Gelfand & Castleberg Page 3
 
We decided to start working on a CD. I chose a more varied selection of poems from my two books, Seeking Center and A Dreamer's Guide to Cities and Streams. I included a few from a manuscript-in-progress.

The question next was, how to do it? In a studio? With an engineer? One constraint was money; we were doing the project on a shoestring. After talking to people with recording experience, Marty decided the best option was to do it ourselves.

Marty Castleberg: When we first started, I only owned a few acoustic instruments and some old gigging hardware-my computer was sorely lacking and I had no recording software. I used this project as a reason to upgrade, to take advantage of some of the new software I saw demonstrated at the nearby Apple store. I wanted to


experiment and turn a memoir I have been writing into an audio book - making a CD with Joan would be good practice. I also bought a tutoring package from Apple that entitled me to sit down for an hour a week with an Apple specialist. I spent most of these sessions with "Frank," who has worked as a sound engineer in the recording industry. Frank and I got to know each other very well. He showed me the possibilities while keeping me within the limitations of the tools I had chosen.

Joan: Over the next month Marty and I met to record the poems. Recording was the first hurdle, or area of discord. I hated my voice! Marty assured me it was fine. I wasn't convinced. Finally a theater friend told me, "All actors hate the sound of their own voice." I finally let go and accepted what Marty was telling me: I sounded fine.