Saturday’s Smile – January 25, 2014
Saturday’s Smile – January 25, 2014 Read More »
205 – This Is How I Podcast (Inside The Yellow Studio Circa 2014)
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Welcome to Episode 205, an inside look to the audio engine here in the Land of Bula. That Zoom H6 (pictured above) is the latest addition to the studio. It’s an incredible piece of equipment, capable of more than a single digital recorder ought to be capable of. Thanks to Patrick (my rep) at Sweetwater Sound, I got it about a month ago.
The unit comes with this hard shell case (notice the nice hinge system – it ain’t flimsy), a windscreen, a USB cable, two microphone interfaces and a small capacity SD card. I wish it had come with an AC power adaptor (an additional $24 or so by itself, or an additional $55 or so if you get it along with a bunch of other unnecessary accessories).
This unit will serve as a multi-channel digital recorder, but it also serves as a USB interface. It has 4 XLR/TRS hybrid inputs, each with its own individual pots. I’ve yet to record with it (other than a short test recording). The full color display is angled (as you can probably see by the photo) making it easy to see. It’s a solidly built unit with a rubberized outer surface.
The reason I was looking for a new unit was because my Roland R-09HR is growing increasingly unreliable due to lots of use. It’s been a great unit, but I was also looking for a unit with XLR/TRS inputs…and a unit capable of providing phantom power for my Rode NTG-2 (which can also be powered by AA batteries).
But let’s go back a bit, shall we?
Episode 76 was the first go round of giving folks a peek inside The Yellow Studio. Numerically, that was 130 episodes, but there are many unnumbered episodes. And there are other podcasts that have come out of The Yellow Studio.
I confess that not much has changed over the years, but I also know how geeky we podcasters can be. I love to see studios. And find out what gear people are using, and how they’re using it.
I know you’d like some logical approach to knowing more about The Yellow Studio. For starters, let’s talk about the name. Just look at the photo gallery and you’ll see the color of the walls. People often ask, “Why yellow?” Why not?
Truth is, I love yellow, orange, red and hunter green. Those are among my favorite colors. I don’t have just one.
When I was 15 – yes, people, when I was young, living in Louisiana…you could get your driver’s license at 15 – I had a 1954 GMC pickup truck. It was an old truck some farmer had abandoned in a field.
My maternal grandfather bought it for $150 and got it running, then paid somebody a little bit to recover the seat in new vinyl. It was a “3-on-the-tree” transmission and I drove it back from Oklahoma, where my grandparents lived, all the way back to Louisiana.
No air conditioning. No radio. Bare bones classic truck in faded hunter green.
I loved it. So much that when I got it home a buddy and I painted it hunter green with orange fender flares. With a brush! And it looked good. Of course, it looked better if you were standing a few feet away. 😉
During high school I had great fun with that truck. My first “real” car was a Pontiac Lemans. It was “Sundance Orange” – that’s what GM called it. So orange was always a big player for me. So, why not The Orange Studio?
I never considered walls being orange. Frankly, it just seemed too dark and I wanted something lighter. I had a moment of clarity when the TV show HOUSE aired. His boss, Cuddy, had yellow walls in her office. Mustard yellow. The exact shade I knew I wanted when I first “built” the Yellow Studio. Of course, it wasn’t so named at the time.
The moment I saw Cuddy’s office I told my wife, “That’s the color I want to paint the walls.” She and Dena, a close friend, painted it after finding the right shade of yellow. So that’s how the name came to be.
What else about the physical space?
– It’s a room about 13′ x 14.5′.
– There’s an adjoining bathroom.
– It has a small closet, filled with too many cables and other audio paraphernalia.
– It has 2 large windows with wooden slat shutters on the inside.
– It has an overhead florescent light, which rarely gets turned on.
– There are 4 full height bookcases behind my desk (out of seen most of the time) filled with books.
– There are 3 other 5′ high bookcases in the studio, also filled with books.
– There is one 4′ high bookcase filled with books, and a Polk Audio HD clock radio, plus a 3 monkeys lamp (hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil).
– There is a CD carousel in the corner that houses 2000 CD’s with more stashed here and there.
– There’s one 2-drawer lowboy filing cabinet (lateral files or regular – it can configured either way).
– There’s 3 chairs that can sit around the “broadcast table” which is actually a conference table.
– The floor is carpeted with a light green low plush carpet.
– The ceiling has popcorn texture circa 1980’s (yeah, I hate it but it’s a royal pain and major mess to change it).
– The room has one HVAC vent without a vent fixture to prevent any rattling. Air just drops into the room.
Okay, enough about the actual space. Now for the stuff you really care about.
