Now go out and make some great audio fiction!!!

The post Audio Fiction with Fred – Week 5 appeared first on FinalRune Academy.

PRO TIP – NEVER NEVER plug/unplug a USB device while a recording is ‘hot.’ … you’ll see I almost blow up the whole class by trying to do that on this video, ha… the webcam was plugged into a USB hub, I thought it would be fun to show you how I dig through SFX on my libraries, which are all stored on a USB hard drive… well, my Mac didn’t like when I plugged in that new device and the webcam glitched and I nearly crashed the call. Luckily it managed to keep recording (whew!) and I was able to carry on via mobile, but I very easily could have ruined everything. So, see, I’m just trying to make all of these mistakes in realtime to remind you that everyone screws things up and to help you avoid some of the (just about all that are available for options) mistakes I’ve made over the years…

Advance to Week 5

Bonus vid

Ambient Reverb Bus chain tutorial (actually figured it out this time). This is the more advanced but EXTREMELY POWERFUL technique of sending dialogue and SFX submixes off to Ambient-Land to be acoustically treated as various locations.

Soapbox – setting up reverb chain – Reaper

Bonus Video 2

Sound design tips using Reaper

Soapbox – Sound Design in Reaper – some tips

Useful Stuff

some useful websites as you start your SFX and music journey! the internet is FULL of lists and recommendations, so this is really just a starting place:

• sounddogs.com – SFX website I showed, affordable rate commercial license
• Incompetech – Creative Commons (non-commercial, attribution) Music
• sessions.blue – Creative Commons (non-commercial, attribution) Music
• soundrangers.com – SFX/music website with affordable rates, commercial license
• audiojungle.net – affordable SFX/music for commercial license

The post Audio Fiction with Fred – Week 4 appeared first on FinalRune Academy.

Bonus Video:

Recording Session “The Bloody Mess”

Additional Bonus Material

Soapbox – Dialogue 102 with Fred, Part 1

Soapbox – Dialogue 102 with Fred, Part 2

Advance to Week 4

Some Additional Recommended Listening:

This is not even a start at scratching the surface of stuff you should check out, but here are a few shows I’ve been thinking about recently that do some interesting mix-ups of the way story is told

HUNGRY EARTH – decadent single narrator program with SFX and music underscore, from real-world location in south of England
https://soundcloud.com/corneliuszg/hungry-earth-mix01

TRACKS – a mind-bending, complex layered conspiracy thriller
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07nsf2x

JANUS DESCENDING – Nonlinear cosmic horror tale set in space. Oh yeah, it’s fun!
https://www.nosuchthingradio.com/janus-descending

PASSENGER LIST – One of the break-out fiction hits of the last year, which does a lot of really interesting things in the way it unveils the narrative
https://passengerlist.org/

BRAIN CHEMISTRY – A cryogenically-frozen man is revived in the future, to a world that is not quite what he expected. THE TRUTH show is consistently awesome and changes up format a lot, this one does some really neat things with POV and tells a story in a way that you really only can do in audio…
http://www.thetruthpodcast.com/story/2017/9/27/brain-chemistry

More resources for the radio history junkies:

I sent some resources to someone who was interested in more of the academic track understanding the emergent audio fiction scene — honestly these all need a post 2015 update but for earlier background this is some good stuff… thought I’d share with y’all

• My senior thesis on radio drama – http://www.finalrune.com/dead/radio.htm
• A paper by a colleague on the early days of radio drama emergence on the internet –  https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/c5d3/b56c44ed19e37ff9769c03515dd422b24363.pdf
• Interview with scholar Neil Verma about radio history – http://www.radiodramarevival.com/episode-484-going-deep-neil-verma-lights/

The post Audio Fiction with Fred – Week 3 appeared first on FinalRune Academy.

You’ll learn:

The post Audio Fiction with Fred – Week 2 appeared first on FinalRune Academy.

Welcome to Audio Fiction with Fred!

In the first week’s course, we cover:

• Introduction to Fred
• Overview of modern audio fiction including a dive into radio drama history in the USA 1930s – present
• Audio scriptwriting – what makes an audio script work and what differentiates it from other media

Advance to Week 2

Recommended Listening

ALL OF THIS IS OPTIONAL. If you see something that jazzes you, go for it. No pressure. Most of these are picked for their relevance in the grand history of radio and illustrating production techniques over time.

