Sunny California

If you haven’t checked out the podcast yet, you really should. We have an interview with Nick Mason, the drummer from the seminal band Pink Floyd. It was an amazing experience to meet up with a hero and at the same time be part of a groundbreaking interview for an emerging medium.

I haven’t had a chance to document the day so I will take a few seconds to write down how the interview went and some of the post-interview issues we had to deal with. We were able to whip up a portable rig for the session thanks to my friend Jack Herrington. He is currently working on a podcasting book and scored up some gear to play with and make his own show. For more about Jack and the book check out Show #3.

Anyway, he loaned us his Marantz PMD660 and his Audio-Technica AT835b shotgun mic for the interview. The cool thing about the Marantz is that it provides XLR inputs, pre-amp, phantom power and records down to a Compact Flash card. This means that you don’t have any moving parts, pretty crazy if you ask me.

We didn’t need the phantom from the Marantz because the AT835b provides its own phantom with an AA battery that you have to screw into the handle. That actually could be an issue in the long run. The cap that screws on and off has very fine threads and those tend to wear as time goes on. Also, we don’t know if the battery drains if left in by accident. These are just a few of the things to consider before we decide to purchase it.

On the day of the interview, we were to meet up with Brenda (Chronicle Books publicist) at the Palomar hotel in downtown SF at 2:10pm for the 2:15pm interview. We got there a bit early because there was no way in hell we would be late to that. Chris would be doing the actual interview and I was there for moral support more or less. We wandered over to the Marriott, because they have a bigger lobby, to kill time. Chris and I worked on the questions and then we headed back to the Palomar.

Brenda was downstairs and we headed up to the Fifth Floor lobby (it’s also a super nice restaurant) and Mr. Mason (is it too improper to call him Nick? Eh… I will anyway), Nick was on the phone with KQED prepping for the “Fourm” interview the next day. Another woman was there to also do an interview with Nick for a magazine. She asked who we were with and we said the Fake Science Lab Report and explained it was podcast. We got a nice blank look, and she said “Technology, huh?”. Yup.

Nick got off the phone and we chatted briefly about podcasting and what it is and then we asked where we wanted to do the interview. Chris and I mentioned that the lobby was not the best due to the music playing so he graciously offered up his suite and we headed up to the room.

Chris asked how the press tour was going so far and Nick told us about how this was a piece of cake compared to touring for music. He said that one thing that happened a lot back in the day was that he would get back to the hotel after a gig, look at his room key that said 601 and find out the hotel only has 5 floors (it was the key from the night before).

Once settled in the suite we got comfy and Chris started the interview. It was amazing 20 min. of chatting and Nick was just an amazing person to talk to. Both Chris and I would love to spend more time just chatting with him about, well, pretty much anything actually.

Once we got the interview back we started the editing process. We immediately noticed some not so great things about the recording. There was a nasty hum in the source that was in the painful 10-12 kHz range. Very high, very grating. I sat down with the MasterWorks EQ and we soon realized it was not only a nasty hum, but it was also a complex harmonic. After doing some serious detailed notching we removed 98% of the hum but it left the source a little dead and telephone sounding.

To resolve that problem we put the whole thing through a room in the Altverb and this gave a little breathe and ambience to it. Chris had the mic a little closer to his mouth so his level was a little high on the single track (one mic recording) so we compressed up the whole source with the UAD Pultec and shelved the whole thing to lose some of the rumble caused by street noise and trolleys.

That was the other issue with the recoding, due to trucks and trolleys going by we had to leave a few mistakes in the interview that we would have preferred to edit out, but it would have caused some strange edits. Chris decided to leave them in, and in all honesty it’s a great interview and it sounds really good. Fun, fun stuff

In the future we are looking at getting the Audio-Technica and maybe a Sony Hi-MD that can hold up to a gig of data. The nice thing about the new Hi-MD is that they have a USB for getting audio on AND off the disc. We would also get a mini-jack to XLR passive converter cable to do the recording. Simple, cheap, and hell… the NPR pro’s use it.