tell me about books on tape.

I only have a few nuts-and-bolts questions, actually. I’m recording some stuff for my voice-over demo reel, and I’m including a book-on-tape segment.

I haven’t ever had the occasion to listen to one, and I doubt my audio engineer has either. Will those of you who listen to a lot of books on tape help a Doper out?

[ul]
[li]I assume the reader does different voices for the different characters, right?[/li][li]Is there music playing behind the reading of the text, or silence?[/li][li]Do they do sound effects (e.g. gunshots, dogs barking)?[/li][/ul]
The particular excerpt I chose is from The Hound of the Baskervilles and doesn’t need sound effects, but I am especially interested in the music issue.

Thanks, guys!

I used to listen to a lot of them.

Almost always one actor does all voices. There are even audio book stars. Guy who did most of Dark Tower books was super. He got in an accident or something and I think he died or retired.

There are usually music cues and music in transition between scenes.

Rarely sound effects.

I’ve been listening since the true days of ‘books on tape’, and now I’m a regular audible.com digital audiobook subscriber. Overall, the answer to most of your questions is ‘it depends’, more specifically:

  • I assume the reader does different voices for the different characters, right?

Most of the time, but for the best readers it’s subtle.

  • Is there music playing behind the reading of the text, or silence?

A lot of books have some theme or background music, but few have it throughout the entire book. There are a few series I can think of off the top of my head, (Earthsea and Bartimaeus,) where the background music fades out after the beginning and resumes at the end, so when you hear the orchestra starting to grow loud, you’re sure that the book is really coming to a close.

  • Do they do sound effects (e.g. gunshots, dogs barking)?

This is fairly rare in my experience, but a few sound effects are used in situations where other sounds will actually explain what’s going on better than the original text can.

These answers are given for fairly simple book productions with a single reader. I’ve also listened to some titles on audible that seem to be more of a ‘dramatic production’ - they stick to the text of the original book, but introduce different readers to read different sections based on who the main character is, for instance, and in these I think that music or sound effects would be used more often. And further along the same spectrum you have actual audio plays with a different script based upon the book.

I hope that this helps.

I’ve only listened to Steve Martin read his autobiography “Born Standing Up” and Alfred Molina narrate a book on the Beatles. Nothing but them reading in either set of CDs, but both were very enjoyable. I think Molina did just a bit of acting when he read direct quotes from people in the book, but it didn’t distract at all. He didn’t do female voices, but I’m not sure if anyone like Yoko Ono was quoted, allowing us to hear his take on a female “character”. I hope this helps.

Thanks, folks – this is helpful. I just wanted to make sure the style was different from, say, a radio play.

Can you sample the books on iTunes, the way that you can sample songs? If so, you might want to sample a few. It would be free and all.

It’s REALLY easy to go to the library and check out a few audiobooks and see for yourself …

The one thing I hate is when the switch voices. Like on one book the hero will sound one way and the next book (in a series) they’ll use a different actor and so the voice will be different.

Some readers are better than others. Some are so bad, I can’t listen to the books on tape version.

I think they’re mostly called audiobooks these days. Anyway, regarding the different voices, you get the ones who do only slightly different voices, and then you get voice actors like Jim Dale on the Harry Potter audiobooks. He starts reading segments at about the 2 minute mark.

I’d go along with this. When the reader has had to do different voices and I’ve noticed it as him ‘doing a different voice,’ it jars. Generally they’ll modulate their voice to be more gently spoken, more strident, swifter, etc, and rely on the text to deliver the rest.

Occasionally including something more obvious like accent is unavoidable, so you need to plan ahead - if your c character interacts with characters a, b and d only once in the text but they’re all arguing, then you still need to be able to differentiate between them, so one of them might need an ‘accent’ or something. But even if the accent is perfect it will stand put and break the fourth wall a little more than you’d like.

Sound effects are extremely rare. Use them only if the text is inadequate. I can’t actually remember ever hearing any in any audiobooks, but I’m sure there are some. ‘BANG!’ said with the right timing and plosive action can be a lot more startling than a sound-effect gunshot. More to the point, if there weren’t any sound effects before that then the listener might wonder if the reader had suddenly coughed loudly or something rather than recognising it as a gunshot.

Music at the beginning and end of chapters is nice, scene-setting, but if it were played throughout would be extremely irritating. It’s a book - I can make my own music.

Don’t. Talk. Too. Slowly. Don’t. OVER. Emphasise. Drives me bloody mad. Talk at a touch slower than the usual human’s pace of speech and emphasise words just a little more than usual. It’s hard to judge when you’ve gone too far, but IME most readers manage it, with a few exceptions. I do not appreciate being read to like I’m a 5-year-old tucked up in bed when I’m listening to a book about quantum physics.

Oh, that’s all for books for grown-ups, since mentioned Doyle - for kids’ books you’d do different voices, same as you would when reading to an actual kid.