Comments on: 1M: Corduroy Is My Guinea Pig

1M: Corduroy Is My Guinea Pig

cortex — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 20:28:31 -0800

This inaugural episode of the new Metafilter Music Podcast supplement is hosted by cortex and features an interview with and music by Corduroy, as well songs from lovermont, chococat, micayetoca, and The World Famous. It runs just under 36 minutes.

direct link

Songs featured in the podcast, in play order: 00:00 - Improvised banjole theme by Corduroy (podcast exclusive!) 00:30 - Stars by lovermont (her first post!) 04:01 - I Said It All by chococat, part of April's 2-chord challenge 06:45 - Naming Everything by Corduroy 15:40 - Apfel Augen by Corduroy 25:31 - King of Carrot Flowers, a Neutral Milk Hotel cover by Corduroy & friends 27:50 - Kimo by micayetoca 30:59 - There Is No by The World Famous A few other personal Corduroy favorites that didn't come up in the podcast: Whoop Heet Hobbes (yeah, I'm pretty sure that's a Mythbusters promo in the background) Bury Your Tracks It's Time to Get Up And, like most of The Kids Today, Corduroy has a myspace page.

By: cortex

cortex — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 20:33:35 -0800

If you're surprised that this exists, see this recent Metatalk thread that sprang up out of discussion in the Episode 39 post for some backstory.

I've never really done an interview before, and Corduroy has never really been interviewed before, so it was sort of Amateur High-Five hour. I had a good time talking with him and putting together the mix for the podcast, so I think this is something I'll go ahead and try to do regularly—ideally in "off" weeks between the main Mefi podcast episodes.

Any thoughts, suggestions, etc. about this one specifically and about future Music podcasts in general is very much welcome.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 20:37:14 -0800

Just to head off some of the editorial talk -- for the first few music episodes, we're running this in the main normal podcast feed. If it becomes officially "a thing" we can split it off into its own podcast feed and keep it out of the normal mefi podcast feed (personally I like the music ones mixed in, but time will tell).

I just listened to this in the background while I edited some video I shot today and it sounded great from end to end.

By: rtha

rtha — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 20:38:18 -0800

Woooo!! Thanks!

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 20:42:52 -0800

ooooooh I totally want to do my own MeFiBrarian podcast now too!

By: boo_radley

boo_radley — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 20:45:55 -0800

I'm up to the interview, and it's pretty awesome so far.

By: danb

danb — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 20:47:50 -0800

YES

By: iamkimiam

iamkimiam — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 20:49:39 -0800

YES!

By: iamkimiam

iamkimiam — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 20:50:53 -0800

Oh that was weird. I hadn't refreshed the page for a couple minutes, but am disappointed to find that posting a comment stops the music. There's no way around that one though I imagine.

By: cortex

cortex — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 21:01:56 -0800

Oh! We added a thing to Music threads that warns against that, but I'm not sure if we added it to Podcast threads.

By: frenetic

frenetic — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 21:02:14 -0800

Very nice!

By: frenetic

frenetic — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 21:04:59 -0800

Oh and a self-link but I think it's relevant (and might be helpful), I've got a script that I use to mash my Sellout Central podcast together.

I just point it at a bunch of WAVs and it jams it all together. YMMV.

By: Corduroy

Corduroy — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 21:18:12 -0800

Ha! Very surreal feeling. I'm super honored to have been the guinea pig, and I'm really looking forward to listening to other interviews! I think in the future, a neat feature would be the musician being interviewed performing a song live. Also, definitely keep doing the ambush intro music.

A couple things I wanted to mention in the interview, but all those first time jitters got in the way of: MuFi has really been an amazing place for me. For some reason I wasn't all that nervous posting my first song and, looking back on it, I really had no reason to be. Just a supportive, genuinely interested group. I've only showed a couple songs to a couple high school peers, so having this outlet has been really important to me. So I just wanted to say thank you to everyone for listening.

