Will Richardson

Speaker, consultant, writer, learner, parent

Podcast (Kind of…) #3

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So having said last week that I was pretty much done with the podcasting stuff, here I am, back with what I guess is Podcast #3. But, this one is a bit different.

After listening recently to an NPR audio-essay on Brian Eno I thought “now there’s an application for Podcasts” or something close to that. See, to me the power in this has always been about the audience, the ability to distribute the creation to people in the hopes they’ll listen. The Eno essayist had NPR. We, thanks to Podcasting, have the Internet.

So, I carved out a few hours, wrote up an essay, fired up Audacity, and tried to pay Podcasting hommage to one of my favorite musicians, Todd Rundgren, who came out with a new CD last year that really floored me. After a short intro, this is the result. (There’s about 20 seconds between the intro and the actual project, by the way.)

This is by no means perfection, in fact at times it gut-wrenchingly embarrasing. (The grand irony comes with what Todd sings at the end right after I sign off. Nails it.) There are lots of ps popping, and keep your finger on your iPod volume as the levels leave something to be desired. But for the most part, this is the kind of thing I see Podcasting being used for in the classroom. Of course, the big test is if Alan can stay awake…

Comments

  1. Alan Levine says

    Hey, I’m awake… my toe is even tapping. I like what you did in terms of wrapping some context and opinion around Todd’s music, and its a nice modelt for what students might do- they could not only do music form famous speeches from some of the online archives…

    Still- I cannot pull exceprts, make comments, etc, but taken for what it is, personal radio shows, it works. It is a much different media form and needs more than monologues.

    I was not as much a Rundgren music fan, but respect hime quite a bit for the multimedia development he did in the 1990s, using the software I was using at the same time (Macromedia Director)– he used to participate in some of the Director listserv exchanges. Yup, he is a musician and a multimedia dude, allright with me.

    Now where is my iPod?