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Voiceteam 2021: Commentary
May. 29th, 2021 02:00 pmVoiceteam 2021 Round 2: Commentary Challenge. Write or record new commentary on a fanwork of yours created before this week. This should be at minimum 7 min or 1K written words. You might talk about why the project is meaningful to you, what your thought process was in making it, what it taught you, reflections on what you might do differently now, etc.
As soon as I came across Cornerofmadness’ The Ties That Bind series, I knew that I was going to podfic it. (Cornerofmadness has blanket permission to podfic, for those who may be worried about that.) Each part is supposed to roughly stand alone within this alternate universe where Malcolm’s voice box was damaged around ten due to [a slightly canon divergent moment], which leads to different amounts of raspiness ascribed to Malcolm’s voice and varying degrees of pain and resulting use of Alternative and Augmentative Communication (AAC) methods. The series listing provides more information (and reveals the traumatic event Malcolm went through): [Podfic] The Ties That Bind. Since I’m writing about a series, it will also be the place where I link this post instead of one fic.
Not really being ‘in’ a podficcer community at the time that I was recording and editing this series [April 2021] meant that I had no prior exposure to discussions about the inclusion of screen reader voices in podfic in any capacity. Trying to mess around with Effects on my voice for an artificial voice when I also needed to differentiate the phrases in sign language from the usual narration and Malcolm’s raspy voice seemed weirdly stubborn that I try to ‘voice’ everything. After I finished the series, I was a bit surprised when I came across an old discussion about using screen reader audio in the podfichat Discord server where some people disliked that, but I imagine that the situation in this series isn’t typical for the discussion because Malcolm uses text-to-speech when talking is too painful, so using screen reader audio is quite literally supported by the text (Bound to Loneliness, Bound for Normalcy). Outside of that, it seemed like a relatively easy way to achieve an artificial voice, so I didn’t hesitate at the time.
Figuring out how to use a screen reader’s audio was also a nice little challenge at the time, in terms of my recording and editing skills. Except for including a song snippet in one fic when it was required, The Ties That Bind series was really the first time that I messed around with adding sound effects to a podfic, specifically whiteboard marker scribbling tracks for Bound to Possibility. (It’s set a few months after Malcolm is injured, so he uses a whiteboard before a text-to-speech program.) It seems like a relatively small detail, but hunting down marker scribbling kept a little bit of fun in the editing process. I was in the midst of cold reading a 65.9K multi-chapter at the time I was recording The Ties That Bind, so I had zero intentions of reading this series cold; I knew that I was going to have to change up my usual recording and editing processes in order to ultimately differentiate the voices (narration, raspy voice, and sign language). However, I wasn’t expecting certain emotional responses from reading the text itself out loud.
On the one hand, it makes sense that Malcolm doesn’t like his voice. He went through a traumatic event, and the resulting scar on his throat and his raspy voice are lifelong reminders of everything involved with that event. He has a clear before and after in terms of his voice (and experiencing pain if he talks too long). On the other hand, I was projecting onto Malcolm, and it felt strange to run into all these little reminders that he didn’t like his raspy voice. Personal opinions about my voice have ranged from dislike to hate based on vocal gender dysphoria, but I’ve never really disliked that it’s got a fraction of the raspiness ascribed to Malcolm in this fic. Granted, I didn’t go through Malcolm’s traumatic event, so I don’t have a before and after or pain influencing how I feel. It’s just, y’know, the voice I’ve had my whole life. It is what it is.
I got comments from substitute teachers about whether I had a cold. I usually got reminders to project and be louder instead of directly asking about my voice. Except, of course, for the one secretary who politely asked if she could ask a question about my voice because she had never encountered someone who had that degree of hoarseness without some sort of painful event happening first. In the course of day-to-day living, my vocal quality isn’t a constant, horrible thing that I have to fight against. It almost felt strange to read Malcolm’s perspective out loud because his ‘new’ voice remained a bit new to him. I feel I should clarify that I didn’t really have a negative response to this. It’s not that I think Malcolm should like his voice within this premise, or anything. It’s more that I felt the edges where I didn’t line up with the character. Case in point, while Malcolm is written as using the label ‘disabled’, I’ve never done so, and that, in part, influenced my usage of ‘non-normate voices’ instead of ‘disabled voices’ in “Thoughts on Audio Social Media & Podfic”.
