Monthly Archives: January 2011

Podcasting

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So I’ve recorded a couple of bits for Julie’s Forgotten Classics podcast, “Jabberwocky” and “How the Whale Got his Throat”, and I thought I’d make some technical notes, never having done this before.

I recorded the two bits using GarageBand, which has a podcast setup; it seems to work just fine, and I think I’ll stick with it for the time being. My microphone was a cheap headset that I got with a copy of Rosetta Stone last year; it worked out OK, but I thought the result was rather noisy. Later, I went back and did some experiments, using the headset’s earphones to monitor the sound as I was recording…and, oh, yeah, it’s noisy. Here’s what I got:

  • A rather loud hiss.
  • A periodic beep, beep, beep, beep.
  • Every little noise uttered by my sons in the next room.
  • My every breath and plosive, whether I wanted them recorded or not.

By playing around with GarageBand, and a little judicious Googling, I found a filter called Speech Enhancer that masks out noise; it dealt with the first two, and maybe the third, but not the last. For such a little microphone, it picks up everything in the room.

So, after some more judicious Googling I ordered a new mic, a “Blue Snowflake“. It’s a portable USB microphone made precisely for podcasting and the like, by an outfit I’d never heard of that makes professional microphones. I’ve done some limited experiments with it, but so far I’m quite pleased. The hiss is still there, but is rather quieter, and the annoying beep, beep, beep is gone. It’s a directional mic, so noises elsewhere in the house are less of an issue, and as I can place it one to two feet from my mouth plosives aren’t an issue. Very cool; I’m looking forward to using it.

Fifteen Vocalists in Fifteen Minutes

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Julie just did a meme, and tagged me:

From a Facebook thing I got tagged with, but I’m sharing it here also. I found it interesting to see what vocalists swam to the surface of my mind when I was just staring at the sky and thinking about music.

The rules: Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen vocalists that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes. And in no particular order. Tag fifteen friends.

Here are my fifteen:

  1. Ian Anderson
  2. Al Stewart
  3. Pete Townshend
  4. Bob Dylan
  5. Maddy Prior
  6. Leonard Warren
  7. Johnny Cash
  8. Arlo Guthrie
  9. Pete Seeger
  10. Allan Sherman
  11. Levon Helm
  12. Bruce Springsteen
  13. Harry Belafonte
  14. Mark Knopfler

I confess I looked at my iTunes library to complete this, as there were names from Julie’s list that were rattling around in my brain that I wouldn’t have picked.

Forgotten Classics

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Blog-friend Julie Davis has, in addition to her
Happy Catholic blog, a podcast called Forgotten Classics in which she reads aloud a variety of obscure but entertaining works from the public domain. I confess that I have never listened to Forgotten Classics; my daily commute is about ten minutes each way, and I can’t pay attention to a podcast while I’m writing software at work. Despite that, I’ve embarked on a bit of an endeavor; I’m going to be recording a few classics of my own, which Julie has graciously offered to host. The first, my overly dramatic reading of Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky”, is now available, both at the Forgotten Classics blog, and through iTunes. Give it a listen!

On Evil

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From my quote journal:

Charles Williams, in his analysis of the fall and of redemption, points out that when man learns from the devil to know good and evil, this involves his coming to see good as evil; there is nothing but good for him to see or know. If he is to know evil, it can only be by a distorted vision of what is good. That is how evil is conceived and, in due time, brought to birth.

— Simon Tugwell, The Beatitudes

And it is by a distorted vision of good that we choose what is good at the wrong time, or in the wrong way, or in the wrong amount, or for the wrong reason, or by the wrong means.