Here’s a list of the cool stuff (these are not affiliate links; I do have an affiliate list for most of my resources here):
• Herman Miller Mirra chair (I ditched it for the time being ’cause it’s never worked properly; need to take it in for service)
• Apple iMac 27″ with i7 processor (16GB RAM / 1TB Hard Drive)
• Apple iPad Air (128GB with ATT capability)
• Ambrosia Wiretap Studio ($69  – well worth it)
• Audio Hijack Pro by Rogue Amoeba
• Twisted Wave (my DAW of choice)
• Dialog by Wave Arts (my audio plugin of choice)
• Ambrosia Soundboard (sound cart software; this is $49)
• Sound Byte by Black Cat Systems (my main sound cart software)
• ID3 Editor (to create ID tags)
• Transmit by Panic is my ftp program of choice
• Call Recorder by ECamm (the software I use to record Skype calls – when I don’t use Wiretap Studio)
*Watch an episode of Mixergy.com with Andrew Warner to see how this software records video Skype calls
• Edirol R-09HR digital recorder
• Broadcast Tools ProMix12 broadcast console/mixer
• Zoom H6 multi-track digital recorder
• Yamaha MG124C mixer
• Heil Sound PR40 microphones (they’re my oldest pieces of gear)
• Heil Sound SM1 Shock Mounts
• Heil Sound PL2T Booms
• Heil Sound RS1 boom 12″ extension mount (for one mic; the other mic uses the C clamp)
• VAC pop filters for each PR40
• Heil Sound foam pop filter (I have one of these in case I want to take a PR40 out in the field to use; never happens, by the way)
• Giant Squid Cardioid Stereo mics (I know they’re great ’cause I’ve used them before; unfortunately, mine have never worked)
• Electro-Voice RE50B microphones (I have two of these for field use, but they work equally well in the studio)
• Rode NTG-2 shotgun microphone (it’s a condenser requiring phantom power, but has battery power capability built right in)
• Aphex 230 Voice Channel Processors (one for each PR40 mic)
• TC Electronic Finalizer Express (a final processor that handles everything going through the board)
• Telos One Phone Hybrid
• PreSonus FP10 Firewire Interface (awful customer service; I would not buy these again)
• PreSonus FireStudioProject Firewire Interface (I’m ditching these because I HATE PreSonus)
• Panamax power management
• Aphex Headpod 454 Headphone Amp (now called a HeadPod 4)
• Kensington Keyboards
• Sennheiser HD25-MKII headphones
• Kodak Zi8 HD video camera
• Audio Technica ATR3550 corded lapel microphone
• Logitech 1080p Webcam Pro C910
• Webcam Settings (an app that is terrific for managing webcam settings)
• ScreenFlow by Telestream (screen capture and video recording software)
• Camtasia For Mac (I got it in a Mac Bundle deal for $14 so I had to buy it; it’s a great alternative to ScreenFlow)
• iMovie by Apple (also for some video recording)
• Apple QuickTime Pro (can record audio, video or screen capture)
• Camera Stabilizer (this is great; buy one if you don’t have one)
• Vonage VOIP phone service (this feeds the phone hybrid)
• Apple AirPort Extreme (the old flat square version)
• Various hard drives back it all up
• Toshiba 42″ HDTV on the wall (maybe my most used piece of gear)
• Lots of my gear came from the fine folks at BSWUSA.com (shout out to Kelley Sullivan; she’s been terrific to deal with through the years)
Today’s episodes may go deeper (and darker) than you want, but that’s what the STOP button is for, right? I hope you enjoyed the tour.
Thanks for listening for all these years. I know the podcast here has morphed and changed over time, but that’s what we do as people. We grow. We change. Hopefully, we improve. I’m still working on it.
Do you have a podcast? Let me know about it.
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203 – When My Greed For Your Money Exceeds My Need For Your Trust (Why 2014 Is Going To Be A New Start)
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January 12, 2012 around 11 o’clock in the morning. Epiphany time. They don’t happen often. When they do you have to make note of them. Well, you don’t have to, but it’s a fun thing to do.
Thirty seven years earlier, to the month, I entered my first college classroom. Already armed with a few years of selling experience, business never entered my mind as a career choice. Instead, my love of electronics deluded me into thinking electrical engineering might be a worthwhile course of study. I couldn’t have been wronger.
A few frustrating years in the engineering curriculum resulted in hours, days and months of introspection. I was 19 years old and had two things on my mind. A girl I’d been dating for two years and figuring out this college thing. In that order.
Introspection resulted in two decisions. One infinitely more important than the other. More life-changing.
There was a girl in Texas who I’d been writing to daily for 2 years. She was the one. Thankfully, she felt the same way about me. The idea of getting married entered the conversation. She worked. And went to school. I worked. And went to school. Neither of us was rich, but we knew we could launch a life together. It was be another year before we’d gather with friends and family in the church building where we now worship. That was over 36 years ago.