I have acquired subglottic stenosis. Due to prolonged intubation as an infant in the NICU [neonatal intensive care unit], I have scar buildup and a resultant narrowing in (more or less) the bit of your airway below the vocal cords but before you’re actually in the trachea proper. That’s the easiest explanation for non-medical folks, at any rate. Since I was an infant (and everything was all small and close together), it’s also possible that the breathing tube affected my vocal cords a bit as well. As far as I’m aware, I never underwent any surgical corrections, and I did not need to have a tracheostomy tube inserted, which are usually for more severe cases. I occasionally have some stridor [high pitched whistling noise when breathing], and my voice is described as hoarse, a whisper, or ‘distinctive’ by others.
This was the first series I’ve come across where I didn’t need to leave at least an oscillating fan on in my room while recording to clean up my voice after I run Noise Reduction. I’m aware this runs counter to what’s commonly suggested to new podficcers, but that’s how I worked out my basic narration ‘podfic voice’ that’s, as far as early commenters considered, relatively pleasant sounding. My voice - as is - made it somewhat easier to do Malcolm’s raspy voice, and I actually needed to have as little background noise while recording as possible to get a usable raspy voice track. In terms of editing, I did a separate Noise Reduction, Normalization, and Change Pitch. Since I was already set up for the raspy voice recording, I used the same approach for the phrases that were sign language, but I then went to do my normal editing process (Noise Reduction, Normalization, Equalization (Bass Boost), Low Pass Filter, and Change Pitch).
In trying to look up tips for doing his immediate aftermath voice with the strongest rasp, I found advice for having a raspy voice that ranged from not supporting your breath to dubiously reproducible methods like smoking or yelling. I’m not sure what people with normate voices do, but I could adequately get a stronger rasp by not supporting my breath. Which meant I didn’t breathe immediately before starting those lines of dialogue, and the staccato bit in Bound to Possibility utilized a harsh exhale. (It’s similar to using a peak flow meter except you don’t breathe as deeply as you can beforehand; you want one quick, hard exhale.) For two and a half words that Malcolm had to work to vocalize, it did work. It’s a bit too much like gasping to try to use with full sentences, though, so I let whatever rasp made it through editing while talking normally suffice in other parts (noted for Bound for Normalcy).
Overall, it was interesting recording and editing for The Ties That Bind series, and the only reason that I even made note of anything that I did is that the series is marked incomplete, so I had wanted to make sure I could repeat the process for any future parts. (I made sure that I met the word count before repeating anything from prior notes, but honestly, there’s only so many ways to explain acquired subglottic stenosis over a lifetime.) Back in late February and early March [2021], I did initial recording and editing experiments to figure out how to get a podfic voice that didn’t actually sound like me, and then I tried to not think about it. This series made me really have to face that if I followed common starting advice, my podfic voice would likely be what the sign language portions sound like. If I really pared down on the editing, I would have the raspy voice that Malcolm’s vocal portions get, even if it’s not truly as raspy as his voice is described in the text (“Yep, raspy as if he’d been chain smoking and stealing Gil’s bourbon”).
And yet, clearly, I didn’t try going that route when I first started to make podfic. I’ve been resistant to connecting my fannish online identity with my offline identity, and I didn’t particularly want my podfic identity to get connected to either one. I highly doubt that I’d post raw audio, but even if I did minor editing to slow down vocal recognition, I never thought that I’d purposefully share audio where I sounded like, well, me. It’s not like I’ve had a formative moment where someone has told me to fix my voice that’s keeping me back, or I’ve run into a post discouraging those with certain voices or vocal qualities from taking part in podfic. I’m sure the warning in my ao3 profile seems like overkill for some listeners when my podfic voice has been edited to sound just fine.
There’s still something about not using the usual recording and editing process that seems like I’m somehow putting out a lower quality podfic as a result. In theory, it would be interesting to see if there’s a change from any listeners if I switched to leaving my voice sound raspy, but I’ll be honest - it’s going to be at least 80 F or 26.6 C in the upcoming days. It’s the unofficial start of summer where I live, and the idea of turning off air conditioning for this is probably not going to happen. (I mentioned to my teammates that I didn’t really have a choice about an A/C unit being installed in my window at the beginning of Voiceteam, so it’s already bad enough that I have a different level of background noise to adjust to.) Maybe this autumn or winter after the A/C unit comes out, I can give a raspy voice experiment a shot.
