Podcasting. Like a radio show but saved onto a computer audio file so you can listen to it at your leisure and on a variety of devices.
Me and Jake Newby have made two six-episode series of podcasts relating to our music scene blogs here at Kungfuology.com. You can hear them for yourselves right here:
So, today we decided to throw out an Expo special to keep things ticking.
First the theory behind our pods. I like the Guardian Unlimited Football Weekly Podcast. I really really like it. I used it as a model for ours in many ways. Here are some key points:
It's about a single specific topic (football).
It talks about current events: what's just happened and what's coming up.
It is 45 minutes long.
It is all talking, nice and clear with no backing track or silly noises.
We record it in my house and the room is not sound proofed or sound dampened in any way. So, if you are not right up to the mic, there will be horrible echo and a tinny sound to the whole thing. Our weapon of chance (we borrow it) is the Zoom H2 Handy Recorder.
This looks like an electric shaver and can do single direction, two-channel (front/back) or surround. I have heard pods done with this using surround with many people sitting around the room - but they sound like a*s because of the previously mentioned point. We use the two channel setting and attach the mini stand. Then it goes on a stool and we sit either side of it about 30cm (a ruler) away.
Our mouths are roughly level with the mic head and in the two-channel (and high gain) setting it's as if we have two mics. We take care to speak up and clearly too. There is a red light to indicate overdrive on both sides so you can test first.
We have a set format for the regular episodes: intro, reviews, chat, previews, song. So. Jake arrived at the house and I set up the recorder. We both got a sheet of paper each and talked out the contents while noting down stuff we decided on. Jake used the internet to check our blogs for the last reviews and stories and also the listing for the weekend. We were doing an Expo special so we riffed a bit on the Expo and thought of some possible jokes. This special was decided on the spur of the moment though so we were going in much rougher than usual.
Important point: we then turned off all other electric devices in the room aside from the Zoom and turned our cell phones completely off. This is essential for you to cheat a studio type quality without the studio.
Next important point: if doing it in one take, to minimize editing later, go to the toilet first and also prepare drinks.
We record in one take and have the habit of leaving most mistakes in, for fun.
Now we go into post-production. I use Adobe Audition on a PC to edit but there are many open source and free programs available. So, I transfer the pod file to my desktop via USB and also copy the song we need from CD using Windows Media Player. Then I import them into Audition.
After a brief edit and an export I now have a file of the show - but it is massive at several hundred MB. So I use Switchsound Converter to turn it into a 40 MB MP3 file. Now it's ready to be listened to. There are many options open to you now, we upload it to our blog.
As dry as it all sounds, we had a great time making this. Riffing on the Expo was fun and we included a surprise song that is technically banned and that we know will delight our listeners. We did the pods for a bit of a laugh but have found that our readers like them a lot. So it's been quite rewarding.
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