But there was another decision I made when I was 19. Well, maybe it wasn’t so much a decision as a realization. I hated math. Try getting an engineering degree when you hate and suck at math. Somebody else might be able to do that, but I sure couldn’t. Fact is, I couldn’t get past calculus. Finding what you don’t want is often as profitable any discovery you can make.
Introspection involves turning back the clock and hitting the replay button on your life. What have I done? What have I enjoyed? What am I good at? What am I really bad at? What do I hate? Questions filled my head and my journals.
Math was a subject I enjoyed until an 8th grade teacher made it all go south for me. Mrs. Name-Withheld-To-Protect-The-Guilty did me an injustice or a favor. I’m not sure which. But math never was the same for me after sitting in her class for a year.
No teacher ever lessened my love for art, writing or speaking. And were it not for teachers who insisted that specific dates were the most interesting focal points in history, my love for that subject would have never wavered. Never underestimate the power of a teacher to fuel or destroy a passion. Who knew I would father two future educators driven to make a positive difference in the lives of young people?
Writing, history, speech, art, social sciences, psychology – these were the school subjects that always held my interest. As a teenager my private study mostly consisted of reading and reviewing stereo gear information. The technology interested me, but it was mostly a means to an end – killer music. That love affair with music and stereo gear is what lead me to think the pursuit of an electrical engineering degree might be the way to go.
I had earned thousands of dollars as a hi-fi sales guy at a local stereo shop. Straight commission. No guarantee. No benefits, unless you counted an employee discount as a benefit. And I did.
Selling hi-fi gear was not hard. It was fun. Success required hard work, but it didn’t really seem like work. I enjoyed the products and what people got out of them. Mostly, great music.
I can’t be sure, but I think the first business book I ever read was How I Raised Myself From Failure to Success in Selling by Frank Bettger. That’s assuming you don’t count How To Win Friends And Influence People as a business book.
I never took a single business course in college. It never dawned on me to change my major from engineering to business. What did occur to me was the obvious, or so I thought – journalism. Specifically, broadcast journalism.
I enjoyed writing. Unlike most, I had written a lot. I wrote letters to my girlfriend. I wrote letters to other friends. I wrote in notebooks. I wrote during class. I always wrote like I spoke. What better natural aptitude for broadcast (or spoken word) journalism? Match that up with rock solid reading habits, good study skills for subjects that interest me plus a heightened curiosity…it seemed a good fit.
Never mind that I had no intention of using it in the real world. College wasn’t about the real world for me except that my folks believed a diploma was the path to real world success. Most parents believed that. I never thought much about it really because I was not chasing some professional degree. Buddies were chasing degrees in engineering, architecture, geology, pre-law and pre-med. Those paths seemed logical and predictable. Mine didn’t.
Fast forward because the story is already too long. My grade point average soared after leaving engineering. Just more proof that I had done the right thing. Most times I didn’t get much proof. At least not for a long time. But this shift in my performance happened almost immediately with visible results. Hold that thought, because it’s important to the story. And it’ll be among the most valuable things you can learn. When is the last time you got almost instant positive feedback?
I’ve talked with a few people during my lifetime who admitted that when they stumbled into a certain group of people, they just felt “at home.” I voice over actor once told me that when she first stumbled into that craft and met other voice actors, she immediately said, “These are my people.” Has that ever happened to you?
The closest I can think of in my life was admission into the LSU School of Journalism. It just felt right. It was work, but it didn’t seem like work.
Two years ago, almost to the day, I realized that I need to find my element – my niche. I need to find the place where I can say, “These are my people.” So I began, in earnest, to find that place. I’m still working on it, but I think I’m dangerously close because it’s still about writing and telling stories.
Maybe my epiphany can help you find your own.
202 – The Top 3 Excuses For Not Using Content Marketing
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:51 — 35.1MB)
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Companies, organizations and small businesses all have the same excuses for failing to incorporate content marketing strategies into their plans. It’s 2014, people. It’s time to wake up and figure things out.
Today’s show is a closer examination of the real-world excuses I’ve heard through the years as I’ve attempted to convince business owners that content marketing must be part of their plans. Not future plans. CURRENT plans.
There’s nothing scientific about my list, but it’s highly accurate based on my experience and conversations.
3. “I don’t know how to do it.”
2. “It takes too much time.”
(Tied with, “It takes too long to get results.”)
1. “It’s not worth it.”
(Tied with, “I don’t get it.”)
What’s your excuse? What excuses do you hear?
P.S. DropVox is the resource I talk about in today’s show.
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