Abracadabra | 1806

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Abracadabra

Well, well, well. Three holes in the the Ground, and it’s episode six. Can you believe it?

I don’t think I’ve ever kept anything up for this long—at least, not super regularly. You know, stuff like writing a diary every day or doing NaNoWriMo, I’ve done. But I think this is probably the first thing that I’ve stuck with for six weeks—or six episodes—and I’m actually still enjoying it. That suggests to me that I might keep enjoying it, and at least keep doing it, at least for a while.

A couple of people have asked me to talk about podcasting—editing, recording, and then releasing within an hour—so I thought I’d cover that a little bit.

First of all, I already owned a Blue Yeti USB microphone that I bought years ago, and I really like it. I’ve used it for recording instruments, for recording other bits and bobs of audio, and for Skype calls. Having one of those is probably quite important, but I think you could probably get one of the cheaper RØDE podcasting mics if you want to do this yourself.

With the exception of last week’s episode, my process starts with opening up Google Docs. I put in the title of the show, jot down a couple of bullet points for what I want to talk about, and then fire up GarageBand.

I’ve also got one of those room divider things that we used to use in my old flat—to separate where we used to get dressed from the rest of the living room because we lived in a really small space. So I get that out, put it around the desk, and hang this big red blanket behind my chair. I also put a couple of pillows in front of me at mouth height to try and dampen reflections between the two surfaces. And yeah, then I start speaking.

Any sound reflections you hear as echoes or room noise when I’m talking are probably from the ceiling—we have really high ceilings here. I think if I talk quieter, it goes away, but regardless, I still speak quite close to the microphone.

One of the things about placing the one-hour constraint on recording is that I try to edit the volume levels of the different tracks as I go. So, I’ll record a couple of takes of whatever it is I want to say, pick the best one, move it to the right place in the track, and set the volumes and fade-ins and fade-outs as I go, rather than doing all that at the end. Then, I just start talking—and talk some more.

When I get to about 4 minutes 30 on the clock, I record the outro for the episode. Then, I check how long that took and figure out what I’m going to say in the last 20 seconds, trying to squeeze it all in. Sometimes that works, and sometimes it doesn’t—so I have to go back and find a way to trim things down, maybe cutting out seven to eight seconds throughout the whole podcast by removing gaps, breaths, and the occasional “and” or “um.”

Since I started, I think the quality has gone up, and so has my confidence in speaking and actually just doing this. I’m really happy with how it’s working out so far, and I’d really encourage anybody else who wants to do a small, short podcast to give it a try.

I think I’m going to experiment with less of the talking-head routine in the episodes I put out next month, in May. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ll be speaking at Peer-to-Peer Web on the 5th of May in Berlin, and I’m hoping to do a couple of interviews for that and include them in the show. I’m also speaking at Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam on the 10th and 11th of May.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I’ll be talking about Solarpunk and the concept of Land as Platform. The current title of the talk is Solarpunk: A Grand Dress Rehearsal in Remaking Our Present and Future History. Right now, across disparate fields, a future is being built. But the future does not passively arrive, fully formed, from the ether. We must first meet it the way humanity always has—through dreams, stories, and song. This talk will explore narrative strategies and strategic narratives, such as RetroSuburbia and Land as Platform, as ways to make life more wonderful for us right now—and, more importantly, for generations to come.

So, if you’re in the Netherlands and you’re free on the 10th and 11th, it’d be great to see you or hear from you at that event. Do swing by and say hello.

The other thing I wanted to talk about this week is the dictation feature in Google Docs. Now that my microphone is permanently set up at my desk, I’ve kind of gotten into the habit of using it. It’s probably not news to anyone who already uses the feature a lot, but I’ve realized that I can just sit down, start speaking, and suddenly I’ve got 500 to 750 words on the page. I mean, it still needs a lot of editing—because, well, it’s dictation—but it’s fairly accurate. More importantly, the words are on the page, and I didn’t have to sit down and type them. There’s no inner critic. You can just get words out of your head and onto the page.

Speaking of pages, I’m @thejaymo on all good-quality social media websites, and you’ve been listening to episode 1806 of Permanently Moved Online, a podcast in 301 seconds.