What it's like to record an audio book 

Of course someone beat me to the joke

I can't believe Matt didn't make that joke in the video!

​@@teabagfcYou know, every video from him is a Parker video.

Standing Uping Mathing

Stand-up maths? This is clearly Matt_Parker_2 smh

The urge to do that (in writing) when proof-reading my own work is tough to resist. I'm convinced that this is exactly what happened when you read something that has nested parentheses or endless footnotes.

Some of my favorite writing has loads of footnotes, I also enjoy random tangents in videos, there's definitely a correlation between the two

Underrated pun

@@QuantumHistorian i remember one author calls it overfitting the lecture, the more time you spend on a lecture note the more confusing it gets because you keep adding small details and tangents to it

@@oldcowbb That's an excellent word for it! While I enjoy the odd tangent, I think too much can be a sign of bad structure. Footnotes (like parentheses [such as these]) mostly happen at a junction when there are two ways the discussion could go and you want to do cover both at the same time. Maybe footnotes are the best way of doing that, but even better would be a structure where both points can be brought up one after the other in a way that maintains flow. Not saying I have any magic solutions here, but this is a problem I have when writing myself. Especially with multiple authors and too much editing and re-editing.

errors and mistakes are elusive! we have regulatory documentation that gets checked by like 4 lab people, 2 quality people and 2 labheads and there are STILL errors slipping through. mostly minor ones though, like spelling error word didnt detect..

After a while you also get so familiar with a text that it's hard to read what it actually says on the page rather than what you think it says.

Make Word read it to you, it is painful but helpful!

@@neiljessie8068This is what I always do. Surprisingly awesome and useful feature

At 15:03 I think he's saying that 1st ed. _Humble Pi_ was printed after its audiobook recording and thus *doesn't* have as many errors. But 1st ed. _Love Triangle_ will have some errors that later editions don't.

@@theadamabrams Ah my mistake. Then I guess _Love Triangle_ deserves a Parker Edition!

​@@EmceeJoseph That's a fine Parker Edition comment you've made 😁

@@dibbler5 Indeed!

​@@theadamabrams Could these be described as Schrodinger Typos?

if you sit with proper posture then the difference between sitting and standing is minimal in terms of breath support source: played a wind instrument for almost a decade.

It might be more psychological. Standing up is more common in public speaking, so it might encourage you to speak with more emotion and a wider range of tones than the sedated sitting down which might give a more rested and calm feeling.

@@Arcangel0723 Ya, as long as your upper body is straight, I can't imagine sitting or standing really makes a difference in that regard. Sitting is probably less tiring, but if you're not used to recording audiobooks (or really performing seated) and you are used to doing it standing up, I can see why Matt would want to.

thunk?

I imagine that a lot of people who do these recordings do them for long hours and I don't know about you but my feet kill me after standing still for very long, way more than even after a long hike. So I think in terms of comfort and sustainability sitting is probably better for most people. And as others have said, I don't think it has too much of an effect on your voice especially because they don't need you to project like you're speaking to a large room with no mic

Listening for mistakes for 2 hours sounds tough too. I know it's his job but still... You have to really be tuned in to catch things like "a" vs "the".

I mean sure, but knowing what a character should sound like and being able to actually produce that sound in a way that's usable for an audio production are two very different things.

@@theanyktos a fair point

You wouldn't expect a scriptwriter to act in their own work, some do, but it's not the norm. Why would that be different when you remove the visual aspect of acting but keep the auditory one?

Also, the process is probably different for different categories, but I would think for fiction the author would be involved at least for sample passages of each character. Might depend on the publisher how much input the author has into the tone the VA sets for the book.

It's not clear that the character is "supposed" to sound like what the author thinks they should sound like. There's a very famous essay "The Death of the Author".

He's probably good at sorting mistakes from dialects.

@@Karreth I don't think there's any dialect in which arbitrary is pronounced without that r. It's just an idiosyncrasy Matt has.

​@@PerMortensen I guess it depends on how deep down the linguistics rabbit hole one wants to go, with things like a 'personal dialect' (or 'idiolect') :D but it's also definitely true that English people tend to eat Rs all over the place if they're speaking quickly

@@EcceJack He's not English.

​@@ImDemonAlchemistNo, but he has acclimatised to an extent. I (in Scotland) have a college who lived south of the border for a while, and they pronounce some Rs like other Scots, miss some like English, and chuck in extra 'intrusive' ones in other places.

