Exit Darth

I’ve been working on editing the first episode for the audio version of my collection One Hand Screaming and discovered something that I hadn’t noticed while working on my series of test podcasts Prelude To A Scream.

I breathe a lot.

Too much, in fact.

Right into the bloody microphone.

I’m using Audacity to record and edit my podcasts, and find that it is an awesome application, intuitive and easy to get up and running with quite fast. Among other great features, it has this wonderful noise removal function built into it. For the first few recordings I used it to remove clicking and page shuffling and other circumstantial noises, but with the recording of the full audio version of my story “Browsers” I found I had to edit out tons of pauses where I’m sucking in my breath. It became disconcerting after, I don’t know, the tenth time within the space of a minute. So I removed them. Well, most of them. I did leave a few breath sucking noises in, as well as some lip smacking, swallowing and choking noises, and a plethora of “uh’s” just to give it that realistic “listening to me doing a live reading” kind of feel.

But I’m now leary to go back and listen to Episodes 01 through 03 of Prelude To A Scream, afraid that all I’m going to hear are the Darth Vader breathing pauses between words.

Someone listen to them for me, ok? And tell me how bad it really is.