Caddickisms

Free Royalty Free Music Loops, Free Royalty Free Sound Effects

A couple months ago we completed the first four podcasts our company has produced, for internal training purposes. I’ve mentioned previously some of the testing we did to get them produced, and I’ll probably go into more detail in the future on what process we ended up with and how we intend to move forward. For now, I just want to point out one aspect that took us longer to agree on than I anticipated: music.

Music tastes are really subjective, so it can be hard to get people to agree on what to use. There were only two of us that had to agree, so it could have been worse, but we were trying to find something that wasn’t too intrusive, that we could use repeatedly across different podcasts (a theme, basically), and that wouldn’t drive people nuts when looped. Each of us grabbed our favorite examples off the web and we put them up to a vote. I chose mine from Partners In Rhyme (who have a pretty good selection, IMO - I’m considering getting one of their CDs). My co-worker got hers from the audio section of Microsoft’s Clip Art site. I also just found this site, off the MS site. All have some good stuff.

All of these sites let you hear samples (they’d be dumb not to), and all contain Royalty Free music, which is important if you don’t want to break the law or pay a lot of money. The PIR site has pre-made loops - the MS site is a crap shoot in that department. The link at the top of the post here takes you to a page on the PIR site where you can get free Royalty Free loops, which is nice. The MS site is all free, but you may have to make your own loop out of it (which I ended up doing, and it took forever to get it to sound smooth). You also have to watch that you’re getting the right audio format; stay away from MIDI unless you’re willing to download a separate tool to convert that to WAV or MP3, or some other usable format.

We ended up with a sort of soft “hold music” kind of loop that had just a bit of a future newsroom feel to it (at least that’s how I thought of it) that complimented my co-worker’s voice very nicely.

Does anybody know of any other sources of free music loops? Please share! Post any you know about in the comments.

[Update: found two more sites that are promising:  This one has free loops, and this one has one free score a month (though it looks like an ad banner on the site).]

Technorati Tags: podcasting, free music, corporate training

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The MASIE Center - Learning Lab & ThinkTank - PodCasting for Learning Call

I’m listening right now to this podcast. It’s got a slow start, but there are some good ideas in there. For example, around the 10 or 15 minute mark, they give some ideas for ways to use training podcasts. One example was a tour that a national park was giving. Tourists can download a tour that you stop and start as you drive around the park (in a prescribed direction). That’s not really a big change from yesterday’s technology: audio tours are not new, but using a podcast for the tour opens up a cheaper way to do it than the radio or cassette methods commonly used.

As I listen to this, the content is getting better, especially as the floor is opened for questions. Lots of good tactical stuff here. Give it a listen!

As an aside, I’m at the SkillSoft Perspectives conference this week, and Elliott Masie is the Keynote Speaker tomorrow. I’ve walked past him a couple of times, and made eye contact, but for some reason I haven’t talked to him yet. I didn’t really have anything to say to him beyond, “Hey, thanks for putting all this content and visibility out there for learning.” Seemed kind of lame to interrupt his pre-conference poolside relaxation for that (though now that I type it out, maybe it’s not so lame). Maybe I’ll catch him at the reception tonight. It’s interesting to me that I walked past him 5 minutes before I got the TRENDS email from him about the podcast above. He had sent it about an hour before. Nothing unusual about that, but I thought it was interesting.

Technorati Tags: elliott masie, podcasting, learning, education, corporate training

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Video, Music, Podcasts, Audio, and Multimedia WordPress Plugins « Lorelle on WordPress

This is a great annotated list of plug-ins for WordPress users trying to add video or audio of any sort to their blog. I wish she would have put this list out months ago - it would have saved me quite a bit of time and effort.

Now I have to go through all those options and see how I can best use them.

Thanks, Lorelle, for the compilation (and the link to my previous post on the subject)!

Technorati Tags: WordPress Plugins, multimedia, audio plugins, video plugins, blogs

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[update: I've since started using the Anarchy plugin, which also makes standard hyperlinks playable, and though I'm on the fence about which technology I like better for audio (I got Anarchy for the video component), I lean toward the method described below because it's less visually intrusive. Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to disable the Anarchy audio player segment without disabling the whole thing, so all the example links below (and throughout this site for now) show Anarchy's "audio mp3" indicator beside the simple blue arrow used by the del.icio.us player described below. The blue arrow is the only thing installed by the instructions below (visually) so keep that in mind as you continue reading.] 

I’ve been looking for something like this for months. Who knew I’d find it without even trying on one of the most popular websites in the world?

A while back, I was working on some podcasting ideas for work and testing some things out here on Caddickisms. I spent a long time just trying to get an audio player to work correctly in WordPress (the software that runs this blog). The problem is that everything I found used the HTML <object> tag, which WordPress kept re-writing (and breaking) behind the scenes. I thought I had it fixed when I ran across the Gmail audio player, which uses the <iframe> tag, but apparently something gets screwed up there too, because while it works in Firefox, it’s broken in Internet Explorer (at least in version 6).

