I have tried very hard to trim down the playlists from Mediterranean Spain. I was aiming for 20. The final list has 50 and there were more I wanted to include. It is almost three hours long. I won’t be doing the same on YouTube.
The book for this first section is Cathedral of the Sea by Ildefonso Falcones. Marvellous. A challenging 700+ pages, but a beautiful read.
Catalonia, do you have a lot of music; and even more diversity than I was expecting, and a lot of protest which I suppose I was expecting. And there is Arabic, African, Chanteuse, Jazz (of many types), electro, experimental, early medieval European and some decidedly uncharacteristically odd without category. And a 3 hour playlist.
In my imaginary musical journey I decided to add some books to read along the way. I had already started to blog the journey and was re-reading A Colder War by Charles Cumming set in Istanbul when I had the idea. But where to start? Should the books be read at the time I am listening to the music of each country, or mix them up?
So far the best discovery of all the music in Valencia is the preservation and performance of early Spanish Music. The key figures seem to be based around one band, L’Ham de Foc and one individual in particular, Efrén López, who links to music well beyond Spain, into Persian, Ottoman genres. Also on the early music list are Mara Aranda and Capella de Ministrers.
A friend of a friend emailed me. He and his wife were going to Slovenia for a holiday and he would be grateful for any suggestions. The Visit Ljubljana website is excellent for places to go and things to do, but I think personal recommendations are better for restaurants and cafes (beats TripAdvisor hands down to actually speak to someone).
Last week an other friend of a relative said he was going to Ljubljana and Bled and asked for suggestions. So here are a few thoughts on restaurants in Ljubljana. Fir information on Bled, I have written this book.
The next stop on my make-believe music of the Mediterranean tour is Murcia. Aside from one discovery – Cuadrillas – the search is disappointing. But there are a couple of highlights for my rather paltry playlist – video and audio.
The next part of my imaginary journey around the Mediterranean –
music from Andalucía. If, when you think of Spain you see images of flamenco dancers, bull-fights and holidaymakers on packed summer beaches in soaring temperatures, then this is the Spain you are thinking about.
In the last post my imaginary journey was a walk through the border between Gibraltar and Spain. My intention was first to travel east exploring the sounds of Andalusia. And I will. But just as I was leaving the Rock, I read about Gibraltar Productions who run the Gibraltar World Music Festival. One of the artists that they represent is Jose Carlos Gomez. He is from Algeciras 20 kilometers on the other side of the Bay of Gibraltar.
The beginning of the journey and the beginning of the project. The search for interesting and challenging music around the Mediterranean starting in Gibraltar.
This will be a tour I would love to take in real time; I doubt if I ever will. Our starting point and finish line are The Pillars of Hercules. The route is Spain, France, Monaco, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Libya, Malta, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. I have all the time in the world.
Its website says “FutureLearn aims to pioneer the best social learning experiences for everyone, anywhere.” With leading educational partners from around the world, it offers hundreds of courses. “Podcasting” isn’t one of them, but there are a few relevant courses that might interest a podcaster.
Not everyone uses music in their podcasts and not all of this taster course will be relevant to podcasters, but I thought someone might find Music Copyright and Me useful.
Then I discovered the “Related Artists” link on Spotify. (As I write incidentally I am listening to this.) A few years ago I lamented on Facebook that I was just so tired of music.
I have rediscovered the excitement of finding new (to me) music that I once had as a DJ.
I have thought about distributing this through the podcast, but as people expect an audio file, not a PDF, I decided it was better to post this PDF here and allow anyone to download it … for a short time at least.
Podcasting for Journalism Students bookIt is available on Kindle and as a paperback
The book is for young, trainee, or student journalists not specialising in broadcast media. It is an introduction to “making content”, podcasting and broadcasting whether you want to understand production on a professional level or simply because you want to create podcasts for fun or add something useful to your CV.
