Sound Out Media

Okay, my next workshop is finally scheduled .. it will be on Saturday, September 25th from 10 until 12:30, with an optional lunch and sound/photowalk afterwards.

Hope you can join us. We always have a lot of fun at these workshops. This workshop is intended for people who would like to do audio and video on the internet and are wondering where to start. Using software that’s available to everybody, I show you how to do things like …

* adding the sound of the waves to your beautiful sunset stills during your vacation in Maui
* making a slideshow about your Mother for her 50th birthday, complete with words where you’re all talking about her
* recording your poetry and adding images that illustrate your poem perfectly
* helping your kid get good sound of her rock band to upload on Youtube
* doing a little video for the front page of your business website

And a whole bunch of other ideas that will come up around the table as we explore together.

And about the sound/photo walk … this is something I just like to do as an exercise in looking and seeing. What we’ll do is have a good lunch, then go for a walk with our cameras and our recorders (if you have one .. you can still enjoy the experience if you don’t, because not everything in our lives HAS to be documented). It’s amazing what you will see and hear that you might have blocked out before in the business of the day.

Check out my Workshops and Seminars page for details … and SEE YOU/HEAR YOU there!

I finally found what I’ve been looking for. I’ve want to find an app that would allow me to post soundfiles directly to blogs, Twitter, and Facebook with no fuss, no muss.

Soundcloud is it. And it’s so much more than that. It’s a community of soundmakers .. musicians, documentarians, poets .. if you can hear it, you can post it.

What I really love is that the comment field allows you to flag a place in the soundfile and comment on that particular beat, or word or sound effect.

This is worth paying for … especially since you can also set up a private section .. very handy when working on a documentary with your producer … s/he can flag the places which need to be changed …

I’ve just been reading a series of post on Airdaily, the email exchange list for the members of the Association of Independents in Radio.

Bad audio is one of the things that rankles every radio turned multimedia producer. There are too few cameras out there with adequate built in audio recorders. And also few with jacks to hook up an external microphone and be able to listen on headphones.

Here’s a great low-tech solution that will give hi fidelity sound results. Mike the subjects separately and record it into a good sound recorder.

Synch it up after the fact … granted, this is not easy … you have to make sure the audio track when you’re editing is positioned perfectly.

One of my colleagues suggested that you get someone to clap at the beginning. Once, twice, three times. By matching the sound with the visual of the person clapping, you should be able to nudge the sound file so the mouth and the words match too.

(Warning: before you start editing, you need to render the file down so the video and audio are merged .. otherwise, you’ll get unsynched really fast)

Any of you who have worked with me know how much I have extolled the virtues of the Samson Zoom H2 Audio recorder.

What is amazing about the H2 is that it is beautiful broadcast quality sound with a built in microphone for less than $200. Considering that my first reporter gear was a Sony cassette machine and mike for $1000 (!), this was a big step forward in terms of balancing affordability with quality.

Now it gets even better — the Zoom H1 has been released and it’s only $99. I’m sure it will sound great too, because all the Samson products are really good.

Check it out.

If you’ve never been to a Podcamp before, it’s something I highly recommend if you want to learn about communicating on the Web.

Podcamps aren’t just about podcasting, they’re about the whole field of social media. They’re free and speakers are people who just want to share their knowledge.

There are some tremendously generous people with a lot of expertise who have a lot to share. And whether you’re a newbie or experienced, your presence will be valued and validated by people present. The spirit of these events is what makes them unique.

I’m about to do a presentation on getting grants for your community media projects. I’m looking forward to meeting a whole bunch of new people .. in person, and then keeping in touch with them on the web.

Toronto Podcamp is held in February, London is in May and other cities in North America have them various times. Search under Podcamp on the net .. you’ll likely find one near you.

Okay, peeps. I need your opinion.

Am I alone in thinking that Facebook and Twitter are on the road to becoming The Former Newest Big Thing?

I am sensing a shift .. frustration with Twitter because it doesn’t always work (too many .. “Whoops …we’re overloaded” messages. And fear that we’re becoming too dependent on it, which hasn’t developed a revenue model yet and could therefore disappear, causing us to go through emotional withdrawal and the loss of our carefully built networks?

