In a later than intended podcast I played Eleven & The Falcons (who have had their Twitter profile hacked), Kidd Russell, Burn, Rainer Straschill, Gideons Demise and a little track from me
Watch With Mothers reviewed Netasyi, Fernwood and Bubonik Funk.
I also thought I'd mention how I actually put this podcast together.
The simple story is that I copy mp3s, pre recorded pieces (Watch With Mothers, First Fifteen, interviews etc) into a piece of software called Garageband, record the spoken bits in-between. That can take up to around an hour. The Watch With Mothers review takes me around 20 minutes to produce. I send Swineshead (London) and Napoleon (Oop North) the track by email on a Thursday evening. On Sunday Swineshead sends me the three sound files of the finished reviews that he did with Napoleon via Skype I get the spoken word MP3s, put them all together in Logic, put the track they are reviewing so that it plays underneath at the right volume, fading in and out at the right places. I make the First Fifteen section in Logic. That's pretty easy and only takes about ten minutes. Any other interviews I do I mix in Logic, including all The Matt Stevens chats.
All the interviews I do, I use Skype and record the conversations using a natty little bit of kit called eCam which saves everything (including the video!) as an mpeg file.
Garageband then does a mix of the whole cast and saves it as an MP4a. That mixdown takes about 25 minutes and often crashes so can take longer. I then import that MP4a in to iTunes to create an MP3 as MP4a's are not recognised by the little player widgets AND wont show the pictures in an iTunes feed. That takes about 10 minutes. Once that has been done, I copy the finished MP3 to my desktop. I then have to get it loaded up on to (or is it IN to?) my account at Podbean who host Isthisthingon podcast. As it's a big file, around 80meg, I have use an use a great piece of software called Hyperduck and load it to my FTP account in Podbean. I have no idea what FTP stands for or what it is! All I know is that if you need to send a big file somewhere on the internet , you use an FTP loader and Cyberduck is what I use. It's easy to set up and all I have to do is just drag the MP3 into it and press send and it just happens. It takes about 30 minutes.
Whilst it's doing this I write this blog including all the names of the artists that I've played, any interviews or websites that were mentioned. This includes adding the hyperlinks for everything mentioned. This takes about the same time as the ftp upload takes.
Now I go into podbean and publish the podcast. That means copying and pasting this blog into the podbean article and checking a few boxes. I click "publish" and it goes live and is available in iTunes immediately and on the little player in about 30 minutes.
That may not sound like the simple version but I've left out all the chatting to artists on-line, tweeting to publicise the cast, producing the jingles, the facebook group, emailing all the artists that I play each week, managing the artists google group plus loads of other little things I have forgotten.
Fitting all this in with trying to forge a semblance of a musical career AND maintaining a full time job is a bit tricky and remember I DON'T GET PAID FOR THIS. So, if I miss a hyperlink off, or the levels are a bit down, or you spot one of the many mistakes I make, then you will understand now eh?
Oh and do me a favour? BUY MY MUSIC or at least download the free stuff!
I'm aiming for 1000 subscribers before my birthday, so far there are 753 so spread the word eh?
To listen and subscribe through Itunes click the button on the right panel. There's an rss feed button there too but I don't understand what it does but you're welcome to use it if you do.
There's also this little player
