Performance

Can I sing the lyrics printed in the book?

Best Practices, Performance

The short answer is “no”.

Copyright protection covers both the musical composition — the melody and lyrics that make the song — and the sound recording. Different people probably hold each of those copyrights. The songwriter or her music publishing company generally own the song copyright, and the performer’s record label usually owns the sound recording copyright.

Performing and distributing a copyrighted song without first obtaining the proper licenses for these activities is copyright infringement.

You should not sing song lyrics printed in your book unless the song is clearly in the Public Domain or the rights holder has paid for reprint rights and a mechanical license.

The “Happy Birthday” song was considered copyrighted until 2016, when a judge ruled it is in the Public Domain. Therefore, you could sing this song in your audiobook.

You cannot sing copyrighted lyrics with a made-up tune. The words still have the same meaning and sequence protected in the song copyright.

You should not even say the song lyrics unless the rights holder presents evidence of the necessary copyright clearances. The RH could have requested and been given permission to reprint the song lyrics in the book.

Since the melody is copyrighted as part of the song, you shouldn’t hum it in the audiobook.

You can legally say the song title since titles cannot be copyrighted.

“What about the Fair Use Standard?” I can hear you thinking. Fair Use allows a person to use a small amount of copyrighted material without permission in a limited way, such as in artistic criticisms and reviews, as well as in educational articles like my Case Study below. A piece must pass several subjective tests to be deemed Fair Use. No magic number exists for the amount of the song that could be freely used, and you don’t know whether a judge would agree with your position if you had to go to court.

Just remember: The music industry zealously protects its copyrights, and the publishing industry is extremely risk-averse.

 

Case Study

While this real-world example deals with the song melody instead of the lyrics, the principle is the same.

As you can see in the below screen shot from Amazon, Stephen King’s book 11/22/63 includes a number of references to the famous Glenn Miller song “In The Mood”. The italicized portions of the circled text represent part of the melody of that song. You’ll notice that the same sequence shows up 5 times in the search results on the left.

 

 

Glenn Miller plays the italicized part of the song in the :3 sample below.

 

This :13 excerpt from the audiobook demonstrates that narrator Craig Wasson did not hum a recognizable tune.

 

Other resources on this topic:

  • This article offers more information about copyrights and music and lyrics.
  • The Knowledge Base articles about music and sound effects may be relevant to your project.

 

Comments on Delivery Speed, Genre, Pauses, and Tone

Performance

Julie Wilson is a senior executive producer at Penguin Random House Audio who also offers coaching and courses for narrators. In this newsletter, she discussed a narrator’s delivery speed.

She commented, “Often, when I tell narrators they are reading “too fast,” it’s actually because they have lost the thread of the story.”

I discovered long ago that I would speed up if I worried that no one was listening to me or that they would stop listening. Concentrating on the TEXT shifts my thoughts from my ego to the author’s intent.

Your speed probably will change from book to book as it will be influenced by the book’s genre and tone.

In his book The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller, John Truby describes genre as:

Genres aren’t just systems for expressing certain themes. They are also strategies for storytelling. One of the ways genres set themselves apart from one another is that they each ask a different central question and force the main character to make a crucial decision.

Thanks to narrator Heather Costa Kafer for sharing this definition.

Narrator and author Tanya Eby observes in this article about developing your narration technique that the genre’s tone is linked to the listening audience. She supplies 2 important questions a narrator should answer as they begin to prep their book for recording.

In her subsequent article Importance of Genre/Tone in Audiobook Narration, Tanya states, “How you change your tone can change the whole feel of the line.” She expands on the nuances of the tones associated with the most popular genres and includes a sound clip of one sentence read with different tones.

Note: You may need a subscription to read Tanya’s Substack. You’ll find a discount offer in the Welcome Center.

Finally, your pauses will not only affect your delivery speed and tone, but they fill your words with meaning and feeling. As narrator Tavia Gilbert wrote on LinkedIn:

In narration, what you don’t say is JUST as powerful as what you do. So pauses aren’t just breaks—they’re huge opportunities.

They allow the listener space to breathe, to process, and to feel.

Mastering the art of the pause is about understanding timing and emotion. And it’s where the magic happens. Always remember that silence is often louder than words.

 

How to play characters of the opposite gender

Performance

The listener knows the gender of the narrator and is not expecting him/her to sound like the other gender. Female narrators shouldn’t necessarily use lower pitch for male characters, nor should male narrators instinctively use a higher pitch to voice female characters.

Each character’s voice will be derived from their personality, which you discover through reading the book and taking notes. You want to be able to visualize a 3-dimensional person and ACT their part according to their scene intentions in the subtext.

Simply distinguishing characters on the basis of generic vocal tricks (changing pitch, gruffness, etc.) does not make the characters sound like real people and isn’t a sustainable approach over the course of a book. Remember, real people have differences in cadence, breathiness, musicality, and articulation. You may find that changing your posture even slightly is a helpful technique for physically embodying a different character.

Regardless of a character’s gender, I think of who I would cast in the role and then channel that person in my performance. The person could be an actor or someone famous, or it could be a family member or friend. This technique enabled me to think of 5 men I could picture as the drag queens who were in several prolonged scenes together in 2 books! If no one comes to mind, I start giving the character a back story that would shape how they would sound.

In books with dozens of characters, you may find that some of your minor characters tend to sound similar. That’s okay. Your main goal is to make sure that the major character voices are distinctive.

 

Other resources on this topic:

How to switch characters during recording sessions

Performance

When you start out, you may be tempted to record each character separately and edit them together.

Avoid this temptation. You should read the book straight through and switch your voice as needed for each character as s/he appears. However, when doing dialogue between characters with a wide variety in accents, you may find that you need to stop and punch in more frequently.

Each moment in the book builds on the one before it. Recording the voices independent of each other would cause 2 negative effects:

1. Editing the files together into the finished book would take entirely too much time.
2. The finished book would sound disjointed and choppy, which would result in listener frustration and complaints.

To be honest, if you’re not comfortable with the practice of easily and quickly switching voices as you progress through the book, you need to spend more time in practicing performance skills and perhaps doing more prep before undertaking a project to be sold commercially.

 

Other resources on this topic:

* To read Tanya’s article, a subscription may be required to her Substack. She is offering a 50% discount to anyone coming from Narrators Roadmap. Follow this link to subscribe with the discount.