Contrabass Conversations

It’s time for our 2016 listener survey!

This survey will only take a minute or so to fill out, and it’s incredibly helpful for me.

Why?

First off, I love hearing from you!

Also, it shows me what you find most compelling about what I put out for the podcast.

But most of all, it helps me to create podcast content that helps you.

If you can find the time to take the survey, I’d really appreciate it!

I wrote a three-part series for Drew McManus’ site ArtsHacker earlier this year, and this got my brain going: what if I also put out some “pulling back the curtain” podcasts about how I do all of this and what I’ve learned in the process?  So that’s what today’s episode is.  I’m breaking this into two parts: today I’m covering “the art of the interview” and seven lessons I’ve learned about interviewing.  Next time we’ll go deep into the tech behind recording, editing, and putting these episodes out.

Podcasters like me end up having this strange skill set where they’re half Jay Leno and half IT guy.  While some of the bigger podcasters split these duties into various team members, the vast majority of podcasters (myself included) fill both of these roles.

Early Days: Discovering Podcasts

I discovered podcasts not too long after getting my first iPod Video in 2005.  My first podcast was This Week in Tech with Leo Laporte (who I’ve actually seen live! my wife and I went to the TWiT studio in Petaluma last year to see a live taping of This Week in Tech).  I was hooked from the get go, and it wasn’t took long before I thought, “What if I did my own podcast?”

I filed that thought away for a year.  My blog was starting to grow, and I was having a good time riding that wave.  But the more I got into blogging, the more I thought about how cool it would be to have a podcast. I was loving listening to interview shows, and I had broadened my listening to include about 20 podcasts at that point.  It was basically all that I listened to outside of some music.  It had totally supplanted any other form of talk radio or television.

As 2006 progressed, I resolved to start my own show, and the last few months of that year were spent purchasing gear, setting up a website, getting hosting for my new podcast, and learning how to use my gear to record and edit.  I did some unreleased test episodes at the end of 2006 and put out my first podcast on January 1st of 2007.

Getting My Sea Legs

Recording yourself makes most people self-conscious, and listening back to yourself as a host can be particularly awkward.  Like most people, I hated how I sounded on the mic, and I didn’t really know how to use any of the gear that I had that well, so it was trial by fire for sure.  I had this questionable Acer laptop at the time, with caused all sorts of problems early on, but I’ll save those details for the tech episode next time.

I put out what I thought was a pretty decent first episode, just stating the purpose of the show and what I hope to do.  The funny thing is that I have done pretty much exactly what I said on that first episode!  I went back not too long ago and listened to that episode, expecting some truly cringe-worthy material, but to my surprise it was actually pretty tight.

My first three episodes had no guests—they were just me rambling into the microphone, and it’s amazing to hear how stiff and stilted my delivery was.  It was all new to me, and that’s the first big lesson I have for this episode: no matter how well-versed you may be in public speaking, it takes time to find your own rhythm and your own voice in front of the microphone for a podcast.  Imitating someone else may work at first, but ultimately you have to find your own style.  It’s tough!

My First Guests

I finally got a guest on episode 4—Andy Anderson from the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and I am eternally thankful to him for being willing to take a chance on something like this.  Andy is an incredibly open guy, which was amazing for a first guest. He made it so easy for me.  I can think of a lot of other people I interviewed after that which would have been much more challenging interviews, but Andy was amazing and was really helpful for building my confidence.  I mean, I really didn’t know what I was doing.

I had listened to podcasts for a while at that point and had taken in a lot of interviews, but doing your own interview is not the thing entirely.  It can feel kind of formal and weird—I actually think that it’s one of those deceptively difficult skills that seems easy when done well but is in reality incredibly challenging to do at a high level.

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