Reading stories vs Audio-Booking them

[Lester Curtis]

That's great stuff Dan!

I have never thought about what kind of music would go with a Steampunk theme!

There are nearly as many different styles of steampunk music as there are any other genres of music. I know several different sets of steampunk musicians. String Quartets playing classical music, Rock bands playing dance music with steampnk-themed lyrics, Goth/Industrial bands turned to steampunk themes and such, Filkers, etc. For my project, I'm writing a mix of full orchestra and rock instrumentation.
Dan

Not bad. To me, it would just seem natural to focus on a brass composition -- marching-band arrangements -- as fitting for the feel of the era. I like the richness of your arrangement, though, and as near as I can tell, steampunk doesn't seem to try to exactly duplicate the historical flavor so much as spin off from it. Makes me wonder what John Phillips Sousa would have done with electronic instruments.

I'm not sure what you have in mind for this composition as part of a complete production, but one thing that bothered me was the abrupt breaks between the three movements. Seemed a little jarring; you might consider a different approach to transitions, unless this is a place where the narrator would announce a chapter change.

When the linked piece ended, another began [Part 6, Blue Sky Flying], and it took me a moment to find out what was going on. I liked that one better just as something to listen to, but of course it has a different purpose for you.

Like your cover art, too.

Mark Edgemon wrote:

Most audio directors do as much to shape a performance after it's in the can through post editing techniques as they do during the recording. Adding and removing space in between words and sentences can add dramatic effect, such as altering the actor's voice inflection. Slightly adjusting the narrator's speed dozens of times throughout the performance and or slightly adjusting pitch when a male actor let's say does female voice inflections is all part of the producer/editor/director's job.

Also to get the spoken parts to synch with the background music, and sometimes to get the entire piece to fit within an allotted time -- a fifteen-second commercial spot typically comes in at about thirteen seconds, so that it doesn't get accidentally truncated during broadcast.

[Lester Curtis]

TV stations do indeed speed up commercials, so a 30 second spot plays in 25-28 seconds, chop off endings, because they are too lackadaisical to give credence to their chief source of revenues.

Long gone are the days when "the customer is king" and "the customer is always right"! Broadcasting is now the old west equivalent of the bad lands for advertisers.

I was professionally trained in studio production (Recording Workshop), and as we were taught there, the broadcasters don't mess with what's given them, they just air it and keep to their schedules. So, they don't speed anything up, but if a commercial spot runs thirty-one seconds, the ending of it just gets cut when it airs, and it's not the station's fault; the party who produced the spot is the one apologizing to the advertisers. Now, I do know that it's not uncommon for advertisers (commonly small local ones) to contract with the broadcaster to produce their spots for them. Still, it's not the viewers who directly pay for the programming; the advertisers are still the clients of greatest importance.

Funny, it's like that as much with cable as it is with "free" broadcast. Back when cable came out, I wasn't the only one looking forward to commercial-free programming. Cable gets paid for from both ends now. Oh, well.

I do see a lot of sloppiness on TV lately, though. It's across the board: ad spots get botched, but so does the news production. I don't recall this happening much way back when. I think there's a general carelessness creeping into the industry, or maybe lack of proper training.

[Lester Curtis]

Mark wrote:

Oh they definitely DO mess with the spots in a horrific way to the ad buyer and I'll tell you how.

Wow. I had no idea.

[Lester Curtis]

Meanwhile, in the world of self-publishing . . .

I recently signed up to a Yahoo group dealing with self-publishing. Somehow I defaulted to receiving emails of all the new posts. Okay; it saves me going to the page.

Anyway, I get emails from some poor wretch who has an ebook they're trying to SELL -- and they start finding THOUSANDS of FREE copies of it all over the net.

And the British government is enacting a law which allows them to steal the publication rights to "orphan works." They've started compiling a list of the booty, which includes books that are still in print, as well as books published outside of the UK. Who needs pirates, huh?