Recording Keats Poems and Letters

[Malia]

Hello Everyone
I had an idea a while back which I posted in the feedback section of the forum and Stephen Saturn replied that he liked the idea so I'm posting it here to see who else is interested.

The idea is to have us Keats fans read and record some of Keats's poems and letters and have them uploaded as audio files to the this website. I think it would be cool to hear our various readings of Keats's work--it gives depth and insight into different readers' interpretation of his work. Besides, poetry is meant to be read aloud and Keats's work is especially melodic and pleasing to the ear.

What do you all think? I'm not quite sure how this will work, technically speaking, (i.e. how to create/send/upload audio files) but it would be fun to listen to all our readings.

[Credo Buffa]

That's a fun idea! I'd be up for it

[Saturn]

If you have a microphone you can connect it to your microphone socket on your computer and record your reading with sound recorder or Nero or some other sound recording program.

As for uploading the files I would recommend using either http://rapidshare.de/ or http://www.megaupload.com/ for permanent storage of the files or http://www.sendmefile.com/index.htm for easier use.

http://www.yousendit.com/ can be used but has only 7 days storage of files.


I don't recommend anyone troes to record the whole of Endymion or Hyperion though

I will record a few examples myself later this week and put them up as soon as I can.

This could be very interesting my friends. As Malia quite rightly has pointed out poetry was meant to be heard.

If anyone has any better suggestions for hosting the files I'd be very grateful for any ideas.

[Malia]

This is totally cool, Stephen! Thanks for posting the hosting links--I'm going to try and figure out how to do it on my computer this weekend. Hope I have the right software on my Mac--I took an online class in Hawaiian once and had to regularly upload audio files of me speaking in Hawaiian, so I know it *can* be done.

I look forward to hearing your readings--and everyone else's!

[Saturn]

Here's my first couple of goes at this.

Click on the links to download the mp3's.

O Solitude! If I must with thee dwell
http://www.sendmefile.com/00216491

To- ['Had I man's fair form']
http://www.sendmefile.com/00216494

On first looking into Chapman's Homer
http://www.sendmefile.com/00216496

I'd like to know what you think.
Are they too flat? Can you even understand my Northern Irish brogue? Is the volume too low?

I look forward to hearing your own readings of Keats' work.


It doesn't neccessarily have to be a complete poem.
In the case of the longer poems like Endymion and Hyperion, Isabella etc. it could be your favouritestanza or couple of stanza's.

I doesn't evenhave to be a poem. It could be a passage from one of his letters, a speech from Otho The Great perhaps, as long as it's Keats.

[Malia]

I'm totally bummed--I can't open your files, Stephen! I can get to the link and click "download file" and the media player pops up all in a normal fashion but it says it can't initiate the file. Please try again as I'd really love to hear your readings. I'm going to try and see what I can do this weekend about getting something posted--it'll take a few hours to figure it out (hours that I haven't had at my disposal during the work week).

We'll get this technology glitch worked out one way or another

[Despondence]

Very nice Stephen! not much accent there, I thought
I only had some trouble making out certain parts, especially in "Solitude", as you went down in pitch you also went down in volume, till it sounded almost mumbled or half muffled. But otherwise really nice! (btw, I could fix that with a bit of compression....mind if I remix your act ? :D:D)

P.S. Malia - I had no trouble downloading, maybe if you try another browser, that sometimes helps..

[Malia]

Despondence,
How in heck were you able to listen to the files? I tried to open it in a new window, but to no avail. Did you listen to the files using windows media player? Is there something I'm supposed to have loaded on my computer to listen to MP3 files? If you--or anyone else--can provide some insight, please do, because I'd love to listen to the files--if only I could figure out how!

[Despondence]

Errr....well, for me there was nothing out of the ordinary, it downloaded the mp3 file to disk and then I played it with an external player, not the browser. You seem to have a browser mp3 plug-in that wants to play the file directly. If this doesn't work, then try to deactivate the plugin - or as I suggested, just try another browser (firefox maybe?)

[Despondence]

Or even simpler - when the download link pops up, right-click on it and choose "save linked file to disk" or equivalent.

[Malia]

Yea!
Thanks, Despondence I figured out how to listen to the files. I saved the file to disk, then opened it with some kind of jukebox device instead of media player. I knew there *had* to be a way!

Stephen, LOVELY accent! Great timbre to your voice, as well. I agree with Despondence that you tended to mumble your words--at least it was hard for me to make some of them out--but again, the tibre of your voice, the tone, the metre were all excellent! (At this point, I've only heard "O Solitude", though, so I can't comment on the other two as yet.)

Despondence, are you going to post a few readings of your own soon?

[Despondence]

Despondence, are you going to post a few readings of your own soon?

Much as I love the idea, I wasn't really planing on doing that.. My voice is anything but sultry Though maybe I'lll experiment a bit at some point and see how it comes out

(Hmm. Maybe I could pick one where he was plagued by a sore throat...I do have a bit of a cold at the moment... - anything for realism!)

[Saturn]

My teachers always said I mumbled

On my next attempts I'll try and annunciate better

Thanks for the feedback guys

[Malia]

Much as I love the idea, I wasn't really planing on doing that.. My voice is anything but sultry Though maybe I'lll experiment a bit at some point and see how it comes out

Your voice doesn't have to be perfect to read a poem, goodness gracious. And in fact, it was reported by more than one of Keats's friends that Keats wasn't the best when it came to reading his own poetry aloud. Now, if Keats can do it--you can do it--and I'm sure much better than Keats

Stephen,
I listened to the other two recordings and am absolutely positive now--I love the accent! (We Americans, for the most part, have extremely boring accents, unfortunately--well that's my opinion anyway. . .at least of the "West Coast" accent that we have here in Washington.) It was still hard to make out some of your words, but again, everything else was brilliantly done.

[Credo Buffa]

Hmmm, I'm not able to get any of the files to work either. I'm usually pretty good at troubleshooting these things, but alas, no luck Tried two different browsers, right clicking and saving, etc. . . It downloaded just fine, but when I tried to play it, it didn't work.