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For The Fallen

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With today being Armastice Day and the 92nd anniversary of the end of hostilities between forces in the Great War (World War I), I have worn my poppy with pride and observed the two minute silence. It is with those that have fallen for us in mind, that I present to you my reading of Laurence Binyon's acclaimed poem, For The Fallen. Printed in the Times Newspaper in 1914, it has since come to symbolize all casualties of war, regardless of state.

The third and fourth stanzas may be recognisable, as they are the ones most associated with war.

*****

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old,
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.

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Good work, with a slight drawback

Pretty good voice acting again. I like your low-key tone of voice, it fits to the mood of this poem.

However, I think sometimes you could pronounce the words more clearly. Sometimes (especially during the middle of the poem) it seems to me that you pronounce some of the syllables (or single characters) not clearly enough, which does sound a bit like mumbling.
I may be wrong here and only I hear this "mumbling", but with voice acting it is very important to kind of "overpronounce" the words. A bit like as when you are singing. There are certain phonemes that don't carry too well (like a "t" at the end of a word for example, it's very easy to "swallow" the sound of a "t" at the end of a word, especially when you are singing), so it is very important to pronounce those very clearly.

It may be a bit unusual to do that at first, because in every day speech you wouldn't to this (and don't need to do this as you will be understood either way most of the time), but as I said: For voice acting it is very important to have a very clear and very "clean" pronouncation.

Anyway, I still like your work as a voice actor, but there's always room for improvement. :)

{ Review Request Club }

Coop responds:

Yes, I know what you mean and that's always been a drawback. I wish that I could be perfect and unfortunately, I'm too impatient to bother with waiting for the piece to be perfectly ready, before I slap it up here.

Still, I'm glad you liked it. Perhaps the next piece that I do will be to your liking :)

Nice

Well done coop, this sounds great. I'm jealous of your accent. The tone of your voice was pretty much right on in setting the mood for the poem. It was pretty obvious the couple times you stopped because of the pauses in sound, which interrupted the flow a tad, but it wasn't terrible. The way you read the poem, however, was pretty much perfect though, and you seem to have a good voice for it.

At first I thought this was your own poem and I was about to be shocked. It is a really good poem actually, but it would be better if you had written your own just for the sake of it being your own work.

Constructive criticism aside, I enjoyed listening to this. It's a fantastic poem and you did an excellent job reading it. Keep up the good work.

Coop responds:

I was eager to submit, what can I say?

I wish that I could write poetry so well, but alas - I will be submitting a few more pieces of my own audio over the next few weeks. I'm aiming to have 6 pieces submitted to the AP by the end of 2010, so that's another 3 at minimum.

Credits & Info

Artist

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Waiting for 2 more votes

Uploaded
Nov 11, 2010
3:27 PM EST
Genre
Voice Demo
File Info
Song
1.5 MB
1 min 40 sec

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