The Oddball Oddcast
I’ll be getting into something new here in the next few days: Podcasting. The latest trend in the world of blogging, podcasting is basically an amalgamation of the terms “iPod” and “broadcasting,” meaning an audio broadcast intended for download to a portable music playing device. This has been broadened over the years (months?) to represent any blog-type content recorded in an audio format, rather than in written words.
Because I’ve loved all things audio since a very young age, particularly sound effects, audio post-production and making my own “radio shows,” I’ve often considered doing a podcast of my own. In the end I’ve always decided not to, because I just don’t have anything important to talk about. I mean, I’m not a prime source of news here. Like most other Americans, I get my bad news from CNN (thanks, Judi Dench) and that ilk.
Recently, though, I’ve actually listened to some of the blogger podcasts out there. Not only do they have nothing more important to say than me, but I daresay I have a better radio voice than at least half of them. Perhaps most of them. I’ve heard podcasts from apparent audio enthusiasts who have turned rooms of their homes into recording studios, and these folks are still an absolute bore to listen to because they speak in a monotone and mumble constantly. (Then again, nobody ever said sound engineers should be behind a microphone when a mixing board would suffice.)
So, I thought it might be fun to put together my own “Oddcast” of random happenings here at Oddball Headquarters. Perhaps throw in a dash of sound effects, music and voiceover to appease the audio engineer side of me. But I have no illusions: This is the sort of thing that would be of interest only to my friends and family, so most likely I will restrict visibility of Oddcast postings to logged-in members of that user group only, at least for now.
The only issue is my current workload (it’s an issue with everything right now), but I may have time to squeeze in some prep work on this during the week. Check back later for updates.
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Knight Enforcers.
Knight Enforcers.
KNIGHT ENFORCERS!!!
“Uhhh, Benjamin…if they poured kerosene on the chicken, then why is that guy eating it?”
Hehehehe, maybe I’ll invite the Knight Enforcers on as guest stars. That should be fun…
Don’t forget the Genia crew!
For me, the most fun part of audio recording is making fake commercials and the like — like the stuff I wrote for “The French Revolution” History project in high school and that aborted attempt at making a radio station for GTAIII (or was it Vice City?).
Of course, with your massive library of sound effects, it’s all the better.
We should team up, then, because I never really had much talent with commercials, although I have done a few for the various shows I’ve recorded. My commercials are only funny today because they were so poorly done, they become hilarious in their stupidity. Yours, however — particularly the ones from “The French Revolution” — are freaking awesome. Your aborted GTA radio station was great too, I could totally see myself driving around the game listening to that.
Ha, the Genia crew. They’d be good guest stars as well, if that would make any kind of sense. Speaking of them, last year I made a modern-day Genia recording, mostly as a proof of concept for sound effect insertion in post-production. In the ’80s we obviously didn’t have fancy digital audio editing on our home computers (and analog mixing gear cost megabucks), so I’d have to cue up all my sound effects, music and ambience in real-time, usually by stacking record players, CD players and tape decks knee-deep in my room. It was like the proverbial plate spinning act, making sure everything was cued up and ready to go when I needed it. Most of the time it was, but occasionally I’d miss and you’d hear a record needle SKRRAAATTCHH or me jockeying with the transport controls on a tape deck trying to get to the right spot on the accursed thing, ha.
By contrast, “Genia 17 Space Stories 2005″ was originally nothing but dialog recorded with a minidisc recorder. I then imported the spoken-word stuff and added everything else — ambient sounds, hard effects, foley and even dynamics processing to simulate rooms, corridors and large spaces. The actual “show” is about absolutely nothing and is mostly just a running string of gags and dumb stuff, but IMHO it sounds so damn cool. Particularly the fight scene in sickbay, hee hee. As usual I have no talent for doing multiple distinct voices, but it’s funny anyway.
I can send you an MP3 of it if you’re interested in hearing it, although I make no guarantees as to the quality of the humor or anything else.
Edit: Wow, there is something really wrong with the comment editing functionality all of a sudden. That’s very odd. Edit 2: Nevermind, fixed it. The Wordpress people introduced a bug in the latest version…jeeze.
I’m still very proud of the fact that I pretty much wrote those commercials on the spot. For instance, the “Executions R Us” spot was written in a handful of minutes, and then took two live takes to nail (only because I read the text too fast in relation to the tinkling piano music in the background the first time through). Heh, it’s funny, but “The French Revolution” was recorded much like your old stuff, with stuff cued up to the appropriate moment and done live. The Vice City radio station was more piecemeal, especially since that was only me working.
I’d certainly like to give a collaboration a go. I don’t have any sound effects CDs, and I have a pretty crappy microphone, but we can see what can be done. I, too, can’t do multiplie voices for crap — especially female ones, since my voice (and yours and Reaper’s too, for that matter) is too deep to vocalize a convincing female voice; I can only really do a screechy falsetto that’s not very convincing.
And I’d definitely like to hear an MP3 of the “Space Stories 2005″; email me a link or something so I can download and listen to it.
Can’t wait for the premier broadcasting!
I can help you guys with the female voice if you don’t mind me Thai accent!
I dunno Pooch. We do a pretty mean duet when going along with the “Pink” album.
YEEEEEEAAAAHHH, YEEEEAAAAHHH! </stanbush>
Next time Bandit’s up here we are so busting out the Pink album. And some Lifehouse if we can find it. We can even do the syncopated dance moves like we did in the back of the Trans Am that one night we were in Naples!