Like the Guardian Newspaper – which is owned by the Scott Trust – the Irish Times Trust gives the publisher greater scope than those with more commercial obligations. In the digital age, it was one of the first 30 newspapers in the world to go online when it had the domain Ireland.com – now owned by the Irish Tourism – and now, it is becoming a digital first publication.
Declan Conlon is The Irish Times’s podcast producer. We met in their radio studio in a converted office just off the main newsroom.
Firsthand Guides publish 3 guidebooks (paperback and Kindle) about Bled in Slovenia. The basic Shorter Edition has the information, Standard, information and interviews and Special, which adds photos to the Standard.
Even the simplest podcast or radio programme has a structure. Whether you have thought about it or not, you are going to have a beginning, middle, end. The question is, how can you best structure your podcast to bring your listener through from beginning to the end, keeping the listener informed, surprising them with information they did not already know, motivating them to become involved and leaving them wanting more? There is more than a dash of showbiz in your average podcast.
A podcast will have a running order which communicates to everyone involved what is planned and what is happening. The running order starts out the prospects owned by the producer which also keeps everyone informed about the progress of the show’s production.
Recording away from the studio. There are all sorts of reasons why you would record outside. A podcast episode can benefit from changes in tone and atmosphere. Reporting from a place rather than just about a place can give context to the story. It can add new textures and make the episode more interesting.
“Having an intention is really important. The intention [of The Radio Stuff Podcast] was and is to connect radio lovers around the world and share great ideas and be as positive about the radio industry as we can. It’s really about following our curiosities and talking to interesting people.” This section asks you to identify the purpose of your podcast. If you like, leave it for now and come back once you have read the rest of the book. The purpose will always be central to whatever you do.
This is an introduction to radio and podcast production. Radio and audio podcasts are not exactly the same thing, each have unique factors, but there is a shared core to their production.
As we reach episode 21 … this is the story so far. Now the podcast is part of a project with two books Podcasting for Communities and Podcasting for Student Journalists.
Along with this blog they are a guide for anyone who wants learn to produce podcasts or community radio. I’ve looked at production strategies such as structure, technical challenges, organising a production team, podcast platforms, community management and purpose
I spent a lot of time travelling in January. I had started teaching in Dublin again and was living in Slovenia. Transport between the two is not easy. So I found myself trying different routes, partly to see what can be done on a budget and partly because I had the time to experiment.
This is the outline of a course I teach on radio and podcast production. The students are studying journalism at BA level. They are not specialising in broadcast media, some don’t listen to speech radio much – if at all, some do not plan a career in traditional journalism.
I have been listening to a lot of good stuff recently and I should share more often.
For now I’m going to mention two, one a BBC Radio Drama the other a long standing US podcast.
A report by the Knight Foundation about podcasting and on-demand radio “From Airwaves to Earbuds”. With Knight Foundation partners, both public broadcasters, supported by grants, and for-profit companies, which received investments from the Knight Enterprise Fund who provide insight into the fast growing area of podcasting.
Talking to Alex and Freddie of the QI Elves about No Such Thing as a Fish, not only because I’m a fan, but because of the technical and production approach they take. I wanted to know how they do what they do.
With some 40 year’s experience in journalism, Barbara McCann has worked in radio, TV and print. She talks about interviewing and her approach to getting answers.
I was hoping to spend all of January here, but as Harold McMillan once said, “Events.” I was anticipating three trips to Dublin to teach the Radio for Journalists course. They begin on Wednesday. As I said to the former head of tourism here getting away from Slovenia is relatively easy; coming here is not.
As an anchor on the BBC News channel, Maxine Mawhinney probably spends more time interviewing than anything else. The interviewees will be in the studio or remote – somewhere else in the country or really, anywhere in the world. Maxine shares tips on interviewing and presenting.
At some point over Christmas I began to write predictions for 2017; questioning algorithms, rise in media literacy and fixing the internet to make it a less horrible place – maybe that is about people rather than internet.