• Probably my #1 pick for you to listen by Friday, if you have 10 minutes, Roger Gregg’s sketch on what makes a radio script, a radio script – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfPnacBKA0k
• 1hour – “On a Note of Triumph” by Norman Corwin – https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4668028 – Corwin was one of the true greats of the golden age of American radio, bringing a level of poetry to the form and pushing its boundaries. He is one of the very few radio creators to have works with historical significance, this one in particular as it commemorated the end of WW2 in Europe. Far from a rah-rah victory speech, it is a deep meditation on the sacrifices and meaning of war, especially interesting to consider given how differently America talks about its place in the world in 2020.
• 55 minutes – the original “War of the Worlds” by Orson Welles – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzC3Fg_rRJM – honestly the long shadow of WotW and countless remakes have burned me out personally, but, there is no doubting the importance of this show which perfectly captured the anxiety of the moment and shocked the world, and is one of the few radio events that remains strongly in public consciousness (who will create the Covid-era equivalent?) — for a fresh take on the concept, see the 2014 Wireless Theatre DEAD LONDON – https://www.wirelesstheatrecompany.co.uk/product/dead-london/
• 23mins – “The Thing on the Fourble Board” Quiet Please – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3DPsMrcjJ4 – FOR PEOPLE WHO LIKE SCARY STUFF. One of the most terrifying scripts from the old time era. Also in this vein, SORRY, WRONG NUMBER, THREE SKELETON KEY, and MARS IS HEAVEN. For extra fun hear David Rheinstrom and Gabriel Urbina’s commentary on this show –https://www.radiodramarevival.com/episode-442-going-deep-gabriel-david-thing-fourble-board/
• Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – only 1 min sample seems to be available online – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ew58TUFNF5g – Audible has the full thing (Look for Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Primary Phase) – for fans of Douglas Adams, there’s nothing quite like the source material. Also, consider the quantum leap between live-to-air radio dramas and having access to layers of sound design, effects, etc.
• Other interesting works
  • There is a great collection “60 greatest radio shows” by Waler Cronkite but it’s really old (cassette!) and hard to find, however you can find the discography here: https://www.discogs.com/Various-The-60-Greatest-Old-Time-Radio-Shows-Of-The-20th-Century-Selected-By-Walter-Cronkite/release/4709902 and many of these shows are available on YouTube and elsewhere
  • Firesign Theater – wildly experimental comedy albums of counterculture America 1960s and 70s. some of the earliest adventures into layered multi-track studio recordings, with some wildly hilarious monologues – http://www.firesigntheatre.com/
  • STAN FREBERG! https://www.radiodramarevival.com/episode-410-stan-freberg-retrospective/
  • BBC’s treatment of Lord of the Rings
  • NPR’s Star Wars
  • NPR’s A Canticle for Leibowitz
  • ZBS – Jack Flanders and Ruby
  • Bradbury 13 – 1980s era NPR-funded sci-fi series
  • Seeing Ear Theatre, Sci-fi channel (now SyFy) early entry into online audio… WAY ahead of their time and unfortunately now they’re way behind… (sniff, sniff)

Resources

• Radio Drama Revival – The modern audio fiction scene is thriving! For some more contemporary examples of great work out there, surf RDR, with over 500 (!) episodes over 13 years, there’s something for everyone! – http://radiodramarevival.com/

• Celtx – There are many ways to make a radio script. While various distributors have preferences, I don’t believe there is a ‘right’ format. The script is really just a blueprint, what matters is the thing you build out of the component parts.

  I prefer to use a screenplay-style for my scripts, and I’ll discuss my philosophy about what to put in an audio script in my course.

  While I use Final Draft software, Celtx offers a very similar suite of features with a Free basic plan, which is pretty great.

