Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Listen with Holland

I've been a busy girl over the past week or so, and one of the things I've been doing is enabling people to listen to my poems online.

Along the way, I've discovered that it's quite a complicated process to load audio files onto websites and blogs, especially if you live in the UK instead of the United States - Blogger does a free down-the-phone Audioblogging service in the States, for instance, which you have to pay for in call charges if ringing from outside the USA - so this has not been easy.

However, I found a way round those problems by thinking laterally. I recently got hold of an MP3 recorder and, whilst the sound quality is not brilliant, have now managed to record a handful of performance-friendly poems and load them onto a free Sound & Image website called Putfile.

So if you like the idea of hearing my poems rather than just seeing them in print, you can now check out the ones I've loaded so far by clicking www.putfile.com/janeholland.

Be warned though, if you visit the site, that the volume is quite loud on some of the audio files, so do check it before the file starts playing - there's usually a short window of 5 - 10 secs while it loads during which you can lower the volume.

It's just poems being 'read out' at the moment - which is never ideal - but I have several gigs coming up over the next month or so, and will be taking along my trusty MP3 recorder to see what sort of quality of recording I can get from a live poetry reading in front of an audience.

Here's that link again: www.putfile.com/janeholland

3 comments:

Sarah said...

Hello Jane,

We have an audio bites section at phoenixwriters.com and we're wondering whether you would like to contribute? It would be great if you would!

I am told by Paul that it is a fairly simple process. Email if you're interested. We'd love to have your voice on the site.

Sarah

Anonymous said...

My blog's on TypePad & I've recorded a couple of my poems that I've then uploaded on MP3. I used a free bit of software called Audacity & had no trouble taking them on board at all.

Jane Holland: Editor said...

Cheers, Leeloo, I will email you very soon. Dick, thanks for that suggestion - alas, Blogger doesn't have the same facility but I'm not really interested in changing blogsites at the moment. I'm too happy with the Blogger format in other ways ... and besides, it's rather nice having a separate site just for the audio files, and it is only a click away at http://www.putfile.com/janeholland

Thanks for all the feedback though, it's really appreciated!

Jane