If it's just for pronunciations, they could get a list of all the unique words in the book. Then filter out a list of common words to get the list for review. I don't work in the industry but think that would be a reasonable way to handle it.

@@airock2893 Well Richard has to know when to put more emphasis and which melody fits to what sentence/parts. He's not only checking on pronunciations. Also he should know what to expect. He can't just go in blindly or in this case "deafly" 😅

It's just a UK English vs US English thing. Trapezium is the UK version of Trapezoid. It's like saying you would turn off an audio book because someone called fries chips.

@@FryGuy1013 , except no one in the world uses the word "traPEEzoids". I get that the flawed pronunciation there comes from a blending of the US and UK version of the shape, but that pronunciation for that word is not used anywhere. I would equally turn off any audio book that used the word "traPUHzium". The words are "tra-puh-zoids" and "tra-pee-zium".

@@SgtSupaman you sound like a lot of fun to be around; what else can we express disdain for based on not being a perfect human? I'm happy to know there is someone in the world that can dictate what mistakes are excusable and which ones aren't. Such relief! Coming from Sergeant Malaysian-Tree-Man (his name couldn't be supa for super, would kind of put holes in that entire superiority complex about perfect speaking). What is so special about the Supa tree? What does its wood smell like? What color? How fine is the grain? Is it knotty? Is it a hard or soft wood? Heavy or light? What uses do you make of it? Any other things we should watch out for and deny ourselves things because of lack of perfection? People? No one is perfect, so I shouldn't listen to anyone ... I suppose that includes you which now makes this all moot. Ok, take care have a nice life of being specifically judgemental!

@@zakuraayame5091you sound like a lot of fun to be around; what else can we express disdain for based on not being a perfect human? I'm happy to know there is someone in the world that can dictate what mistakes are excusable and which ones aren't. Such relief! Coming from Sergeant Malaysian-Tree-Man (his name couldn't be supa for super, would kind of put holes in that entire superiority complex about perfect speaking). What is so special about the Supa tree? What does its wood smell like? What color? How fine is the grain? Is it knotty? Is it a hard or soft wood? Heavy or light? What uses do you make of it? Any other things we should watch out for and deny ourselves things because of lack of perfection? People? No one is perfect, so I shouldn't listen to anyone ... I suppose that includes you which now makes this all moot. Ok, take care have a nice life of being specifically judgemental!

@@_Heb_ I'm glad I made someone happy "I'm happy to know there is someone in the world" yep, there are over 8 billion people, out of context quote to spice up your day!

Well or a good engineer, properly "directing" the reading. I don't know if they could turn a dull author-reader into a _great_ reader, but I'm sure they can take _some_ credit for a good performance. I'm sure it also depends on how "directable" the author is.

You normally use them with the glow-ey part face down? Seems... less practical.

Doubtful. I'm sure whatever compensation is negotiated during the contract. Maybe he gets just a little more of the royalties from being both the author and VA of the audio book. That's probably something that you might get hypotheticals on, but I wouldn't expect details of any contract like that to be available.

I guess that's the only way they could get the power cable to it the whole time

The script of an audiobook has to be exact for Reasons, and Steve would convert all the Pis to Half-Taus.

​@@tparadox88that's true, it's a real bone of contention between them.

I understand this joke

​​@@LethalLuggageits the banjo hearthian

Undoubtably

I suspect they've, regrettably, become acceptable pronunciations now.

Yes, I was waiting for him to interrupt on that one. The 'r' was completely missing. Now I'll have to buy the audiobook to see if it got fixed...

Ngl- I didn’t even notice it, even after reading this comment

I think it's a thing where it's small enough that it's not worth redoing an otherwise perfect sentence.

I would suspect someone named Fforde is especially apt at catching typos

Mary Robinette Kowal suffered the nightmare where _the entire opening sentence_ of one of her novels somehow went missing in the first print run. (Fortunately, the second sentence wasn't bad, but still, you craft your opening line _soooo_ carefully!) Solution? She made a whole thing of it with her fans. I think she gave out stickers with the opening line. And, if you met her with a physical copy, she wouldn't just sign it, she'd _handwrite the whole missing sentence onto the page_ for you. That's going above and beyond!

If you haven't checked it out yet, have a listen to the A Problem Squared podcast, which he does with Bec Hill. Very good-natured, funny and interesting.

howjsay?

@@fanq_ that only works if I know I am saying it wrong