One other thing: someone needs to interview Cortex, too!

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 21:34:42 -0800

YAY!

By: boo_radley

boo_radley — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 21:39:29 -0800

I'm done now.

YES.

Corduroy, you got a pretty interesting range of genres going on. Thanks for the interview.

By: cashman

cashman — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 22:45:05 -0800

This is awesome. Stars is fantastic, and this is totally, totally needed, appreciated and welcomed. And thanks for the tip iamkimiam. This is really great, because I had kind of lost the black (music) as a place to click through to.

By: boo_radley

boo_radley — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 22:54:18 -0800

I like the extra material, too. Nice touch for a prolific artist.

By: Dumsnill

Dumsnill — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 23:04:27 -0800

I like!

By: defenestration

defenestration — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 23:22:16 -0800

Thanks! Much appreciated!

jessamyn: "ooooooh I totally want to do my own MeFiBrarian podcast now too!"

Do it!

By: Monday, stony Monday

Monday, stony Monday — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 23:30:03 -0800

This format absolutely works for me, and I'm not one to listen to the radio very long.

By: Phire

Phire — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 00:06:08 -0800

Awesomeness indeed. I also vote for interviews for chococat, flapjax, and frenetic.

I would actually love it so much if MeFi came out with its own set of podcasts, much as How Stuff Works or "This week in [blank]", except so much more epic. It's listening to the MeFi podcast that got me into podcasts in general to begin with.

By: ORthey

ORthey — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 00:16:38 -0800

This is really really awesome and truly hope it continues.

By: PeterMcDermott

PeterMcDermott — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 06:14:49 -0800

nthing flapjax, and putting in an early request for a Miss Lynster interview.

By: micayetoca

micayetoca — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 07:28:11 -0800

Corduroy was a great selection for the first interview. Because his songs are good and because ever since he started posting songs he got people involved. Those of us who post regularly at Music go through different periods (sometimes we are more active, sometimes less, sometimes we post and participate in the comments, sometimes we just leave the song there) and I remember when he came in and started asking for feedback it was like a breeze of fresh air. Also, no matter how technically challenged he insists he is, his songs are really, really good.

Thank you very much for putting the time into making this happen, cortex, it's really cool and it feels really natural. Now, tell me something, how difficult would it be to have in one of the episodes, instead of a one-on-one interview, a round table with five or six MefiMusicians? There's free software like Skype that allows for conference calls. And I know it may be chaotic and complicated, but it would be a very cool way to have a bunch of people who have been interacting for a while and who have never actually heard each other talking in the same conversation, talking about it.

That's just an idea, but what I actually wanted to say was: a) good call having Corduroy b) thank you very much for putting it together.

By: cortex

cortex — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 07:49:32 -0800

Now, tell me something, how difficult would it be to have in one of the episodes, instead of a one-on-one interview, a round table with five or six MefiMusicians?

It's not impossible at all, but it is a couple different flavors of difficult:

1. 5-6 people on a live call (which Skype can do, or 5 at least, last I checked they had some bullshitty platform specific limit where some platforms support 10-way calls and others only support the original 5-way limit, maybe that's improved now?) is a lot of cross talk and messiness. Which could be charming, and could be managed anyway through some extra formal structure on who is talking when, but it's a lot of corralling to do, especially without the visual cues that come with e.g. a round-table discussion in person.

2. Editing that is less slick than with just 2 or 3 parties, because it wouldn't be possible to split out each voice as a separate part in a large call the way we currently do it. We use a Skype plugin called "Call Recorder" that takes a skype call that the user is on and records it as a 2-sided conversation: the user's audio, and the rest of the call.

With a 2-person call, that's super easy—I end up with my track and Corduroy's, and if I need to do a quick duck on one or the other of our tracks during some crosstalk or to make an edit cleaner, no sweat.

With a 3-person call like we do for the main podcast, each of us has to be running Call Recorder so we can each get an isolate vox track ourselves, split out from the "the other two" track each of us ends up with. We take that and use the isolated vox for each to edit the thing together.

