Hack72.Create a Soundseeing Tour

Hack 72. Create a Soundseeing Tour

Bring listeners with you on a tour through your world with vivid verbal imagery.

Soundseeing podcasts are walking tours around neighborhoods, events, or special places. What makes them unique is the medium. If the tour were video, we could simply sit back and watch the pictures of the scenery in a very passive manner. By using audio, our podcasting tour guide creates a "theatre of the mind" [Hack #32] by painting images with words that we must then interpret in our own minds.

Examples of soundseeing tours are available at http://soundseeingtours.com/. This is a Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed you can use in your podcatcher.

This use of imagery means your listeners become much more active participants. And the podcaster is free to guide the listeners' attention as to what they think is the essence of the scene. That's not to say that the background audio isn't important. You couldn't do a fun soundseeing tour from a studio. The chants of the crowd at a game, the clink of glass in a café, or the creaking of floorboards in an old house all add detail to the vision painted by the podcaster's words.

A successful soundseeing tour comprises three critical pieces. The first, somewhat obvious one is that you should tour someplace interesting. Your house could be an interesting tour if you are famous. But those of us not burdened with fame might choose a walk around a historic town, a carnival, an event, or a tourist destination.

The second critical element is interaction. Talk with the hot dog vendor. Ask the crazy guy with the sign on the street corner what the sign means. Have a chat with some tourists to see where they come from and what they like about this spot. Interaction drives the narrative and gives listeners a reason for taking the journey.

The third is not so obvious until you hear it for yourself in a good soundseeing tour. It's detail. Detail is the essential element that lets listeners create the theatre of the mind. The more detail, the more clues they can use to construct their vision of what you are saying in their own minds.

Here is a quick example of why detail is important. Let's say I tell you "I'm walking up to my old house." OK, I see a house, maybe it's old, or maybe it's a place I rented last year. Who knows?

Now how about this; "I'm walking up to the house I grew up in. The snow is crunching under my boots the way it used to when I was a kid. The house is painted green now. It used to be white when I was a kid. Here that creak? That's the old porch. I remember hiding under that porch with my brother when we were young."

That's why detail is so important. You know ages, you know colors, and you know the season. And in your mind you create a picture, which is different for every person. This is why audio is so compelling. With video, all the work of building the imagery is done for your listeners. With audio, they become active participants in the storytelling. The next time you listen to a soundseeing tour, or to a story on the radio, pay attention to how much detail they use to draw with words what would take 1,000 frames of video to convey.

One last thing on content before I get into technique: never think of the audience; just imagine a single listener walking along with you. Because that is what's happening. You are talking to an individual, alone in their headphones. You aren't talking to a group. And your soundseeing tour is a private moment for them to walk with you in a very intimate and friendly way.

10.5.1. Getting Your Rig Together

Since a soundseeing tour involves walking around, you can cross your laptop computer off the list of good recording rigs. This leaves the mobile options: an iPod or iRiver, a mini-disc recorder, or a solid-state recorder such as the Marantz 660, among others [Hack #69]. With the iPod you can use a device such as Griffin's iTalk to record from a microphone, although you might want to experiment first to make sure you are happy with the 8 kHz record rate at 8 bits.

With the recording device in hand it's time to get the right microphone or microphones [Hack #13]. If you want something you can set once and forget about, you will want an omnidirectional microphone that picks up sound from anywhere and has a proximity effect that will emphasize your voice. For this purpose I recommend a single lavalier located about 6 inches down from your chin, or a binaural microphone [Hack #16] set that will give a unique surround sound experience for your listeners.

If you want more control over the sound and a richer presence, you can use a handheld microphone such as a small dynamic omnidirectional microphone. This will emphasize your own voice and still will pick up a lot of ambient sound. If you are more interested in what you intend to say and in getting a clear sound from your talks with other people, you should use a shotgun microphone such as the Audio-Technica 897.

By far, the preferred mechanism is the lavalier microphone. The first reason is convenience, since it's generally set properly and forgotten. The second is that it's not threatening to people since it's either hidden or is reasonably small. If people on the street think anything about you, it will be that you are a nutcase talking to yourself.

10.5.1.1 Preparing a lavalier microphone.

Like other microphones, lavaliers come in both cardioid and omnidirectional shapes. Omnidirectional is better for this purpose because it will pick up sound from all around you, which adds ambience. And it's not as prone to handling noise [Hack #15] as a cardioid microphone is.

In addition, you will want a lavalier that has a proximity effect. This means that closer sounds will be louder so that when you speak, your voice will stand out from the background.

