[Studiotalk] Multiple narrators

Tue May 21 13:29:34 CDT 2019

We’ve experimented with multiple narrators on a handful of books. Very similarly to what Stephen and Nancy shared.

Often this is when selections involve extensive interviews, or even letters back and forth between two pen pals. When the text is moving quickly between two people, with little to differentiate them beyond their name and a colon, it can easily become confusing for the patron.

There’s an old book on BARD, made up of Orson Wells interviews, which I found unlistenable for how hard it was to follow. In that case, there was a single narrator doing nothing to differentiate the two people speaking, aside from saying their initials at the beginning of the sentence.

Another instance which comes to mind is when there was a framing device, I believe a journalist, and then the chapters themselves were the first-person perspective of a much younger character of the opposite gender. We felt that the same person reading both sections would be distracting, as they were so disparate in voice.

I think multiple narrators would work very well for the project you’re describing, absolutely agreeing with Nancy that switching narrators within the same President would not be ideal.

[Green]

Brian Blackwell
Studio Manager, Arizona Talking Book Library
AZ State Library, Archives & Public Records

Email: bblackwell at azlibrary.gov<mailto:bblackwell at azlibrary.gov>
Office: 602-926-3343
Library: 602-255-5578

1030 N 32nd Street | Phoenix, AZ | 85008

This message and any messages in response to the sender of this
message may be subject to a public records request.

From: studiotalk [mailto:studiotalk-bounces at islemail.org] On Behalf Of Nancy Gahagan
Sent: Tuesday, May 21, 2019 9:42 AM
To: TBBS Recording Studio Info
Subject: Re: [Studiotalk] Multiple narrators

Was going to respond, but Stephen put it perfectly! We have only done this on two books, one being a collection of short stories, and the other a book of essays about aging, where we had a male and a female narrator trade off depending from which point of view the essay was written. If you do choose to use multiple narrators, I would just make sure that one person narrates the content for each campaign. So one in charge of Lincoln, one in charge of FDR, Obama,etc.

Nancy Gahagan
Recording Studio Manager
Perkins School for the Blind

Perkins Library
175 North Beacon Street
Watertown MA 02472
P: 617-972-7362
Perkins.org

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On Tue, May 21, 2019 at 12:25 PM Stephen Lewis <slewis at tsl.texas.gov<mailto:slewis at tsl.texas.gov>> wrote:
For books, NLS prefers a single narrator; however, they understand that sometimes studios will decide to finish a book with a different narrator than the one who originally started narrating the title, if there are extenuating circumstances. We’ve had to do this a number of times during my tenure as studio manager here in Texas. We’ve also experimented with using multiple narrators for certain special projects; in one example it was an ultra-short children’s book and a male and female narrator requested that they read it together with each reading certain characters and/or the narrative text. In another example, the volunteer narrating a non-fiction book about a murder trial, the narrator requested that we have him work with another narrator to do an interview sequence which he thought would be more intelligible if it were done in two voices instead of just the one.  But again, most of our instances of doing this have been out of necessity where the original narrator was not able to finish the book and either the book was way behind schedule and/or enough had been recorded on it already that we felt it better to continue with a new (preferably similar sounding narrator) rather than scrap it and start over.

We had a large Spanish language literary anthology which took several years to complete; the original narrator did record a lot of it but became problematic in attendance and ultimately we had to resort to using multiple other narrators to finish it. By the end of it, the 550 page book took 5 and a half years and 4 narrators to finish.

With magazines, NLS is fine with multiple narrators. There are only a few magazines produced in the network, as far as I am aware, which use 1 narrator for the whole issue.

Ultimately, NLS has its druthers for best-practices but the bottom line is sometimes you have to work outside those to get content completed. Obviously, some scenarios are more suited than others for planning such multi-narrator recordings but our experience is that its best to consider it a last resort or for special circumstances.

- SMiles Lewis
Volunteer Recording Studio<https://www.tsl.texas.gov/tbp/vrs.html>
Texas State Library & Archives Commission
Talking Book Program
Audio Production Administrator / Studio Director
(512) 463-5546 voicemail
(512) 936-0685 fax
www.TexasTalkingBooks.org<http://www.texastalkingbooks.org/>
www.Tsl.Texas.gov/tbp/<http://www.tsl.texas.gov/tbp/>

From: studiotalk <studiotalk-bounces at islemail.org<mailto:studiotalk-bounces at islemail.org>> On Behalf Of Coffman, Linden
Sent: Tuesday, May 21, 2019 11:03 AM
To: studiotalk at islemail.org<mailto:studiotalk at islemail.org>
Subject: [Studiotalk] Multiple narrators

Good day everyone,

I was wondering about using multiple narrators for certain titles or types of books.  I have experimented with using a couple of narrators for a collection of short stories but that is the extent of my experience.  I know that some have used several readers for different articles in magazines or journals.  How does that work for you and your patrons?  What about other types of books?   Would several different narrators work for a collection of essays or biography collections work?  What brought this to mind for me is a large book that I would like to do (500 plus pages) on presidential campaigns in Indiana from Lincoln to Obama.  Could I use multiple narrators reading different chapters and still have good continuity for the recording?  I’m just trying to make use of more volunteer narrators as well finding a way increasing productivity.  Any feedback would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Linden Coffman
Director
Indiana Voices
Indiana State Library
Talking Book & Braille Library
315 West Ohio Street
Indianapolis, IN 46202
317-232-3683
E-mail: lcoffman at library.in.gov<mailto:lcoffman at library.in.gov>

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