Larger calls would require everyone to have Call Recorder, which aside from being a little cumbersome would also mean cash in hand, since it's like $15 bucks for the individual version, and that seems kinda silly to ask someone to do just to talk on skype one time.

BUT! Not impossible, and maybe worth a try some time if we can find a context to make it happen. I mentioned structure, and that could be the key: have something specific that 4-5 people are going to talk about, more or less in turns. Discuss a particular interesting song recording as a group, or have everybody talk about one of their favorite (recent or not) tracks where those are the tracks on the podcast as well.

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 08:04:59 -0800

Moderator podcast ...supplemental.

*beedee beep*

By: metastability

metastability — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 08:41:57 -0800

This is a great way to draw people into the music portion of the site. I clicked on one of Corduroy's songs, then clicked on someone's playlist which contained that song, and now I'm listening to their whole playlist.

I like the playlist format. Can you put a playlist on this page? maybe "songs related to the songs discussed on this podcast", or something. That would be a nice feature.

By: micayetoca

micayetoca — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 08:43:52 -0800

It's not impossible at all, but it is a couple different flavors of difficult:

Yeah, everything you said makes sense. I was thinking about it from the completely naive angle of just recording the conversation live however it comes out, but yeah, thinking practically it would be too much of a mess.

By: cortex

cortex — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 08:56:37 -0800

Can you put a playlist on this page?

Oh, hey, that's a good idea. I don't really know how to wrangle the playlist stuff and pb is I think doing something other than coding this weekend so it won't appear like magic probably, but that's probably worth doing.

By: micayetoca

micayetoca — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 09:35:09 -0800

Another good interviewee would be Karlos The Jackal, though you'd probably need 14 episodes just to go through his instrument collection.

By: cortex

cortex — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 09:47:29 -0800

I could make him write and perform a fifteen-second-long song on, and about, each of them.

By: rtha

rtha — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 10:52:56 -0800

I'm listening right now and I love it! Thank you thank you!

By: roombythelake

roombythelake — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 12:17:29 -0800

someone needs to interview cortex, too!

I vote cortex interviews cortex about cortex, in high Glenn Gould style!

By: madamjujujive

madamjujujive — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 13:56:29 -0800

I really enjoyed this and think it's a great lazy-person's sampling of mefi music - like metastability, it got me clicking around. I always mean to check out mefi music more - so the spoon feeding is perfect. The interview was great, too.

By: amtho

amtho — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 16:50:33 -0800

Thank you! I've only been visiting MeFi music for a short time, but it's wonderful, and this is wonderfuller.

By: Sys Rq

Sys Rq — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 17:35:04 -0800

I really enjoyed this and think it's a great lazy-person's sampling of mefi music - like metastability, it got me clicking around. I always mean to check out mefi music more - so the spoon feeding is perfect. The interview was great, too.

Not to be all "This" but, um, This.

In other words: Hey, neat!

By: Karlos the Jackal

Karlos the Jackal — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 01:25:23 -0800

I could make him write and perform a fifteen-second-long song on, and about, each of them.

Heh. I'd have to spend half a day tuning everything, of course. And it's like painting a bridge -- once I'm done, the ones I started with are out of tune again.

This podcast is pretty great. I didn't realize Corduroy was so young!

By: rollbiz

rollbiz — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 07:34:25 -0800

This came out really really well, I have to think about some suggestions for small tweaks but I really enjoyed the way you did this.

Thanks a lot for making this a reality!

By: jbickers

jbickers — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 08:55:17 -0800

Lovermont, that was extraordinary ... more, please!

By: Pants!

Pants! — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 09:13:17 -0800

This is great, thanks cortex.

By: sadiehawkinstein

sadiehawkinstein — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 10:28:27 -0800

Love it! I need to spend more time getting to know MeFi Music! Thank you!

