Thanks for the feedback so far.
The current "demos" are about a week old. I have recorded some new ones and I think they sound good. That machine gun delivery is me being an idiot and thinking about speaking like a teletype halfway through the demo.
The problem I am trying top overcome right now is my instinct to talk like an auctioneer. I was pretty happy I could get down from mumbling and garbling 50 percent of the words to maybe 3 in a paragraph. I find it takes me about 10 to 12 tries to nail a paragraph down decently. Thank goodness I am paitient and this is a labor of love as opposed a job.
Any ideas for slowing down my speech apart from practice, practice, pracitce? If I can nail that, I could get things down nicely.
Here are something I have done to help my speed and delivery:
(1) Reherse: Doh. Kind of obvious.
(2) Change The Wording: While my Canadian accent my be nice to listen to, I have discovered I have a speech impediment that makes me slur/mumble/garble certain word combinations. To combat this, I read the paragraphs alouda few times. Any place that my mouth has issues with, I change the words until I can pronounce them clearly.
(3) Tap My Leg Like A Beat: I don't know if this really helps, but I pretend I am playing an insturment. I tap my leg and try to focus on pronouncing each word clearly... but not too slowly.
(4) Learning To Record In Bits: I starting work on the first chapter (4 pages) and focusing on nailing down each paragraph. I'm trying to record just a paragraph at a time and splice them together. Shockingly, Audicity works very well in this regard and I haven't been able to hear a "bump/shuffle/click" when I splice paragraphs. The first chapter is pretty hard for me because it is descriptive as opposed to converstational (conversation is easier for me to speak).
As for my setup, I have a Sony SV-120 Dynamic Microphone... sitting in a tupperware container, propped up with hockey cards. My filter is a dollar stor stocking with a plastic hoop inside. The filter sits on a candle holder. I record using my SB Audigy sound card and using the old standby of Audicity.
I'll post an updated Prologue tonight around 9:00 EST as well as the first 1:30 minutes from Chapter 1, so you can check it out. Just follow the link. The news on the page will let you know what you are listening to and when it was recored.
Again, I really apprecaite all of you donating your time to listen and provide feedback. I just hope the project will be listenable when I finish it... and yes, I will post it to Podiobooks when I get it at least 1/2 complete. Maybe I can get away from writing children's books for a while.