So… I gave up. I’m still working on Podcasting related stuff at work, but it’s not posted in a blog, so there was no reason to try to fix something I wasn’t going to be doing very often, if at all. But it kept gnawing at me…

Today, I finally found something that works and it’s easier than any other method I’ve found.

Here’s what you need to know:

1. Copy this [updated. See comments]: <script type="text/javascript" src="http://images.del.icio.us/static/js/playtagger.js" ></script>
2. Put it somewhere in your HTML.
3. Put up a standard link to an MP3 file.

That’s it.

On a blog, you might think you’d have to put the HTML into a template page. You could do that, but with WordPress’ Sidebar Widgets, you don’t have to! Just use one of your existing Text Widgets and put the code in there. I put mine in the “About Me” widget. Works great! Now anytime I want to link to an MP3 file, visitors can play it directly from my page!

Here are some examples:

Grey Eye Glances: Close Your Eyes

Grey Eye Glances: If I was…

(for more of this type of music, try out the Grey Eye Glances site.)

Technorati Tags: website MP3 player, javascript tricks and tips, WordPress tips, del.icio.us tools, play tagger, Grey Eye Glances

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Hi-tech escape from Tower of London | Reuters.com

This is a very cool, interactive, technology-enabled teaching method. Visitors to the Tower of London can participate in a game—powered by GPS, a Windows CE hand-held system, audio files, and real interactions with guards—to help famous prisoners from the Tower’s past escape. Along the way, you learn a lot about history and the Tower.

This is a really exciting step up from an audio tour, in my opinion. Instead of listening to someone talk about whatever you’re looking at, it puts you in the story, creating a sense of drama and engagement not frequently seen at museums and historical sites.

The possibilities this kind of blended learning presents are almost endless for academia, business, and obviously tourism. If you could pull the components together cheaply enough, it would even be a fun way just to put together a game for the sake of a game this way. It would be like literally walking into a Myst-like scenario. Really good stuff.

(Thanks, George, for the heads-up on this one. That’s one more reason to go to London.)

Technorati Tags: interactive, technology-enabled teaching, Tower of London, game, history, museums and historical sites, blended learning, tourism

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I mentioned in a previous post that I was experimenting with Podcasting for training purposes at work. I thought it might be nice to share what I’ve learned so far, the process I went through, and for better or worse, the result.

The point of this exercise was two-fold: to experiment with the technology and tools, and to introduce potential uses of podcasting to a training industry audience focused in a manufacturing company. The original audience all work with me directly, and the script reflects that so there may be some small things that don’t make sense to a general audience. Overall, though, the content is pretty generic.

[By the way, I should mention that neither the script nor my delivery are works of art (especially the latter). This is just a "get the job done" introductory example.]

The process:

After writing the script, I coerced my wife into playing the part of a podcasting expert so I could “interview” her. (You’ll be happy that I did. Aside from the fact that she did an excellent job, it’s just nice to stop listening to me for a while.) I chose the interview format because I wanted to showcase an informal delivery method.

We used Gabcast.com to record the audio over the phone. It was free to open an account, and easy to use. After a couple screw-ups (mine), we recorded a version we could live with.

I took the raw Gabcast MP3 file and played with it a bit in an older version of SoundForge until I realized that I had no idea how to use that tool. I’m sure it will be great once I figure it out, but for now I’m using Audacity. It’s free, pretty powerful, and very easy to use.

I cleaned up the audio a little–took out some hiss, messed with the volume, etc.–and added a free music loop I found as an intro and “outro”.

Then I uploaded the new file to my Odeo.com account. Odeo is also free and provides an upload feature, which isn’t available on Gabcast’s free accounts.

The result:

Then I wrote this post, incorporating Google’s flash audio player (below) to point to the Odeo-hosted file. (Odeo automatically inserts a short ad over the first three seconds of the file.)

or download the MP3 file directly.

And there you have it. That might seem to be a lot, but here’s what it boils down to:

1. Write a script.
2. Record a phone conversation.
3. Optionally, edit/enhance the audio file.
4. Upload the finished version and link to it.

I hope that’s helpful for someone.

It’s worth noting also that in a corporate environment I’d probably not use the free hosting services, if only because we’d want to keep the content internal to the company. Instead, I’d use a phone tap or a VOIP service (or for solo work, a microphone) to get the original recording, then upload the finished version to an intranet site.

Technorati Tags: Podcasting, training, manufacturing company, interview format, Gabcast, MP3, SoundForge, Odeo, flash audio player, corporate environment, Audacity

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Well, I’m working on podcasting technology for work, so I figured I’d better get my feet wet and learn how to do it. As such, here is a lame example of me talking into a microphone for 16 seconds (approximately):

Incidentally, this player is Google’s, as seen in Gmail. Not the prettiest, but it’s the only one I could figure out how to use with Wordpress, so far.

As podcasting hosts go, Odeo.com seems pretty good, and pretty much free. I’ve also tried Gabcast.com, which has its benefits, but I think I’m leaning towards Odeo at the moment.

In the end, I doubt I’ll be using any hosting service, though, since the goal is for the podcasts to only be available inside the firewall at work. This is just a convenient way for me to test out some ideas.

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