Podcasting Resource for HISTSCI1930

WORKSHOP OUTLINE

We are excited to work with you on your podcasts! The Learning Lab folks around for the workshop in case you forget:

• Jordan, Assistant Director of the Learning Lab
• Christine, Assistant Director of the Learning Lab
• Casey, Technical Operations & Learning Lab Studio Manager.

We are all here to help you on your podcasts over the course of the term.

To get us started supporting you, we have a few little activies that will give you a sense of how & why we might communicate our academic ideas through the medium of podcasts.

The Elements of a Podcast

We'd love to start by taking some time to deconstruct just the first bit of a podcast, and unpack all the elements involved. We will do a close reading (or close listening!) of the first 30 seconds of a podcast called Serial and map out how the different audio elements work together temporally.

The Beginning of Serial

The Prompt:

1. Just listen to the first 30 seconds of this podcast and reflect on what you are hearing, and what that evokes.
2. Listen again…
3. And again.
4. As you begin to identify the different elements, start mapping them out. How many elements can you hear? How do they interact/intersect? What functional roles are they playing to support the content?

Communicating to General Audiences

Dejargonifying . . . turning systems into narratives. From statement to story.

Ira Glass on Storytelling

Let's try it!

Prompt: Setting Up Your Act 1

Stories start with a mystery, a puzzle, or a problem. Today, your task is to figure out what that initial obstacle or puzzle is and articulate it.

The prompts for your podcast are all about connecting, and really the diffuculty of connecting (connecting past to present, connecting theory to source, etc.). Just like the Hollywood RomCom narrative, it's only interesting if connecting is difficult.

So let's see if we can set up our own mini mystery using:

• a voice over narration, reflection, interpretation
• some source audio of an object or a location
• logic live loops for musical emphasis and argument support.

The goal is by the end of the workshop you will have developed a 30 second to 1 minute intro that you will be able to perform live for us.

In your groups you will:

• anecdote and source audio capture zone

  1. record yourself encountering the mystery. descriptive only, no interpretation in this recording.
  2. capture that sound, or field audio that gets purely the sound of the space or object in use without you talking/describing it.

• reflection and music support zone

  1. consider the mystery of your source audio. Try out improvising a couple of sentences of reflection to set this mystery up.
  2. experiment with a few logic starter grid loop scenes, switch between them at moments of transistion.
  3. Are there any moments where you might cut to silence or leave just your voice for the audience to hear?

Logic Live Loops Tips

Here are tips from Logic's website about using the interface!

Play Live Loops

To play cells in the Live Loops grid, you can play a single cell, all cells in a scene, or a combination of cells in any scenes. Cells and scenes are nonlinear, so you can play cells and scenes in any order. However, only one cell per track can play at the same time.

To play a single cell, click the play button that appears when your pointer is over the cell.

To play a scene, click the scene trigger button at the bottom of a scene, above the numbers. All the cells in the scene start playing simultaneously.

To play a selection of cells from different scenes, press and hold Shift while selecting the cells, then press Return.

When using Logic Remote with Live Loops, you can use Multi-Touch and swipe gestures to start multiple cells at once.

Cells play at the project tempo and, when set to loop, continue to loop until you play a different cell or scene. Indicators in the cell and at the end of the cell’s row show the cell's progress.

Start other cells and scenes

While cells and scenes are playing, you can select other cells and scenes for playback to create seamless transitions between cells. To play a different cell or scene, simply click a different cell or scene trigger button . The selected cells flash, then start automatically based on the setting in the Quantize Start pop-up menu. To change how quickly cells start playing after you select them, choose a different option from the Quantize Start pop-up menu.

You can also queue cells and scenes to start playing when project playback starts or when you want cells in different scenes to start at the same time. Learn more about starting and stopping Live Loops, queuing cells and scenes, and different quantize start options.

Stop playback

When cells are set to loop, they play until you stop playback:

To stop an individual cell, click the Stop button on the cell.

To stop all cells immediately, including scenes and individual cells, press Stop in the toolbar or press the Spacebar.

To stop cells based on the current setting in the Quantize Start pop-up menu (for example, one bar), click the stop button in the lower-right corner of the grid.

Recording Tips

Here are general podcasting tips from our podcasting site.

Microphone placement:

In order to guarantee the highest quality of audio in your recording, it is important to pay attention to the proximity between your microphone and your subject. When recording a group discussion it is important to arrange the participants so that they are equidistant from the recording device, and if possible, try to avoid areas with a lot of background noise (fan, laptop, open window or other groups of people). Choosing a location with a quiet atmosphere can also help to make sure you have a clear capture of everyone’s voice. However, some background noise is okay - you also want to keep the conversation feeling natural and not too staged - as long as you can hear all of the participants in the conversation. Other tips for increasing the quality of an audio recording are to remove your phone from its case, and limiting movement of your phone or other objects around it (for example, papers on a table).

Test your recording:

You may not be able to monitor your audio while recording, so it is important to test your recording prior to capturing anything that you plan to use later. Wear headphones while listening to playback to ensure the best quality while you are monitoring your test recording. Listen for things like background noise (HVAC, traffic, other people’s conversations) and to make sure that your microphone is picking up your subject at an appropriate level.

Start early, stop late:

Make sure to begin your recording prior to the start of a discussion, and allow it to run even when the discussion seems to be slowing down or has stopped. It is hard to know exactly which segment of a discussion will stand out as “the best” part, but you can ensure you don’t miss it by capturing everything.

Name your recording:

Even if you don’t have a lot of audio files stored on your phone, make sure to name your recordings after you have finished. This will help keep files organized throughout the uploading and transcription process, and can help you to make sure nothing gets deleted by accident.