And there’s Facebook. Growing frustration at FB’s sneaky attempts to give people our info from the back door …

So, first of of, do you think that’s happening too? And if so, what is the Next Big Thing going to be?

After many years of working with audio only, I am now adding pictures.

Just to explain why it’s taken so long. I have worked in television before, and I’ve learned some valuable skills along the way. But up until now, I have resisted the urge to work with pictures, thinking that this would take time and focus away from perfecting my audio work.

Well, I’m now at the point where I think I can learn an entirely new media arts discipline and still maintain my commitment to excellent audio.

I am now working on a soundscape slideshow which follows the same story line as the audio piece I’m working on for The Green Planet Monitor

The focus is “How Much Does Your Morning Coffee Cost?” It looks at the environmental and human costs of coffee production.

I am having a great deal of fun going through my photos of Central American coffee plantations and small farmers. The most challenging (and most fun) thing is trying to figure out what I need to say with the words in the soundtrack, and how much I should leave to the pictures.

And how many words I need to add to the slides. I will not be narrating, so I’m thinking about how to identify the people speaking and the locations.

The most part of the job is working in the sounds .. coffee brewing, coffee being raked at a small plantation, sounds of birds, people talking to each other in a cafe, with music ..

It’s a whole new way of creating narrative. I’m having fun.

I know, it’s been a long time since I’ve blogged. That’s because I’ve been travelling (ya, ya, I know there are internet connections all over the world so I could have blogged from Guatemala. But I was too busy gathering stories and visiting campesinos and Mayan women in the mountains)

So, now I’m back and have produced two of my six stories for The Green Planet Monitor. The first two will be posted soon. I’ll update you .. promise.

One of the other things I’m doing with GPMRadio (our Twitter name) is building the community. I know a fair bit about social media, but haven’t really made a concerted effort to build a following .. I’ve been a lot more random.

So, we have a twitter feed, and a Facebook Fan Page. We’ll be adding Youtube and other apps in the near future.

Some of the things I’ve learned so far:

Facebook Fan Pages - we are getting more results here. Facebook is definitely #1 in our social media promotion strategy. It’s easy for people to send people to your page, and there are lots of people on FB. Especially here in Canada.

Twitter — our twitter feed is growing more slowly. At least, compared to my own personal feed (VictoriaFenner). That’s partly because I started my own personal feed a lot earlier. Now that Twitter is getting more crowded, it’s getting harder to get folo-ers.

Yet I’m finding that this is a good thing. The people who are signing up are ones who are truly interested in our content. I sometimes wonder what motivates a person to folo a particular person. I’m happy for every folo-er I get, but am also noticing that my own personal Twitter feed is much more random than GPM Radio. We have a small community so far (33 after 5 days up and running), but what I really love is that all the people who are following us have a connection to the mission of GPM.

We are following a lot more groups and people than are folloing us. There are a couple of reasons for that .. I’ve followed a lot of people so that they’ll folo us. And what is also great is the story tips we’re getting from the groups we’re following.

Lessons learned so far .. there’s nothing wrong with building the community slowly. It’s actually better in the long run.

I’ve just been handed an interesting challenge .. I’ve been asked to compose a soundscape piece that will walk listeners through a streetscape. Only this time, I won’t be able to go out and gather the sounds by walking around and recording.

This soundscape will recreate the sounds of the street in the 1930’s .. people will listen to the soundscape on their ipods and other mobile devices and see the route through their GPS (eg. Google maps) applications on their mobile devices.

So the big job is to research what the street would have sounded like. All of my pieces are based on sounds of the present. So, the big question is, how do I hear the sounds that aren’t there anymore?

It will be fascinating. Stayed tuned .. and please, share your ideas.

With Labour Day being so late this year, is it still summer or is it fall already? For the teachers I know, it’s back to school today even though their students won’t be coming back until next week.

So, I guess it really is back to work, back to school. If not today, then next week for sure.

If you’re starting to think about what workshops you want to take for personal and professional development, here are a couple of suggestions:

PodPoems - Because Poetry is a Spoken Art

an introduction to podcasting for poets and writers
Saturday, September 19, 10 am - 4pm
Location: Toronto

and

Podcasting and Beyond - An Introduction to Multimedia on the Internet
Date: Tuesday Sept 22 1 - 4:30 pm
also in Toronto

For details, go to my Workshops and Events page.