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podcasting forward motionYesterday morning Charlotte and Dave came over to begin our podcasting adventure. Charlotte is a writer of fiction, working on a novel, has several finished shorts. Several months ago when I would evangelize podcasting to anyone who'd sit still long enough to listen, I told her all about EarthCore and Scott Sigler. She had just had a disappointing experience not getting an agent for her stuff, so Scott's self-publishing via podcasting intrigued her. I tried not to promise riches and instafame, but I can sell some shit when I'm into it, ya know? I offered to produce the audio and tech it to a podcast, and volunteered my bud Dave the DJ (and actor and writer) to be the reader. Tally ho.
Listening to: box fan rattle Reading: some wiki stuff Weather: 68, which even when this humid is very comfy
Months pass. I am missing some essential gear. Yeah, I've got a half shitty little condenser mic I use with the computer and sometimes with the minidisc, but we need better. I have my trusty Shure SM58, which after 20 years is still the live band standard, but how to bridge the gap between that xlr and the computer. We're probably going to use some music, too, so mix on the computer or the old fashioned way? Buy a badass sound card for $200ish that will accept the xlr straight in? Or buy a badass Mackie Onyx 1220 mixer with Firewire output?
So after some net research and a hard look at my tiny bank account, I bought the Behringer UB802, favorite toy of many a podcaster. And so cute! OK, off we go.
Charlotte got here first, so we created a blog for her, picked a template, did a tiny bit of tweaking (added the cool moon phase code I've got on here, too), created a new gmail account for it, etc. A fly is driving us nuts, so I hang a fly strip above my computer rig. Time for some audio checking.
I got my rig up, decided to capture with CoolEdit 2000, since I'm comfortable with it, and went about setting some levels. A bit tricky, you know, because even with just one channel happening, there are lots of places in the chain where volume is controllable. Just on the mixer channel ya got level and gain, ya got a main level out, there are returns and effects loops to be sure are at 0, then ya got recording levels in on the computer side, as well as making the output level on the computer within the range of acceptable for Dave's phones. Dave arrives. A'ight, let's roll. We roll one, meanwhile I start the barbie and put the brown rice and green beans on, wash the blueberries. It's after noon and my belly noises are going to ruin the recording if we don't eat soon.
First take is a little saturated, a little blatty, s's and p's. K, chicken is on the grill, rice is simmering, I do a little tweak tweak. Try that. Another take. Time for lunch, we listen and eat. Sounds great! We take a few notes on editing, discuss some production stuff, change the title of the story, and things are moving along splendidly. Time for popsicles, and we're about done for the day. Next meeting we'll add music and perhaps some sound effects in the intro.
And back to the mundane. People started complimenting my clothes at the end of this week. If you know me, you know this can only mean one thing: I so desperately need to do laundry that I'm pulling the shit I never wear out of the closet because it's all I have left. So today is the laundry marathon. It'll probably rain, Murphy.
And if you're a guitar player and you liked Jagged Little Pill, check out Alanis's new acoustic version of the album. I heard it at Starbucks. I had 2 hours to kill after dropping Liv off for a movie, a pile of grant proposals to review, and I'd never been to the one and only standalone Starbucks anywhere around here. Wifi, right? Wrong. Not in Morgantown. The chick behind the counter didn't even know what the fuck I was talking about when I asked, so some nerd pushing a broom explained that Tmobile was coming in January. January? Yeah. K. So much for checking my email, I was forced to get down to those proposals. Desperate for any distraction, I turned my attention to the music playing, and I thought, this sounds so familiar but what? Oh yeah, one of the lesser known tunes on the Pill, but different. Sounds unplugged. Cool.
Time for load 2 to get hung up, so time for the Publish Post button.
permalink posted by cat 8:23 AM