Thankfully omnidirectional lavaliers with proximity effect are very common and inexpensive. RadioShack sells a wired lavalier for around $25. Wireless systems are also available, but those can run into the $200 to $700 range.

Setting up a lavalier properly is a bit of an art. The microphone wire is small and delicate. So, you should loop that around twice, at about a 1-inch diameter, and fasten it to the clip. That will act as a strain relief on the connection to the microphone.

If you wear the lavalier on the outside of your shirt, it should have a windscreen on it. That's the little ball of black fuzz that usually comes along with the microphone. This will cut down on wind noise significantly.

Positioning the lavalier is very important. It should be around 6 inches below your chin, and dead center on your body. That way, when you move your head from side to side, the volume loss will be consistent.

Handling noise is a real problem with these small microphones, particularly from the material of your clothing. Do your best to tack the microphone down so that your clothes and the microphone move in unison. If they can separate, there will be bunching and rubbing, which will cause noise.

Use some tape and a matchbook cover to insulate your body from the microphone if you are wearing it on the inside of your shirt.

10.5.2. Editing Your Soundseeing Tour

The accepted practice for soundseeing tours is to add the usual top and bottom segments for the show. In addition, a small introductory segment recorded using the studio rig is placed at the front to describe the when, where, and how of the tour.

The amount of editing you do to your tour audio is up to you. Editing varies from none at all, all the way to an edited set of vignettes that is more of a sonic collage than a tour. I recommend only that you keep an ear out for the background noise. As you walk, the noise will change dramatically, and listeners are used to these subtle changes in noise from place to place. If you edit, you will need to recognize the transitions between the background noise from one location to another. Either insert some silence between the edits, with fade-ins before the next segment, or record some ambient noise before each segment and fade in the noise for the next segment at the end of the current segment.

Once you have your soundseeing tour posted to your own podcast, be sure to contact Adam Curry ([e-mail]) with an announcement. He will post a link to the podcast on http://soundseeingtours.com/.

10.5.3. Using the Blog

Don't forget to use the HTML portion of your blog to augment your soundseeing tour. A few still pictures of what you saw can provide more detail for the imagery without completely spoiling the effect of the theatre of the mind. Links to more information about the location or the event make it easy for listeners motivated to re-create your experience.

The real technogeek should bring along a GPS unit and use it to track the tour and superimpose it on a map using HTML. Several products will even merge GPS data with the timestamps of your digital photos (if you sync the two) and provide links to the images taken at various points on your walk. These products include QuakeMap (http://earthquakemap.com/), OziPhoto-Tool (http://oziphototool.alistairdickie.com/), and GPS-Photo Link (http://www.geospatialexperts.com/gpsphotolink.html). For the truly hardcore, the Ricoh Pro G3 digital camera has an optional GPS receiver that can embed GPS data in the data stored with the image.

Check out PodGuides (http://www.podguides.net/) to see how far the linkage between audio, photography, and GPS can go. This service is creating iPod guides to cities using a combination of all of these technologies.

10.5.4. The Las Vegas Soundseeing Tour

Perhaps one of the most compelling podcasting stories is Tim Dressen's Las Vegas soundseeing tour. Tim was on one of his usual trips to Vegas. He likes to stay and gamble at the Venetian as well as at the Barbary Coast.

One morning he decided to supplement his regular podcast (http://fivehundybymidnight.com) with a soundseeing tour of his walk between the two casinos. He had walked that way many times before and knew there would be lots of interesting sounds. His only planned stop was at O'Shea's to catch some of their announcements.

He popped his Belkin microphone into his iPod [Hack #69] and went on his walk. He talked a little about what he saw along the way. But he mainly let the sounds of the strip do the storytelling for him. The result was a soundseeing tour about 20 minutes in length that became a huge hit.

He received a lot of enthusiastic email, but one in particular struck him. Here is a quote from that email:

Most people get to look at pictures to remind them of their trips. This was the first time that I had a reminder of Las Vegas that I could enjoy and experience in a way that was meaningful to me.

The last time the woman had been to Las Vegas she paid extra attention to remember the rich sites and sounds, because she knew she was going blind. For her, Tim's spur-of-the-moment iPod soundseeing tour evoked all the sites and sounds she had strained so hard to remember.

With that kind of feedback, it's no wonder that Tim plans several more soundseeing tours.

10.5.5. See Also

• "Pick the Right Microphone" [Hack #13]

• "Assemble a Small Recording Rig" [Hack #69]