• Springhole (Idea Generator) – https://www.springhole.net/writing_roleplaying_randomators/plotgens.htm – OK so we need to come up with some ideas for short-form radio scripts to make in this class. FULL DISCLAIMER – I just randomly discovered this on the internet and hope there are not any weird scary things you can get to from this website. It seems to have some pretty hilarious and ludicrous plot generators so hopefully that helps you nail a story concept.

• Sample Script – THE BLOODY MESS. This very silly story gives you a walkthrough of all of the elements of a short audio script and wraps up in 7-8 minutes, so it’s roughly the same scope of what I’m hoping students will be able to create with me in this course. In fact, as a learning process for myself I’ll be creating a new version of this show myself during our work together. The story structure of BLOODY MESS is pretty straightforward, but as we’ll discuss in the class, audio offers the ability to really mess with time, point of view, storyteller, and narrative structure.

  Download “The Bloody Mess” (PDF)
  Bloody Mess - FINAL-2020-4-28

The post Audio Fiction with Fred – Week 1 appeared first on FinalRune Academy.

My twitter handle is @finalrune and you can find me on other social media sites with the same handle. I would love to hear what you use and remix!

The War on Poverty

In a back back back door meeting in the White House, the President and his most trusted advisors discuss a new conflict which is unavoidable, absolutely essential to America (at least insofar as justifying the ballooning Department of Defense budget).

This new conflict, nay, War, will be a War fought against one of the most pervasive ills that has cursed civilization since the beginning. A War on… Poverty.

Created for the UMA Audio 319 class for the spring of 2010. Project page: The War on Poverty.

Download script “The War on Poverty” (PDF)

The Bloody Mess

Part of the “You Have Five Minutes” Collection

Download script, “The Bloody Mess” (PDF)

A Drink Before the Dark

Part of the “You Have Five Minutes” Collection

Download script, “A Drink Before the Dark”

Santa, Inc.

Part of the “You Have Five Minutes” Collection

Download script, “Santa, Inc.”

Leonard

Part of the “You Have Five Minutes” Collection

Download script, “Leonard”

Big Chief’s Stimulus

Part of the “You Have Five Minutes” Collection

Download script, “Big Chief’s Stimulus”

Jimmy Heart and the Story Girl

Part of the “You Have Five Minutes” Collection

Download script, “Jimmy Heart and the Story Girl”

The Well

Part of the “You Have Five Minutes” Collection

Download script, “The Well”

Losing You is Hell

A dark retelling of the myth of Orpheus inspired by the classic jazz tune “St James Infirmary.” A man in New Orleans is doomed to keep falling in love with the same woman and seducing her to her death.

Part of the 2009 Live Halloween Radio Drama with WMPG.

Download script, “Losing You is Hell” (PDF)

Dark Passenger

Two teenage friends start scaring each other on the drive to a dismal “haunted” house on the coast of Maine. But when their innocent fun starts to become all too real, they soon realize what true terror is. A nod to Stephen King in a tale inspired by a true story too haunting to forget.

Project page: Dark Passenger

Download script, “Dark Passenger” (PDF)

Fall of the Hero

Sir Grace was the most valiant of all knights, decked in glorious armor that glowed in the sun and a record of dragon-slaying and maiden saving on par with none. But a battle with a renowned wizard with ambiguous ambitions forces Sir Grace to consider things he never imagined, and face his greatest enemy yet: himself.

Project page: Fall of the Hero

Download script, “Fall of the Hero” (PDF)

Tales from Williamsville

Welcome to Williamsville, where tradition and routine dictate the ebb and flow of life. Yet, Williamsville is not without its stories… How do one repressed arsonist, a sexually-charged geriatric, a slimy drug dealer and a soccer mom on steroids combine in the most exciting thing to happen in Williamsville since 1936? Starring a cast of talented and twisted University of Southern Maine students.

Project page: Tales from Williamsville

Download script, “Tales from Williamsville” (PDF)

Drizzle

The unconventional Christmas story of a business man whose life is changed by a random encounter with a stranger. Narrated by the ineffable John Coons.

Project page: Drizzle

Download script, “Drizzle” (PDF)

Blind Man’s Confession

A chilling audio horror story: A young man’s joyride one October night turns into a hell he could never imagine. Originally published in Blue Murder Magazine.

