![]() So I have to throw my mind back to that earlier session and what I was doing then to correct a problem that had been missed by the engineer or the producer. And with Harry Potter, as I finish one set of tapes, they go out to be edited, and later on as I’m recording, back comes a certain set of tapes and they’ll say make a correction on this. So there’s constantly starting, stopping, starting, stopping. And then of course you have to stop for tea time. If you have a scratch on your body, that’s suddenly heard, uou can’t have that. It there’s a fly in the room you can’t possibly record. You have to stop if you hear sounds like my tummy rumbling because I didn’t eat enough breakfast, which happens quite often. You have to stop, otherwise you’re going to hear the page turning. You’re stopping for things turning the page. We’re stopping and starting thousands of time over a hundred page book. That’s how you put a little bit of difference between them. You have to differentiate by making one a little slower, making one a bit faster, one a bit more excited. It’s also very difficult to do the ordinary voices, like the Weasley brothers, because when you listen to boys talk they all sound very similar. ![]() Instinctively, I just go for the voice that I think will be a little unique and a little different, especially when it comes to people like snakes and spiders. I have to love being everybody that I do, because people love themselves, of course they do. Then I have to put myself in the head of that character and see the world and the story through that character’s eyes, whether it be a hero or a villain. All these things have to be considered before I even open my mouth. ![]() The way the author describes who the character is, how they’re dressed, what they look like. I really have to just go with my own instinct based on the description written by the author. However, now with the time being so precious to us, I really don’t have the time for that luxury. Jim : In the old days I used to sort of sit and think up two or three voices for a character and choose the best one for it. Voice number 27, voice number 133, whatever it is, and then I hear the voice I created the night before, speaking the very same line that I’m about to speak, and then it reminds me of that character’s voice. ![]() So then I’ll take that tape with me into the studio, and as I’m recording, we keep stopping when we come to a new character and I play the tape. I’ll say on the tape, ‘Second voice, Ron Weasley.’ And then I’ll read the first line that Ron speaks. Then I’ll read a little more and there’s another character, say Ron. Take one for Dumbledore.’ And I’ll speak the first line that Dumbledore speaks. I use my own tape recorder and as I read I’ll say, ‘Page one, fourth line down, Dumbledore. As I’m reading I’ll jot down in a little notebook all the characters, and as I go through the book I’ll invent the voices of the characters. It’s impossible to read the entire book beforehand, it would take three weeks. But last time I got book five on Friday, and I was in the recording studio on Monday. Usually I get the book about two months in advance. I consider this to be one of the high points of my career, especially because, with our interview complete, Jim said hello to all four of my children in character-as Dumbledore, Dobby, Professor McGonagal, and Hagrid. Jim was extremely fun to talk to, insightful, witty, and at time hilarious, as when describing his first mistake made when recording book one, and when we had to pause while he retrieved his dog’s bone from under the couch. But he did have much to say on the fine art of narrating audiobooks. When we first started talking, he warned that he was not allowed to reveal anything he was currently doing (I could respect that). At the time of this interview, Jim was in the process of recording book six, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. While writing an article on audiobooks for The Children’s Writer, I had the wonderful opportunity to interview Jim Dale, the narrator of all the Harry Potter books. This interview is yet another example of why I absolutely love my job.
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