While I was in Michigan at Waterfall Press/Brilliance Publishing, one of the fascinating things we got to do and see was Sarah Price’s An Amish Buggy Ride being recorded. About twelve of us packed into the tiny little engineer’s studio to listen to Amy McFaddon in the other room as she recorded a scene from Sarah’s book.
I didn’t know much about the audio recording side of publishing but I sure learned a lot that day. Watching Amy alone taught me that it’s as much acting as narrating! Her hands flew about as she read the words. Her nose scrunched up, her eyes widened and narrowed. Peace settled over her features one minute and anxiety appeared right on cue with the words she read. She is an actress whose voice has to carry all the emotions that she showed but we’ll never see. Fascinating!
Here’s Amy’s take on that day. I had to share because even as she described it, I could feel the same moments in that studio. I still hear the engineer stopping her mid sentence to have her make a change. Somehow, she picked up, right in the middle again, as if the flow had never been interrupted, and continued, making the tiniest change in inflection to satisfy the engineer’s ear. They told us that if a narrator doesn’t get a word quite right after a couple of passes, they just continue and either take it from another place once the reader gets it or just has them say the word over and over until they get the right one. Then they actually insert it in the right place to provide a PERFECT reading.
Boy, I wish I could watch and listen as whoever records Deepest Roots of the Heart does. Can you imagine how thrilling that must have been for Sarah?
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