Project page: Blind Man’s Confession

Download script, “Blind Man’s Confession” (PDF)

The post Sample Scripts appeared first on FinalRune Academy.

The story evolved from various walks my daughter Nyana (7 at the time) and I would go on in the woods, and the prompt “Dada, tell me a story,” which at some point became hooked on a large, moss covered boulder behind our home, and the possibility that underneath it was a tunnel to a fantastic world beyond. It all kind of spiraled out from there.

When we got to the production process, we (longstanding collaborator Bill Dufris and I) decided to do it in our emerging “Studio-Location Hybrid Style” which we pioneered in The Dark Tome, Season 2.

All of the scenes in the realm of Fae were recorded in our world-class audio drama studio located at William Dufris’s Mind’s Eye Productions facilities in South Portland. This allows us to record everything clean and to polish it in post-production and have fun with weird creature voices and other effects.

All of the scenes in the “real” world were recorded at my friend Jeremy Kasten’s farmhouse in Berwick, Maine, which was as perfect a set as you could imagine for this show. We stopped short of trying to train one of Jeremy’s goats to work in the show, but otherwise our location was pretty much identical to what the script called for.

Some people may think it’s a tremendous amount of work to do it like this, especially when we have a perfectly good studio to work with, but there is nothing quite like the sound of — for example — speeding down a country road, twisting onto dirt, slamming a car into park and bursting out yelling into a great big field.

An audio drama is only as good as the sum of its component parts.

That starts with the script itself, which — while I’m biased — I think is very strong. I tried to harken back to works I love (Neil Gaiman’s memory that childhood is a terrifying place, and the sharpness with which 1800s faerie tales are told) while also subverting and adding to the fantasy genre. This is not a ‘black and white’ world, Faerie is multi-colored and vibrant, weird in the best way possible and the script remembers that monsters are always the hero in their version of the story.

And this cast – WOW! – we had an extraordinarily strong response to our first casting call and put together an incredible mix of talent, inclusive of returning close collaborators, as well as a number of performers we’d never worked with before.

One of the last projects I ever worked on with William Dufris. And it was a good one!

I could keep on going… The production itself has a strange magical energy to it in that the news was just breaking that Bill Dufris’s cancer had returned, and Bill had to limit his involvement due to physical restraints (like, his body couldn’t do it, not that we had to put Bill in a straight-jacket or anything). Bill makes a few brilliant cameo performances in the show, and when he’s in it, he’s IN – larger than life, the Bill Dufris that everyone know and loves, that steals fire from the gods, that has a consistent record of doing things that people tell him are impossible.

The final stage to this – MUSIC and SOUND EFFECTS. As of this writing, we’re still deep in this process, but we had the pleasure of working with Rory O’Shea, who did sound design for LOCKE & KEY and last year’s HOMEFRONT, and Peter Van Riet, the Belgian-based composer who has created music for our projects LOCKE & KEY, A JOURNEY WITH STRANGE BEDFELLOWS, and THE DARK TOME. Finally! We committed to underscoring the entire show, and brought on Frank Schulmeyer (a friend of Bill’s from the London days).

All of this is a way of saying… Don’t miss this show!

The post Behind the Scenes of Of Fae & Fiends appeared first on FinalRune Academy.

Creative talent runs in the Greenhalgh family! The amazing cover art above was developed by my cousin Bethany. See her artwork on Instagram.

Lizzie (Marie Lane), 10, visits her family’s ancestral farmhouse in Maine, and discovers that the woods behind the house contain an amazing secret: a gateway into the mystical land of Faerie.

Yet, a dark cloud looms over the horizon of this fantastic land: Lizzie’s Great-Uncle Carlow (Peter Berkrot), has corrupted the goblin kingdom and plans to conquer all of Fae, and then move into our world unless Lizzie and some unlikely friends — a talking goat (Dustin Tucker) and a swordfighting weasel (Ella Mock) — friends can stop him.

OF FAE & FIENDS

Visit Project Website

Behind the Scenes – OF FAE & FIENDS

The post Of Fae & Fiends appeared first on FinalRune Academy.

Fred Greenhalgh surveys audio fiction mic technique – mono, stereo, binaural – at Podtales 2019 in Boston, MA.

