Category:

Archives:

A few notes on Podcast 17b…

Yup, the one that isn’t quite up yet – our Chief Scientist has just collected it. Two reasons for this. One; I’m not very happy with it in places and iii) To show to a certain person who shall remain nameless – well, at least to the end of podcast 17b!!! – that it’s not as simple as that person may think. Oh, and for the record, I’m saying that with my tongue firmly in my cheek, so please don’t think I’m getting all hoity toity – I know how good I am, ahahahahahahahahahaaaaaa!!!

Ahem.

To be honest, not as good as I like, face facts, otherwise I wouldn’t have to be posting this load of nonsense.

The problem we had was that on the FIRST recording of podcast 17, someone didn’t have their microphone switched on. Bloody silly error and one I really should have picked up upon. However it was a little chaotic and we also had Alistair pop up to add voice (as well as do one or two little things that will, hopefully, enhance your listening pleasure…heh, heh, heh.) to our nonsense.

As a result, when I loaded all four tracks into Audacity, one of ’em was blank.

Bollocks.

So we set about re-recording the podcast giving me just a couple of days to edit it. I wanted to include Alistair, somehow, in the new version so I sat down and tried to take bits audio with him on and splice ’em into the new podcast. This was only reasonably succesfull as the sources, whilst technically being the same, were slightly different. I also ran out of time due to another, someone perplexing problem.

Crumbly.

I have NO idea how, but the track containing Crumbly had a really terrible hum on it…but only intermitently. And different kinds of hums at that. It also went out of synch with the rest of the recording in places. Now, I had to be very carefull with noise reduction – I mean, we didn;t want Crumbly sounding even more like his head was in a bucket of water, did we? But I realised that with the bleed from the other mics, I may just be able to get away with it. So…I had a fiddle. After one full on NR and then another smaller one, the deeper hum was gone. However, I hadn;t noticed, later on, the higher pitched one which Ive managed to dampen down as best I could.

Placing Crumbly into the mixing desk, I began the usual edit, snipping bits here n there to make it flow betetr etc. Then he decided to go out of synch as well as sound….gurgly. Now, I don;t mean gurgly as in too much noise reduction. No, no..more like gurgly like a bad cassette tape. Plus with the synching problems and that high pitched hum…listen to the bit when he’s paying tribute to Arthur. C. Mullard. I think thats the worst bit. Anyway, I did what I could with that.

Fake Keith, alas, was waaaayyyyy too loud level wise meaning she distorts all over the place. And the amount of smut I had to cut out – so much more then usual…..I have all the preliminary recordings and so blackmail will be forthcoming.

Also, I had a little fun with this one. Face facts, after all that I bloody needed it.

TYhis podcast celebrates the birthday of a particular thing. Now, we’d asked Alistair to record a couple of v/os for us and I set to work making them sound as near to the original as possible. He’d also managed to get hold of, and get me permission to use, some music from an old friend and user of the FloorTen forum, as was, Peter Wicks. I had to trim Alistair in a couple of places as well as the music to make them Fit together (bad joke, but what the hell, lol, you’ll get it once the podcast comes out) but they worked excellently together. Many thanks to Peter for allowing me to use them. Then to the ending. The opening was easy…quick V/O and fade the music up at the right spot. The ending though..oooh, tricky. In the end I took part of Mark Ayres’ cover, another part of it,  because the timing changes,  put them together then at the critical moment, placed the television theme for about two bars, over the top because I wanted the, hmm….’howl’ that the tv version has at that point. Hope Mark doesn’t mind.
Doing the V/O and timing that to the music was a doddle after that, LOL.

I’ve also added a very naughty, copyright breaking treat at the very end of the podcast…just keep listening.

So, apologies for the slightly wonky sound in places. But do enjoy as I’m rather chuffed with some of it….

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.