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Sherman Alexie's avatar

I often record my short Substack posts on my iPad without worrying about edits or the quality of the sound. If I mess up, I just re-record the whole thing. And I think my iPad's sound is fine. It works well in our more Substack space. But when I record audio of my Substack using my good mic and laptop computers—and I have strong editing capabilities—I'll edit out almost all the "ums" and "ers" but I'll keep a few. And I'l be careful about editing out breath sounds or lip smacking noises. If I edit out too many of those unintentional sounds then the recording starts to sound a little unreal. Strangely enough, I think those slightly imperfect recordings sound more real. More sincere.

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Sharron Bassano's avatar

"...the artificial reality of a glossed, mendacious perfection." ... "The sincerity of grime rather than the dishonesty of sterility." ... "Because it isn’t about technical perfection, the following of rules to achieve a precise result.....[it is about ] something that might be called human." Thank all the gods for that bit of wisdom! Sometimes it is good to tell instead of show. Sometimes those adverbs are necessary, not to mention a passive voice to shake things up. I had a teacher who advised us, ""Let's create errors and commit poetry." Thank you, Charles, for always provoking us.

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