Preamble

It was an honor to have Dagaz Media be invited to the inaugural Podtales conference in Boston to offer a workshop on microphone technique. Our goal with the workshop was to bring some gear into the room and illustrate that microphone choices are the audio fiction equivalent of paint brushes, or camera lenses. Microphones all have unique properties and there rarely is a ‘wrong’ choice — just different choices that vary depending on the context, resources available to the creator, and subject matter / tone of their piece.

Too often, I see creators whose mic choices are limited to the most basic USB audio interfaces… And while that’s an OK way to get started, I would like to encourage us all to dream bigger, and also make the argument that it’s really not cost-prohibitive to try out some more interesting ways to record (e.g. YES while you can spend $2,500 on mics in a heartbeat, you can also record stereo and binaural with rigs that are well under $500, with incredible results).

I have been blessed with the opportunity to work with some extremely kind, generous, and amazingly talented mentors in the audio fiction space and seen that there is no wrong way to do any of this, just a myriad selection of RIGHT ways. You can record on location. You can record in the studio – with actors looking at each other… Or not. Or even, dare I say it, when actors aren’t in the same place at the same time (though I personally dislike this approach to recording, I think it’s possible to execute well especially if you put some work into ensuring there is some modicum of consistency across recording environments and record the actors in real-time together).

This piece is not intended to be an exhaustive breakdown of every kind of way that an audio drama can be recorded, but more to illustrate from how moving beyond basic functional recording setup allows us to think about mic technique as a creative tool to employ, rather than technical obstacle to overcome.

High-level, we explore three different ways to record a show:

• Multiple mono mics – the most obvious and classic way to record an ensemble cast in studio.
• X-Y stereo mic – the “BBC way” and also a great way to record on-location.
• Binaural stereo mic – this so-called “3d audio” method dates back 50+ years but still sounds incredibly immersive and convincing… on headphones.

Shout out to Dagaz Media

“Bill and Freds Audio Adventures” was a term coined by the team at Audible Studios who we worked with on Locke & Key and The X-Files audio dramas!

You’ll see me jump around a lot between I/me and We/our in this piece. The workshop at Podtales was sponsored by Dagaz Media, which is the parent audio company formed by me and audio co-conspirator and dear friend, William (Bill) Dufris, as Dagaz Media. Bill was not able to make it to Boston for our workshop due to medical reasons, but he generously lent a bunch of microphones from his studio so that we could pull the workshop off, and also has been instrumental in iterating on the various recording methods over the years we’ve worked together — Locke & Key, The Dark Tome, The X-Files, Expeditionary Force: Homefront. When you see we/our I’m talking about the results of my professional collaboration with Bill / Dagaz Media, when you see I/me it’s a Fred Greenhalgh personal opinion… And if the two occasionally seem to bleed into each other, it’s only because Bill is such a close collaborator it’s hard to tell who is who and which is which sometimes!

Supplementary Resources:

There is quite a lot to dig into here beyond just a blog entry and some clips. We decided to ‘open source’ one of the original session files from Dark Tome as well as all providing the raw audio from Podtales, so you can really get a sense of how the cake is baked!

See this Dropbox folder to download the resource kit: http://bit.ly/podtales-workshop

Including:

• Script – Sample scene from The Dark Tome, Season 2, Episode 9 (DT S2E9)
• ProTools Session including PodTales recordings as well as stem tracks from the original scene in DT S2E9
• ProTools Session from the original scene in DT S2E9
• Raw audio for all of the above so you can play around with the raw audio even if you don’t have ProTools
• Final mix of the sample scene from DTS2E9

Also see this supplementary video where Fred walks you through what’s in the resource kit!

In-depth breakdown of the various mic’ing techniques and why I chose to illustrate them for PodTales:

Multiple Mono Mics (RØDE NTG-2)

Multi mic mono recording set-up in a professional studio

Perhaps the most obvious way to record a group of actors is to give each actor their own microphone and have them read their lines into it. Within this model there are still about a bazillion decisions to be made… e.g. shotgun vs. cardioid microphones, how do you orient the actors in the space with one another, or even do you try and break the actors apart entirely (e.g. Big Finish for all of their dramas records in a unique studio where actors have their own booths).

