Area 51, a very, very slick comedy podcast (#34 on Podcast Alley) put together by a group of top-notch professionals who probably lost their jobs when Clear Channel pillaged and burned their former places of work, mentioned Herro Flom Japan on their March 24 podcast.
Dude, I know the levels were off. It was my 2nd podcast. Ever. In my whole life. Come to think of it, I’ll fix the levels tonight and re-upload it.
It seems like quite a few people are curious about the setup I’m using to record binaural soundseeing tours. Actually, I wouldn’t recommend using the rig I hobbled together because it picks up the sounds inside my mouth and upper digestive tract. Check out the binaural mics at soundprofessionals.com instead.
But, since you asked…
There’s picture of the monstrosity here.
At home I use a Plantronics DSP-400 headset and Audacity. The noise canceling mic works great. If I were using an el cheapo mic, the racket my PC makes would practically drown out my voice. And the headset came with a CD full of excellent software, which I unfortunately lost long ago.
Today’s Boing Boing has a link to a post on another blog about the Pocky commercial that was in French. My coworker is the guy who wrote the lyrics. He’s French. I call him “Frenchie.” But not to his face.
Hitch a ride inside my head while I roam the streets of Kabukicho in search of…well, audio. My favorite part is when I buy a bottle of green tea from a vending machine and you can hear the sound of me drinking it as if you were there inside my head. The hawkers who try to temp me into their tittie bars, nightclubs and whorehouses won’t take no for an answer until I practically beat them over the head with it. There are a few craptacular camera phone pics in the gallery. I also updated the gallery for last week’s show.
Please don’t announce this podcast to tens of thousands of people. I don’t want to incur the wrath of the bandwidth gods. Let’s leave it as a well-kept secret for now.
The tour was so long that I didn’t get to cover some things I wanted to, like my meeting with Scott Lockman of Tokyo Calling. He came to my company’s office on Thursday evening to discuss a teaching gig. It’s funny how radio guys never look the way you imagine them. Matching the face with the voice for the first time is like watching a movie that’s been dubbed–only difference is the mouth moves in perfect sync with the voice.
My apologies to those of you on dial-up connections–this one’s also a bigun’. Also, sorry for the audio levels being set way too high, but unless you’re an audiophile you probably won’t notice. Just turn the volume down a bit.
Thanks to everyone who left comments. What a nice bunch of people you all are.
Podcast (audio): Play in new window | Download (23.0MB) | Embed
Subscribe: RSS
Yesterday at work I listened to the recordings I made about a week ago while walking through Kabukicho. (“Kabukicho is to sex what Akihabara is to electronics.”) I got some really good audio. You can hear me buy a bottle of green tea from a vending machine. A guy standing next to it is talking on his cell phone. Then about 10 seconds later you can hear me take a drink and swallow. Those earbud mics pick up everything. I talk with a few hawkers, some in English (the Nigerians) and some in Japanese. Then towards the end a motorcycle goes by on the left, and if you’re listening to it on headphones you’d absolutely swear the thing is real. At work the window is to my left and the first time I heard it I thought it was outside.
What prevented me from putting the podcast together was a technical problem. I upgraded my computer the other day with 256MB more RAM and a USB 2.0/Firewire card, and since then it’s been really, really slllllloooooow. I just figured out it was the card, not the RAM or my massively fragmented HD. So maybe my next soundseeing tour will be of me trying to take the damn card back. Not easy here. FYI, Bic Camera won’t take back DIY PC parts but SofMap will.
Sorry ’bout that. Something somewhere decided to break.
My first podcast! What an ordeal it is to put one of these things together, but the most fun I’ve had by myself in a long time. Guzzling red wine probably helped.
Intro: Guano Apes
See the photo gallery! If there’s nothing there, I fell asleep before I got a chance to upload photos. Check back later. I’ll get them up, promise.
The JET Program
Masagoro’s home page. In addition to being an accomplished artist, fluent in baby talk in two languages and performing original songs on toy piano outside the Shibuya station, a Google search reveals that she’s also a published poet.
Podcast (audio): Play in new window | Download (27.2MB) | Embed
Subscribe: RSS