The Coal Mining of Voiceover
An In Conversation with Audiobook Narrator David de Vries and Author John K Danenbarger
John K Danenbarger: It has been such a pleasure to get to know you (David de Vries). You did such a terrific job narrating my novel that I became interested in how a narrator works, what a narrator finds interesting, and what he/she might find difficult.
So, my first question is, how do you work? Do you have a studio constructed at home or do you travel to a studio somewhere in the vicinity?
David de Vries: I’ve had a recording studio in my home for more than twenty years. In the late 90s, the technology had changed enough to make a small project studio feasible for Voice Artists. Although I’ve done a great deal of theatre and film/television, voiceover work was always my bread and butter from my early days in the business. The market was beginning to trend at that time toward VO talent that could provide their services without the cost of recording studio fees. So I went to the bank and got a loan to set myself up with a very small recording booth and the necessary outboard and computer gear. It helped that I was a musician and songwriter and had been recording my songs in much cruder fashion for years. Nonetheless, that experience along with the many hours I had logged in other studios was a great help. Since then, I’ve done everything from commercials to documentaries in my home studio, and of course, hundreds of audiobooks.
Today, the technology is even better and more affordable but some things don’t change — microphones haven’t changed a great deal in the last 60 years (good ones still cost an arm and a leg) and basic physics is another! It needs to be quiet. Having a suitable recording room or booth requires some variables that can get quite expensive. Being next to a rumbling train line or the constant whir of leaf blowers or having a cranky old HVAC system would require a great deal of sound isolation and all that is never cheap. I upgraded my booth a couple of years ago since I spend so much time in it and it’s quite commodious now. I’m also an aficionado of microphones and I have a small collection with which I’ve done the lion’s share of my work.
Occasionally I’ll travel to a studio to work, either in town or out of town, but 90% of my narration occurs at home these days.
John: So, how much time does it take to record a book?
David: Depending on my deadlines, I try not to record more than 4 or 5 hours a day. I’ve certainly done more. When I narrated Leon Uris’ “Mila 18” I worked with an engineer from 8:30am — 5pm for a week in a studio in Michigan. It was a 650 page book and it required every minute for me to complete it. But that kind of schedule is really exhausting. I was thrilled to do the project, but one could reach burn out very quickly at that pace.
John: So do you like doing it?
David: What I love is being able to set my own schedule depending on whatever else is going on in my life. I also narrate a lot of history and current affairs, and it’s been such an education! It’s a privilege to learn on the job and an honor to give voice to great scholarship and writing. Can you tell I like my job?
John: What is the negative part of this work?
David: It can be quite isolating at times, sitting there with my iPad and my microphone (people in the industry call audiobook narration “the coal mining of voiceover,” but I believe the benefits far outweigh the liabilities.
John: “The coal mining of voiceover.” Hilarious. Are there things authors do or say that drive you up the wall? Or, since you work through an agency, do you have little or no contact with authors?
David: There’s rarely contact between author and narrator. I think some publishers like for narrators to stay in their lane, and not bother the authors. But I do have occasion to connect at times and it’s very gratifying. I had a challenging history of the Japanese intelligence community written by an MIT professor that I had questions about, so I reached out to him and he was very helpful. Sometimes I just want to thank the author for their work. And it goes the other way as well. I narrated a Vietnam war memoir by a gentleman who wasn’t a professional writer per se, and he was very kind to track me down and thank me for my rendering of his story.
Good writing always wins the day for me. It’s easier to narrate for one thing. You begin to glean the writer’s style and can begin to anticipate the landscape of the writing. But I would have to say that punctuation is probably a pet peeve. For the narrator, punctuation is the GPS of the text. I know where I’m going if a text is mapped out properly via its punctuation. If it’s not, more mistakes and more frustration occur. Every book is a bit of a puzzle that the narrator has to put together piece by piece. That’s the challenge and the fun of it.
John: I would definitely think that punctuation, and even sentence structure, would be key to good narration. I know that, in my self-editing in the early drafts, I use a robotic reader to read back to me to decide if I need to rearrange the sentence and the paragraph, cut out repetition, and punctuate differently. Because I have written the text, I am able to mentally put nuances into the robot’s reading and hear the tone. I don’t know how common it is because I have never heard anyone talk about it, but I use music as a motivator (setting my mood) and as a feeling I want to give the reader in the music of the sentences.
I am guessing that because you are musical, both composing and performing, your narration is, in my own opinion, superior to anyone I have either heard or auditioned. I think you literally hear the tone in the writing, or even better said, the tone of the characters.
So if your work requires a certain amount of quality surrounding and publishers have deadlines, do you need to hang around home to not lose income?
David: Most of the time, I have a queue of titles that I’m under contract to narrate. Right now I have about ten in my queue. Two weeks ago, I only had one. When it rains, it pours. It’s an enviable position to be in, because as a free-lance artist, I have a horizon of work that gives me some sense of security. But of course, that does mean that I have to be in my booth making the donuts and I can’t just take off on impulse. I also have to make myself available for the corrections, i.e. the errors I made while narrating (anything from a mispronunciation to a word inversion) and those come in after the Quality Control (QC) folks have had a go at the recording. So I need to be available for those as well. But to speak to your point, if I’m not in my booth, I’m not making money. Everybody struggles with work/life balance — I’m no different. I try to get out of the studio — walking the dog is an excellent pastime. I like to cook too, and play tennis. I used to fret about getting it all done a lot more than I do now. It all usually works out in the end.
John: So with a book like mine, with eight main characters and innumerable secondary characters, some with foreign accents, how did you manage?
David: What a fascinating book and a challenging one to narrate! I won’t lie, you put me through my paces. So vivid in my mind still, images remain and the disparate connections all these people had. Congratulations and may you enjoy much continued success! I’ll just be in my booth. Sometimes a film set. It remains a challenge and a bit of a mystery but maybe I subconsciously like the uncertainty. Whatever it is, it’s not boring! Let’s stay in touch beyond this project. I want to know what you’re working on!
John: Well, thank you again for the great job you did on my audiobook.
