The Bass Geek

I’d like to thank the good folks at Propellerheads (creators of Reason) for posting some extensive documentation on their website. The challenge of finding the instructions I needed in a 400+ page PDF more than outweighed the cost I would have incurred by putting my fist through a laptop screen. I’m still a little irritated at the workflow to edit clips in the sequencer, but I suspect that it’s the newness of the procedure, and that learning the keyboard shortcuts might be in order.

Even the image of a punched laptop is making me sad. That tells me two things - first, that I’m thankful it never happened, and second, that I need a small vacation.

You can download the latest IMN Podcast from this link right here, or you can get it from the Flash player on the main site.

With Expert Podcasting Practices For Dummies on the shelves right now, and since I already brought up podcasts, I thought I’d shed a little light on the dark, troubled way the IMN podcast comes together. In this post, I’ll detail the tools we use and have used in the past, and I’ll look at the actual process next Monday.

In the two years, we’ve tried a variety of methods in hopes of finding one that produced the best quality of audio in the shortest amount of time (co-host Steve Hayes and I have lives to get back to, after all). We’ve tried recording directly to a PC using Sonar Home Studio, recording directly to my Mac laptop using Garageband 4, recording to a hard-drive-based music workstation, and a flash memory recorder. We alternate at this point between recording to my laptop or the flash recorder, depending on which one is easier to grab at the time. Both have proven to be fairly stable solutions, barring user error (yes, that user would be me).

Post-production stuff like editing and file conversion is done on the Mac using Soundtrack Pro and a couple of freeware programs: Switch converts the AIFF file to a 128kbps mp3 file, and Musorg helps me edit the ID3 tag for each file. I used to use iTunes for both purposes, but I didn’t care for the fact that I had to clear out the library each time I edited an episode. From there, I just SFTP the episode and the XML file for our RSS feed to the server, where it lies in wait for unsuspecting listeners.

In a perfect world, I’d have already upgraded to Logic Studio and use the new version of Soundtrack Pro 2 (my current version comes from the Final Cut Pro bundle), but that’s dependent on the budget. And the budget is slowly shaking its head at new carpet and an upcoming trip to New Orleans, so I don’t think I’ll slide this by for awhile.

So that’s the techie side. The planning and scripting part comes next week.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that we’ve used Shure, AKG and Blue Snowball mics. We’ve achieved great results with all three, although getting two Snowballs working at the same time required a little tweating in the Audio/MIDI section of the Mac OS - I had to create an aggregate device out of both mic and route the audio through there.

The podcasting book is on the presses and should be out quite soon (they may even have my name up on Amazon soon), and IMN just put up a new podcast episode as well. Finally, I’m loading up the iPod with a bunch of new episodes for the Thanksgiving traveling season. It’s fun audio time all around. It’s kind of hard to get into the flow of “This American Life” unless you’re in the car for a good long time, so this might work out well.

I also just bought William Gibson’s “Spook Country” - tried waiting for the paperback, but I just couldn’t make it. Couldn’t wait for the Kindle, either. The addition of WiFi and the stature of Amazon to back this new device are intriguing developments, but I’m not sure the consumer adoption of the iPod has opened the door wide enough for a better, faster eReader. Hell, I was trying to dodge $10 for a hardcover. The $400 price tag is a bit much to justify, especially when I deal with folks every day who print off e-mail and PowerPoint presentation because they’d rather read them on paper.

This is another device that may take a generation to integrate, as folks get more used to reading off of a screen. And dealing with it when your book’s battery dies.

I just finished the tech review of the Composing Digital Music For Dummies book, so all that’s left now is the CD that goes with it. Even though I’m just the tech editor on this project, I’m still excited to see this book come out. I think it’s got some great stuff in it, and the author has some great advice and insights. That just leaves the second edition of MySpace For Dummies and the Laptop Just The Steps For Dummies on the horizon.

And there’s a new podcast available at IMN as well. If you don’t want to download it, just play it out of the Flash player in the upper-right corner. Enjoy.

At least that’s what the Vinyl CD is doing for me. Maybe I’m just flashing back to the scene in “Austin Powers” where the needle drops on the CD and makes the god-awful noise. Or perhaps it’s “The Simpsons,” where a bird and a rat are tied together as a new “hybrid animal.” I see the kitsch factor here, and it’ll make a stellar promo piece or special fan club item, but otherwise . . .

At least people are experimenting, I suppose. They can’t all be genius moves.