Author: Barrett Golding/Archives

Leave the Phone, Take the Mic

Guess he’s not a Fox News fan :

Palo Alto iPhoners

1 Day before video from Podtech’s Micheal Johnson:

Pubradio Talent Quest

Public Radio Talent Quest:
Banners | Recorded Promos | Promo Scripts

Potts Performs

Just so we’re not the only blog in the world without cell-phone salesmen phenom Paul Potts:

NPR Day to Day: Potts interview | TV Finals

HEAD and LEG

WFMU’s blog has mp3s of Head and Leg’s In Your Dreams, a spoken-weird, oddio art, musicollage. I suggest you buy the CD, as I did, from Seeland, Negativland’s mail-order label, if only for the exquisite artwork inside by Pauline Lim:

“Your ___ Is Only Momentary” © Pauline Lim
Oil, alkyd, acrylic on canvas. 22″ x 28″ 2004

From Head and Leg In Your Dreams…

“Poke You in the Eye” (1:09):

“The Womb Room” (2:54):

“Dreamscape” (2:15):

Forgotten Voices

The Sound Archive at the Imperial War Museum has a huge collection of sound-recorded war-related oral histories and broadcasts from WWI on. Some of the best-of are in the Forgotten Voices project; there’s a play in London based on the collection; and there’s several Forgotten Voices of the Second World War book/CDs.

Here’s the tres-Brit voice of First Lord of the Admiralty 1/Oct/1939, Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, getting ready for a fight (1:13):

Sent by Rich Halten.

Telling Stories with Sound

Free online Journalism Training course from News University, taught by the NY Times multimedia editor: Telling Stories with Sound.

Ultimate Ears headphones

I’m kinda lucky to have
HeadRoom, the large net/mail headphone retailer, right in my hometown (Bozeman MT). When I need cans I just cruise by and buy whatever they recommend: they’re audiophile fanatics and listen critically to everything they sell.

In the field I use ear canal headphones (don’t call ’em “earbuds,” sez HR). They sound good, they seat well (i.e., don’t fall out), and they’re small, so you don’t look like a Martian when approaching folk outta-the-blue to interview them. I usually pay between $100 and $200 for a really good, but not top-o-line pair.

I used a Shure E4 with an Etymotic ER6 as backup. The Shure sounded better and had a thicker cord. I say “had” cuz I recently broke both (abuse), leaving me field phone-less.

So I swung by HeadRoom for new Shures, but Shure’s new E’s have much thinner cords. “Anything else as good?” asks I.

Guy pulls out the Ultimate Ears super.fi 5 Pro ($180). I buy sans listen; take ’em home and am impressed. For the first time I hear a decent bass response from ear-canals. People say both the Shure and Etymotics have good bass, but I never thot so, even when I had the in-ear seal as tight as a [fill in offensive simile here]. But these UE’s go low, likely cuz of their dual drivers, one just for bass. (Caveat: HR mentioned the crossover could be a prob as it occurs at in vocal mid-range, but probs for them are usually out of my range of perception.)

Bass is important not just for the funk-in-recordings but also for field recording, as most of the wind and plosive overdrives occur in the lower freqs — lower than most open-ear phones go. So you could be wrecking your recording and not know (hear) it.

Day of Silence

Internet radio is in immediate danger. Devastatingly large increases in royalty rates take effect July 15: retroactive to Jan 1 2006. Many radio and music sites can’t afford the increases, so will be forced to shut down their music streams.

Today is a national “Day of Silence” to protest these rates, and to encourage the millions of net radio listeners to take action and contact their Congressional representatives.

Webcasters across USA have special programming planned; some will broadcast complete silence.

The bipartisan Internet Radio Equality Act can save internet radio. Info at Savenetradio.org and Radio and Internet Newsletter.

Otha Turner’s Picnic cast

This week’s HV cast starts Summer with some Mississippi moonshine, barbecued goat and the last of the old-time Fife & Drum picnics. A story by Ben Adair, “Otha Turner’s Picnic” (13:10 mp3):

Negativland A’cappella: 180-Gs

Now, maybe we have heard everything: the 180-Gs do a’cappella covers of Negativland classics, including Casey Kasem cursing over U2 (“I Still Haven’t Found”). Among the downloads at myspace.com/180gs, from their CD is 180 d’Gs to the Future, “Christianity is Stupid” (3:55 mp3):

Found by Lukas.

Hype Machine

The Hype Machine tracks music blogs and mp3 posts. You can add a Top 10 to your own site of what folk are music-blogging right now, looks like:

Sun Tunnels Solstice

Scott’s piece on “Sun Tunnels” (9:21) sculpture in the Utah desert runs this solstice week on The Nature Conservancy’s Nature Stories podcast:

ParkeHarrison Photogravures

Robert & Shana ParkeHarrison Photogravures:

The Navigator (2001) Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison

Reclamation (2003) Robert & Shana ParkeHarrison

ParkeHarrison: Site | Edelman Gallery | Shainman Gallery

Lemon Weather for Duck Jelly

Lemon Jelly “Nice Weather for Ducks” (from Lost Horizons) directed by Nigel Pay:

Harper’s Online Ink

If you’re a Harper’s Magazine subscriber, you can now get pdf versions of paper articles online; e.g., here’s Carrier, Scott – Articles (Harper’s Magazine).

MSM Can Learn from TDS

American Journalism Review “What the Mainstream Media Can Learn From Jon Stewart“:

When Hub Brown’s students first told him they loved “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and sometimes even relied on it for news, he was, as any responsible journalism professor would be, appalled.

Now he’s a “Daily Show” convert.

“There are days when I watch ‘The Daily Show,’ and I kind of chuckle. There are days when I laugh out loud. There are days when I stand up and point to the TV and say, ‘You’re damn right!'” says Brown, chair of the communications department at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and an associate professor of broadcast journalism.…

As “The Daily’s Show’s” Web site puts it: “One anchor, five correspondents, zero credibility. If you’re tired of the stodginess of the evening newscasts, if you can’t bear to sit through the spinmeisters and shills on the 24-hour cable news networks, don’t miss The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, a nightly half-hour series unburdened by objectivity, journalistic integrity or even accuracy.”

TDS 2007.07.15 Tony Snow on AG-gate:

My Father’s Music cast

This week’s HV cast is a Father’s Day ditty. Going in and out of cool, in syncopated time, a daughter and dad’s ever-changing relationship moves to the beat of a jazz standard. A story by Rebecca Flowers, “My Father’s Music” (mp3 6:30):

Matrix Ping Pong

This 2003 performance won the the annual Japanese show Kinchan and Katori Shingo’s National Costume Competition (欽ちゃん＆香取慎吾の新！仮装大賞); a ping-pong game played matrix-style using kurokos — stagehands in kabuki theatre — to hold up the actors and props:

Writing for Radio- Poynter

At Poynter Online Al Tomkins hosts a series of articles and interviews on Writing for Radio: “Veteran Radio Reporter Shares Secrets to Writing Short,” “Sound for the Eyes: Writing Visually for Audio,” and “When Old Radio Dogs Learn to Use Pics.”