Word count: 1,793 words.
As soon as I came across Cornerofmadness’ The Ties That Bind series, I knew that I was going to podfic it. (Cornerofmadness has blanket permission to podfic, for those who may be worried about that.) Each part is supposed to roughly stand alone within this alternate universe where Malcolm’s voice box was damaged around ten due to [a slightly canon divergent moment], which leads to different amounts of raspiness ascribed to Malcolm’s voice and varying degrees of pain and resulting use of Alternative and Augmentative Communication (AAC) methods. The series listing provides more information (and reveals the traumatic event Malcolm went through): [Podfic] The Ties That Bind. Since I’m writing about a series, it will also be the place where I link this post instead of one fic.
Not really being ‘in’ a podficcer community at the time that I was recording and editing this series [April 2021] meant that I had no prior exposure to discussions about the inclusion of screen reader voices in podfic in any capacity. Trying to mess around with Effects on my voice for an artificial voice when I also needed to differentiate the phrases in sign language from the usual narration and Malcolm’s raspy voice seemed weirdly stubborn that I try to ‘voice’ everything. After I finished the series, I was a bit surprised when I came across an old discussion about using screen reader audio in the podfichat Discord server where some people disliked that, but I imagine that the situation in this series isn’t typical for the discussion because Malcolm uses text-to-speech when talking is too painful, so using screen reader audio is quite literally supported by the text (Bound to Loneliness, Bound for Normalcy). Outside of that, it seemed like a relatively easy way to achieve an artificial voice, so I didn’t hesitate at the time.
Figuring out how to use a screen reader’s audio was also a nice little challenge at the time, in terms of my recording and editing skills. Except for including a song snippet in one fic when it was required, The Ties That Bind series was really the first time that I messed around with adding sound effects to a podfic, specifically whiteboard marker scribbling tracks for Bound to Possibility. (It’s set a few months after Malcolm is injured, so he uses a whiteboard before a text-to-speech program.) It seems like a relatively small detail, but hunting down marker scribbling kept a little bit of fun in the editing process. I was in the midst of cold reading a 65.9K multi-chapter at the time I was recording The Ties That Bind, so I had zero intentions of reading this series cold; I knew that I was going to have to change up my usual recording and editing processes in order to ultimately differentiate the voices (narration, raspy voice, and sign language). However, I wasn’t expecting certain emotional responses from reading the text itself out loud.
On the one hand, it makes sense that Malcolm doesn’t like his voice. He went through a traumatic event, and the resulting scar on his throat and his raspy voice are lifelong reminders of everything involved with that event. He has a clear before and after in terms of his voice (and experiencing pain if he talks too long). On the other hand, I was projecting onto Malcolm, and it felt strange to run into all these little reminders that he didn’t like his raspy voice. Personal opinions about my voice have ranged from dislike to hate based on vocal gender dysphoria, but I’ve never really disliked that it’s got a fraction of the raspiness ascribed to Malcolm in this fic. Granted, I didn’t go through Malcolm’s traumatic event, so I don’t have a before and after or pain influencing how I feel. It’s just, y’know, the voice I’ve had my whole life. It is what it is.
I got comments from substitute teachers about whether I had a cold. I usually got reminders to project and be louder instead of directly asking about my voice. Except, of course, for the one secretary who politely asked if she could ask a question about my voice because she had never encountered someone who had that degree of hoarseness without some sort of painful event happening first. In the course of day-to-day living, my vocal quality isn’t a constant, horrible thing that I have to fight against. It almost felt strange to read Malcolm’s perspective out loud because his ‘new’ voice remained a bit new to him. I feel I should clarify that I didn’t really have a negative response to this. It’s not that I think Malcolm should like his voice within this premise, or anything. It’s more that I felt the edges where I didn’t line up with the character. Case in point, while Malcolm is written as using the label ‘disabled’, I’ve never done so, and that, in part, influenced my usage of ‘non-normate voices’ instead of ‘disabled voices’ in “Thoughts on Audio Social Media & Podfic”.