My personal take is that it’s really nice for actors to have sightline with one another so that they can see and respond to the other actors within a scene. We like to get the actors to physically act out a performance as much as possible – so even though movement is limited by this approach (e.g. if actors wander off-mic that’s generally a problem) we still want to see them express some of the physical aspects of their performance even when stationary so that the sense of movement is captured. We also generally instruct actors to continue to be ‘in the scene’ even when they don’t have lines… e.g. there will be little bits of reactions, overlaps, etc. when an actor is still in the scene and hearing another person’s lines, even if something isn’t scripted. These noises risk sounding campy so you also need to temper that with the direction ‘less is more.’

From a technical perspective, what you get are nice clean tracks which you can do a lot with in post. You can orient and re-orient actors in the stereo field using stereo panning or even binaural plugins. You can also much more easily splice together parts of takes, so if an actor fluffed their line in one take, you might be able to fix it with another take. Also, especially if you use a tight shotgun mic with limited room pickup pattern, you can endure slightly less ideal recording conditions since the mics may forgive a boxier or boomier room.

Anyhoo, here’s our cast running through this Dark Tome scene on multiple mono Mics:

Pros of Multi-Mic:

• Most flexibility in post-production.
• Lots of choices… shotgun, cardioid, etc. and price points for various mics starting at ~$50/each up till.. a shocking amount of $$/each

Cons of Multi-Mic:

• For all but the simplest of shows, you’ll need a more complex audio interface than a simple 2-channel rig. Possibly a mixer mixed down to stereo, or even better, a rack piece of equipment with 4+ inputs and multitrack recording.
• The amount of ‘stuff’ in the way can inhibit performer’s ability to interact with others and get in the way of creating a real human moment.
• More time involved in post-production because you need to make a bunch of decisions about how a scene will lay out and how to work performances into the stereo field.

Stereo (X-Y) Mic (RØDE NT-4)

This photo from the FinalRune ‘classic’ archives shows us on location with the RODE NT-4 during one of our early works (William Dufris playing a troll impacted by suburban sprawl). Our original ‘blimp’ set-up consisted of a pencil case, feather boa, and paint roller, held together with an ingenius series of rubber bands!!!

Another way of recording actors in studio, or on location, is to enter the world of stereo. Many BBC dramas are recorded this way, and… actually for masterful effect see this clip of Dirk Maggs producing a scene for Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy where you see both multi-mic and stereo mic technique used in a single clip: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p061m3yq

The advantage of Stereo is multi-fold.

First, you can start working with staging actors and action. i.e. a scene involves two actors grappling with one another, you can actually have them doing that. It also works really well when you have a whole crowd of voices and you want to convey that sense of breadth and depth in a scene. Actors coming in/off mic almost always sounds more convincing when recorded in stereo than when you try to achieve that effect in post.

Of course, to suggest that ‘stereo’ is a single thing, is completely incorrect. There are myriad ways to record stereo tracks and pros and cons for each respective technique. For purposes of this workshop, I chose to use the RODE NT-4 microphone, a rather unique microphone that offers X-Y stereo recording in a matched pair mounted onto a single body microphone.

The RODE NT-4 is a workhorse of a microphone… I’ve used it extensively mostly for location recording, going back to the very first we did (Dark Passenger) and then for Waiting for a Window and The Troll of Stony Brook before going on to use it for Seasons 1 and 2 of The Cleansed.

While a relatively bulky mic, the RODE NT-4 sounds delightful and can be utterly convincing on location. Its bulk, however, does make it a bit more clunky to carry around and more subject to handling noise than our current rig, the Sanken CSS-5. In studio, of course, this is not so much an issue!

There is a whole workshop just on effectively using stereo — e.g. mono compatibility, X-Y vs. M-S vs. ORTF vs. other methods, mic placement, etc. — but in short this can be a really interesting way to get convincing, life-like performances captured with an economy of effort IF you have great source material to begin with.

It should be noted that several common prosumer recorders– The Zoom H1n, H2n, H4n, H5, and H6 for example — ship with X-Y stereo recording built-in mics out of the box.

