Friday night I worked out an audio draft of chapter 1 of “The Boats of the Glen Carrig” using music from Samsa, via Dark Winter records, which is CC-licensed. I converted these MP3 files to AIFF files to start with, so that DSP Quattro could open them.
Lacking mixing automation, I came up with a strategy to mix the music on the fly: I opened up all the source files in DSP Quattro, and then start up an output recorder. Then I play them sequentially and mixed the background sound as the recording progressed.
The result sounded pretty good, although it seems to be a little problematic to be playing two or three files and recording a file on the same hard drive: sometimes I’d get a dropout of a second or two, usually just after the point where I would stop one file and start another. I think I’m going to try working around this by putting the source files for the chapter into a RAM disk. I’m also going to pre-make intro and outro clips with background sound added so these sound consistent across the chapters.
I think I’m also going to re-record the text of chapter 1, in order to slow it down slightly. When the text is paired with beautiful background sound, I want to let it breathe a little bit, especially for chapter 1, which is largely descriptive.
I’m going to re-launch the podcast with a new feed and take down the old material, possibly putting it back up after I’ve done some compression and other processing to make it sound better.
I’m hoping to have the first chapter of “Boats of the Glen Carrig” available in a day or two, depending on just how much chaos is happening at the Potts House! The goal then will be to complete the novel. It is a short novel, but I can’t imagine finishing more than two or three chapters a week, so the 17 chapters should take me through the next couple of months.