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Posts tagged ‘Podcast’

17
Jun
phone

No more music on my iPod thanks to Spotify

I’ve had ‘the middle’ iPod in one form or another since the first iPod Mini was released in 2004.

And ever since, from the very beginning of my iPod ownership life, music and speech have been fighting for dominance of the limited space. Read moreRead more

31
Mar

Making a musical trail

mic_mPart of my job includes making promo trails for my show, for the BBC Jersey website and occasionally for other things as well.

Usually this just involves me writing 30 seconds worth of speech, finding a piece of music and talking over it with a fade in at the start and fade out at the end.

Sometimes I’ll pull together something a little more creative – adding sound effects, other voices, acted scenes.

Well the one I’ve just been asked to help on included singing and me on the guitar – it didn’t go out.

I thought I’d share it with you thought: Clash of the Colonies (sung radio trailer).

I will say in my defense that I didn’t write the lyrics, I’m not singing on it and was asked at very short notice to perform and write the music.

If I had my way I would have recorded the music track first, then recorded the two people (a Canadian and an Aussie) singing the words.

This would then give me the freedom to mix it properly and put together a properly balanced jingle.

I should probably also have played the music a key higher as well – but as you can barely hear the guitar – I don’t think that really makes much difference.

And if anybody is interested the trail is for a special being repeated this Easter on BBC Radio Jersey that was originally recorded for Commonwealth Day that saw an Aussie and a Canadian (both BBC Jersey journalists) argue for their own part of the Commonwealth.

What do you think?

Also I’m interested in improving my voice over skills so if anyone wants a good quality recording for their podcast give me a shout and I’ll do it for you – within reason based on legnth and copy.

More from me

You can listen again to my show on the BBC iPlayer (wherever you are in the world) or listen to a trail I made a few years ago for a Podcast Sitcom I started writing but got bored with.

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26
Jan

Diet Diary: In need of video?

You might have noticed that I haven’t exactly kept up with this regular diet diary idea – it isn’t that I haven’t kept up with my diet (although to a certain extent I haven’t) – it’s just that I got a bit bored.

Foods from plant sources
Image via Wikipedia

I love food, I love cooking, I love combining flavours and most of all I love eating – so why would I write about the absence of food – or at least something that makes me considers the absence of food?

Well I’ve decided to start again; I do like the idea of writing a diary of my eating habits – but approach in a less dogged way.

Instead of saying – time to get rid of the junk and write about what I have and haven’t eaten – I’m going visual.

I’ve been trying to think of a way to bring back my much ignored video podcast for a while but its one of those ideas that is constantly put to the back of my mind every time something shiny enters my line of site.

Well I’ve decided to combine the two problems of being bored with a diet diary and too easily distracted for a video blog and create a diet vlog.

Yup I’m going to show you what happens when I make food, I’m going to talk to you about my diet and I’m going to rant when I can’t have a bar of chocolate.

But I’m also going to look into alternatives to the bars of chocolate, try and avoid eating at my desk and generally use it to take my mind off not having all the junk that normally fills the gap in my day.

Some posts will be with a proper video camera, others with a mobile phone and some will be recorded with my webcam – but all, hopefully, won’t be too awful.

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31
Dec

Happy New Year!

Well 2008 is finally coming to a close and I’m ending it in a house with no central heating, insulation or warmth in any shape or form.

But you’re not interested in that – only to know I’m sitting here wea3130693854_9ff4fa95a9_bring five layers and tight gloves while typing this blog post – so apologies in advance for any typos.

So what will the new year bring? Well I’ve already outlined some of the things I expect to see happen in the media world in 2009 – and some of the things that did/didn’t happen in 2008.

For me personally my show is going to increase from 45 minutes to an hour, will see the addition of live session recordings and hopefully the odd gig as well.

The BBC Jersey website will get a new look around March and with it I’ll be doing a lot more in the way of people features and leaving the office to go out and about.

And as for this blog – I’m hoping to organise the categories a little bit better – split things up along much more generic lines than I’ve previously used.

In the past I’ve been of the opinion that it is better to split things into a specific a groupings as possible – but as time has gone on I’ve come to the conclusion that categories are a bit of an irrelevance.

I would much rather have some very generic top level categories like Media, Technology, News and Thoughts then use tags to find things beyond that – than the current mess I’ve got at the moment.

I may also further tweak the look and feel of the homepage and sub-pages as well – oh and more video clips for the top right hand side as well as a new audio podcast.

Whatever happens – see you in 2009.

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25
Apr

Make it funny

If you want to have a really successful podcast in the UK it seems you need to stick to a number of key rules – at least if the top 25 chart on iTunes is anything to go by.

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20
Mar

Monkey News Animation

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29
Jan

Finding BBC Podcasts

The number of BBC Podcasts seem to be increasing all the time – the number is now well over 100 from across Aunties radio output.

You’ve got everything from Chris Moyles on Radio 1 and Mark Kermode on 5 Live to The Archers on Radio 4 and Digital Planet on the World Service.

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24
Oct

The Archers

I have a fond childhood memory where I’m sitting in my grandparents living room on a Sunday – watching television sitting in front of my grandads chair while he pokes the TV with a big stick to change the channel – his remote control.

Then the clock would turn and he would dissapear into the kitchen and the radio would sound “Dum di dum di dum di dum dum di dum di dum dum” and the Archers would start.

A while later he would come out of the kitchen with something really nice to eat, kick me out of his chair and change the channel with his big stick.

I’ve never liked The Archers, I tried listening to it but it always bored me silly. Silly in much the same way that I can’t stand Coronation Street or Eastenders.

I’ve never lived in the country and I’ve never much liked the country either – I suffer from Hayfever and am allergic to animal hair – so listening to a programme full of people speaking with stereotypical farmer type accents talking about things that either don’t concern me or I can’t be arsed with.

So when I saw the Archers podcast in the top five on iTunes podcast list – I was struck with two emotions – fondess for the memory of my grandad on one hand and complete indiference for the dull nonsense that the programme actually is.

So I downloaded it – listened to the theme tune and skipped to the next song in my podcast.

But I still want to say thanks for the Archers as a podcast and I love the fact that such a stalwart of ‘old BBC’ is in the top five podcasts on iTunes – just goes to show Podcasting really is the fourth media.

14
Oct

Old Time Radio

I was having a discussion with my boss the other day and he was telling me about Old Time Radio or radio shows that have entered the public domain, mainly due to American Radio Networks not registering copyright in the 1950s/60s.

When I got back from the pub I decided to have a look and see if I could actually find any for download online – I found a couple of really good sites with a massive collection of OTR shows – and some brilliant SciFi.

These shows are from the heyday of American Radio – in the bit before television took over and a big radio drama could attract many millions of listeners for each show.

There are also several well known British shows available through the OTR networks as well – this is a brilliant way to take a step back in time, enjoy some brilliantly produced audio productions and learn a little about our media heritage at the same time.

When you add the OTD sites to the British Library and its goal of adding out of print books, newspaper articles and pamphlets to their website for people to read, Google and their book scanning goals and the BBC Archive and you’ve got a great set of resources for 1) going back in time and looking at media history, 2) getting some fab free content and 3) researching modern history.

The OTR and BBC Archive stuff are also brilliant ways to hear the evolution of the English language and accents over the last half century or so.

The OTR stuff is primarily up as mp3s as well so you could probably produce some pretty good podcasts using the content – won’t cost anything either.

Check out:
OTR.com
OTR.net
BBC Archive
British Library

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