Oranges and Lemons

Dear all,

At the start of this year I had the priviledge to work with two lovely people, Richard Holliday and Elliot Stammers, both very gifted in their own respected fields. We got together again to bring you a full audiobook reading of Richard’s standalone short story, Oranges and Lemons.

It felt really good to get in the studio with these two again as we all have good chemistry together and we are always laughing, sharing ideas and working things out. What I found most interesting this time round, was how working on a different story really changed how I approached recording the voice.

There were different characters and darker themes that needed to be shown through the voice, and it was a good experience working with Elliot to help bring these characters forward. I think what I have learnt from recording audiobooks is to know that everyone has a different voice, and when recording its important to bring out the best it that person’s voice.

Richard has done an amazing job as this story shows how versatile he is as an author. His writing has improved and there are some parts in the story that are delivered really well and hold a lot of impact. It’s a powerful story in its own right, and as soon as we started speaking it with all the different characters and emotions, it became magnificent.

After the recordings were made the next part was editing the recordings and merging them together to form the story. As I have gained considerably experience from my previous audiobook project, the editing process went much smoother this time round.

Working on the music took a little longer to get started on as I was doing my principal work at the time. We decided to use Mark Morgan’s music from the classic Fallout games. I think this was a very good choice and it is very different to the music we used in The Last of the Steamers. It was also a different experience when it came to putting it together with the words.

Mark Morgan’s music is in general very dark and atmospheric, and it worked well with the overall sombre tone of Richard’s novel. I felt I could be more flexible this time round and implemented the music in different ways. For certain characters like Scott and Ashton, I used music that contained certain textures that suited their personalities and emotions, but I also used music to help enhance the mood of key moments within the story.

I hope you liked what we created together and you find it enjoyable. I really liked working on this audiobook with Richard and Elliot and I hope they both had a good time making it. If your interested in finding out more about this story and reading some of Richard’s other novels, check out his website at richardholliday.co.uk.

Peace and Love, Jamie