Pros of Stereo Recording:

• Actors can move around and be more ‘present’ in a scene
• Mic, if mounted to boom pole, doesn’t have to remain in a fixed location
• Incredibly convincing if brought on location

Cons of stereo recording:

• Fewer options in post – e.g. how you stage a scene, you’ve essentially committed to that placement in post
• More difficult to splice takes together
• Captures a bit more of the room sound, which may be desirable in location recordings but unwanted in studio recordings

Binaural Mic (3Dio)

Binaural can work TERRIFICALLY well when recording crowd sounds and other weird vocal effects. Here’s Dagaz Media co-founder Bill Dufris leading a bunch of screaming children in a foray around the microphone.

Binaural recording is a specific method of stereo recording deserving of its own section because of its novelty and unique opportunities for creative expression.

A binaural recording is stereo – two mic capsules – but the unique part about it is that the mic capsules are omni-directional, and placed in a dummy head or similar housing that mimics the human ear canal. The magic trick accomplished by recording in this manner, is that recordings that are captured in binaural, when played back in stereo, using headphones, will sound 3-dimensional.

It’s a little hard to really convey what it means to hear in 3-dimensions using only two channels (Left and Right) so you best listen on to the following clips to see what I’m talking about. Or, to really freak yourself out, check out this production of STICKS by ZBS which was recorded in Binaural.

If the results of Binaural are so cool, why isn’t it more common?

Well, the trouble with this form of recording is that as soon as the mix is played back on loudspeakers (rather than headphones), the 3d effect is completely eliminated. Worse, because of the sonic phenomenon called ‘feathering,’ there is phase cancellation of the stereo playback which results in dialogue and other effects sounding kind of weird. So, what is a gorgeous, beautiful, and immersive mix on headphones, can end up sending like crap when played back on speakers. Bummer!

As mentioned above, there have been some really interesting experiments with 3d audio over the years (Stephen King’s THE MIST in 3d sound by ZBS is a classic!!!) but because of the desire for mixes to sound OK on speakers, and no practical way to offer separate mixes for separate contexts, it’s remained a fairly fringe recording technique… though it’s currently enjoying a bit of a resurgence. Check out works by The Truth and The Owl Field.

While the mic used in this demo is fairly price ($1,299) you can get more affordable earbud-style binaural mics if you just want to play around. What happens if you hang out in the subway with binaural mics in your ears instead of earbuds? What crazy weird things might you hear in the woods, or on the beach?

Pros of Binaural recording:

• 3dimensional effect not achievable with other forms of recording

Cons of Binaural recording:

• Weird things happen when played back on stereo

Getting Weird with Binaural

As a fun experiment, KC Wayland had us try spinning a binaural mic while chanting in Latin… It was hella creepy!

To speak to the ‘let’s try some weird stuff’ side of this all, let’s talk about how you do creative things with mic placement… as in this idea that KC Wayland had us try out at Podtales!

Here, we took the binaural mic, spun it around and around and around in circles while KC chanted in Latin. Ummmm yeah… you just gotta kinda hear it for yourself!

*** NOTE: As we said above, this effect only really works well on headphones, ideally high-quality ones in a quiet environment. This is NOT the average listening environment of today’s podcast listener, but dangit, can’t audiophiles get stuff made for them, too?!?! ***

In Closing…

Go forth, make cool stuff, and let me know how it pans out!!! And don’t miss the Dropbox full of goodies for digging deeper into this, link back at the top.

I even included the entire mix of the original Dark Tome episode, inclusive of sound design and music mix, which gives you an idea how one of my finished shows comes together (this one has a hybrid of field-recorded primary dialogue that dissolves into studio recordings when we transition from our world to hell through a demonic portal).

Original Release Mix of this Sample Scene:

Don’t forget to jump over to Dropbox and grab the resource kit that goes with this, so you can hear all the differences in clips yourself, and even better, break apart the ProTools session and see how one of these shows is made!

Dropbox link: http://bit.ly/podtales-workshop

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In addition to ‘collections’ (See “Modern Radio Drama”) there is now a broad “Fiction” Category in Apple Podcasts — allowing shows to take themselves out of “Performing Arts” and be findable in a customized space for fiction shows.