I have acquired subglottic stenosis. Due to prolonged intubation as an infant in the NICU [neonatal intensive care unit], I have scar buildup and a resultant narrowing in (more or less) the bit of your airway below the vocal cords but before you’re actually in the trachea proper. That’s the easiest explanation for non-medical folks, at any rate. Since I was an infant (and everything was all small and close together), it’s also possible that the breathing tube affected my vocal cords a bit as well. As far as I’m aware, I never underwent any surgical corrections, and I did not need to have a tracheostomy tube inserted, which are usually for more severe cases. I occasionally have some stridor [high pitched whistling noise when breathing], and my voice is described as hoarse, a whisper, or ‘distinctive’ by others.
This was the first series I’ve come across where I didn’t need to leave at least an oscillating fan on in my room while recording to clean up my voice after I run Noise Reduction. I’m aware this runs counter to what’s commonly suggested to new podficcers, but that’s how I worked out my basic narration ‘podfic voice’ that’s, as far as early commenters considered, relatively pleasant sounding. My voice - as is - made it somewhat easier to do Malcolm’s raspy voice, and I actually needed to have as little background noise while recording as possible to get a usable raspy voice track. In terms of editing, I did a separate Noise Reduction, Normalization, and Change Pitch. Since I was already set up for the raspy voice recording, I used the same approach for the phrases that were sign language, but I then went to do my normal editing process (Noise Reduction, Normalization, Equalization (Bass Boost), Low Pass Filter, and Change Pitch).
In trying to look up tips for doing his immediate aftermath voice with the strongest rasp, I found advice for having a raspy voice that ranged from not supporting your breath to dubiously reproducible methods like smoking or yelling. I’m not sure what people with normate voices do, but I could adequately get a stronger rasp by not supporting my breath. Which meant I didn’t breathe immediately before starting those lines of dialogue, and the staccato bit in Bound to Possibility utilized a harsh exhale. (It’s similar to using a peak flow meter except you don’t breathe as deeply as you can beforehand; you want one quick, hard exhale.) For two and a half words that Malcolm had to work to vocalize, it did work. It’s a bit too much like gasping to try to use with full sentences, though, so I let whatever rasp made it through editing while talking normally suffice in other parts (noted for Bound for Normalcy).
Overall, it was interesting recording and editing for The Ties That Bind series, and the only reason that I even made note of anything that I did is that the series is marked incomplete, so I had wanted to make sure I could repeat the process for any future parts. (I made sure that I met the word count before repeating anything from prior notes, but honestly, there’s only so many ways to explain acquired subglottic stenosis over a lifetime.) Back in late February and early March [2021], I did initial recording and editing experiments to figure out how to get a podfic voice that didn’t actually sound like me, and then I tried to not think about it. This series made me really have to face that if I followed common starting advice, my podfic voice would likely be what the sign language portions sound like. If I really pared down on the editing, I would have the raspy voice that Malcolm’s vocal portions get, even if it’s not truly as raspy as his voice is described in the text (“Yep, raspy as if he’d been chain smoking and stealing Gil’s bourbon”).
And yet, clearly, I didn’t try going that route when I first started to make podfic. I’ve been resistant to connecting my fannish online identity with my offline identity, and I didn’t particularly want my podfic identity to get connected to either one. I highly doubt that I’d post raw audio, but even if I did minor editing to slow down vocal recognition, I never thought that I’d purposefully share audio where I sounded like, well, me. It’s not like I’ve had a formative moment where someone has told me to fix my voice that’s keeping me back, or I’ve run into a post discouraging those with certain voices or vocal qualities from taking part in podfic. I’m sure the warning in my ao3 profile seems like overkill for some listeners when my podfic voice has been edited to sound just fine.
There’s still something about not using the usual recording and editing process that seems like I’m somehow putting out a lower quality podfic as a result. In theory, it would be interesting to see if there’s a change from any listeners if I switched to leaving my voice sound raspy, but I’ll be honest - it’s going to be at least 80 F or 26.6 C in the upcoming days. It’s the unofficial start of summer where I live, and the idea of turning off air conditioning for this is probably not going to happen. (I mentioned to my teammates that I didn’t really have a choice about an A/C unit being installed in my window at the beginning of Voiceteam, so it’s already bad enough that I have a different level of background noise to adjust to.) Maybe this autumn or winter after the A/C unit comes out, I can give a raspy voice experiment a shot.
Word count: 1,793 words.