And I dig Bonnie 'Prince' Billie, but the Palace stuff my favorite Oldham. Especially Viva Last blues.

By: Corduroy

Corduroy — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 22:22:03 -0800

By the way, I just wanted to add that two of the songs that Cortex linked to have newer versions on my space. And I would absolutely love to be your friend, since I have eight, including Tom.

By: cortex

cortex — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 22:30:50 -0800

Tom is a hell of a guy.

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 22:49:33 -0800

He certainly gets around.

By: Corduroy

Corduroy — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 22:52:55 -0800

I thought so, too, until he started showing up in my house before I had gotten home, and eating my Nutella straight from the container.

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 00:58:41 -0800

Well, MySpace y'know... fulla riff raff.

just sent you a friend request

By: The World Famous

The World Famous — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 12:27:53 -0800

This is great. And I am blown away that one of my track was included. MeFiMusic is full of incredible talent and I love the podcast idea and format.

By: languagehat

languagehat — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 13:57:39 -0800

I finally got around to listening to this, and I'm glad I did. More please!

By: micayetoca

micayetoca — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 16:20:29 -0800

Also, cortex, would you mention a song by request on one of the future episodes? There's this song by Hoopo that for whatever reason went largely unnoticed but is really good and, more to the point, the lyrics are almost biographical for a lot of us who post songs at MM. What do you say?

By: cortex

cortex — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 16:38:17 -0800

Yeah, I can totally see that getting some play. Has a real last-track feel.

By: micayetoca

micayetoca — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 16:56:13 -0800

You are a star. Thanks.

By: odinsdream

odinsdream — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 18:06:30 -0800

Thank you so much for putting this together. It's perfect.

By: lovermont

lovermont — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 01:18:47 -0800

I'm a little late to this party, but I wanted to say this is fantastic. Corduroy, nice interview, and nice songs! You have a great catalog of music here.

Thanks for making the music podcast happen, cortex. Thanks, too, for including my song in the inaugural edition — that was one helluva surprise!

By: Sys Rq

Sys Rq — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 09:20:04 -0800

"ooooooh I totally want to do my own MeFiBrarian podcast now too!"

I'm not even a librarian and I would totally listen to that. Inner-workings, behind-the-scenes stuff is always awesome. Plus, librarians are one of those groups that tend to be lumped into a rigid archetypal pigeonhole type dealy and it would be nice to get to know y'all as individuals with varying opinions on DDC/LCC.

I'm not a praying man, but hot damn, my hands be a-claspin'!

(Please do not mistake the preceding enthusiasm for sarcasm. It's genuine. Do it!)

Also: The World Famous track sounds like a lot of the stuff I used to do in AudioMulch back when it was still in beta and therefore free. As such, me likey.

By: jaruwaan

jaruwaan — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 19:27:15 -0800

Fab! Thanks, cortex and Corduroy.

Corduroy, this was my intro to you/your music. I am impressed.

I am currently on a not very fast cable connection, and I don't spend the time I used to in MeFi Music.... you've made me homesick!

By: Alvy Ampersand

Alvy Ampersand — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 22:28:40 -0800

Great job, guys!

By: blue_beetle

blue_beetle — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 10:49:09 -0800

Could we get this to not be in the main podcast feed? It's not that I don't love the music here so much that it hurts, but well, I just like things separate.

By: danb

danb — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 21:38:54 -0800

blue_beetle, did you read this?

(Personally, I like the idea of having them mixed in. I mean, it's not like there are so many MeFi podcasts that it'll be overloading my subscription list.)

By: lmm

lmm — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 03:57:12 -0800

Great stuff, I especially like Stars. Thanks!

By: sleevener

sleevener — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 06:44:17 -0800

Great music, great interview, good job all around, thank you for doing this and please make more.

By: umbú

umbú — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 19:55:38 -0800

Hey, this is a great idea that gets the word out on the musical corner of the site. It was good to hear the interview, and I loved listening Apfel Augen again.