It’s a fantastic day for audio fiction podcasts in Apple Podcasts (still far and away the most important discovery and listening platform for these shows).

See the new category listing here: ApplePodcasts.com/Fiction

For many years, a common complaint amongst fiction podcasts — spanning the range from full fledge radio drama/audio drama to narrative-based, single or multi-voiced productions — was that there wasn’t a sufficient ‘home’ for these shows.

Under the previous category structure in Apple Podcasts (formerly iTunes), most shows awkwardly listed themselves under “Performing Arts” or perhaps “TV/Film” — odd, because most shows in these categories were actually shows ABOUT these subjects (e.g. Game of Thrones recap podcasts) vs. original content in and of themselves.

There is a long and ongoing conversation about the importance of category labels vis-a-vis discoverability, but suffice to stay it’s still important. Many people use Apple Podcasts to find new shows — especially since it became a standalone  app in 2012 — and so the choices that Apple makes are important. Further, since Apple still drives ~80% of podcast traffic, their choices set the tone for how other indexes work, and hopefully we’ll see other podcast listing services adopt a dedicated category for fiction podcasts soon.

So What Does This Mean for Me as a Producer of Audio Fiction?

Nearly all of the major podcasting services have introduced compatibility for the new categories [see: Apple’s take on podcast hosts], and it’s pretty intuitive on how to change the category of your show… which you should do immediately.

I personally use Spreaker, you’ll find this option under the ‘RSS Customization’ section. Just look for the new ‘Fiction’ category, and use one of the sub-categories — Drama, Comedy, or Science-Fiction — if relevant for your show:

These new categories have been spotted in the wild as of early August, 2019, so don’t delay!

Some other Metadata wisdom, while we’re at it

This new update is a pretty quick ‘win’ for categorizing your show properly and making sure it is found (and competing for chart placement) in the correct location.

A few general best practices around marketing your show remain true:

• Cover art, cover art, cover art!!! — While you’re not supposed to judge books by their covers, we know people do, and people treat podcasts the same way. Imagine someone scrolling through top 100 charts and quickly getting of feel of ‘is this show right for me’ based on your podcast art. Is it legible when rendered on a iPhone’s screen? Does it stand up to getting maximized when someone drills down to see the show’s art blown up in full res on an iPad Pro? If the experience for the user is poor, it’s hurting your ability to get discovered and attract new listeners.
  • Clear, clean art – character art can be gorgeous but if it’s too ‘noisy’ it’ll be hard to see on small screens
  • High res!!! – Artwork should be 3000px x 3000px — it’s the only chance to be featured by Apple Podcasts
• Consistent naming of episodes — It’s super important that you use some of the newer RSS organization features such as Seasons, and labeling of content as Bonus content, Promos, etc. for optimal user experience in Apple Podcasts and other podcast readers. While Apple rolled back strict rules around including episode # in podcast episodes, it’s still ideal to use the iTunes title field to separate Season # and Episode # from the name of your episode Title, for ideal presentation in iTunes. More on this at Podnews. Note: Unlike the new categories, podcast hosts seem to be a little less savvy at supporting this metadata feature. So choose podcast hosts wisely!
• Build, and use, your network — The top way listeners discover new podcasts is through word of mouth… Which, by “mouth” in the 21st century we mean — sometimes literally telling other people with recommendations, using social media, meeting each other at podcast conventions to talk about favorite shows, and sharing shows on other shows (usually in the indie space done by trading 30-60sec promos vs. actually exchanging payment). As a podcast creator, developing a network of your fanbase, as well as other producers in the space, is super-critical to getting the word out about what you’re doing. If you’re wondering where to start, listen to the showcase anthology Radio Drama Revival (which I used to host, and currently am Executive Producer) to learn about the full breadth of the audio drama community.
• Take advantage of Apple Podcast’s marketing guidelines – Apple has provided a great resource for using the Podcasts brand to promote your show, as well as other promotion tips, at: https://www.apple.com/itunes/marketing-on-podcasts/identity-guidelines.html

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