A realization

I'm on vacation for a week but still working hard towards the big goals.  And the down time gave me time to think and come to a realization about how I need to keep moving forward. 

Also I discuss the fantastic podcast Old Gods of Appalachia.  

Transcript

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You're listening to the Standing Wave Podcast, all things spoken word. It is July 6th, 2026, and this is episode three, which is a bit of a milestone because I originally tried to do this podcast two other times. I got started, recorded two episodes, and then scrapped them. So making it to the third episode means it's official. This is what it is. And this week I want to jump right into sort of where the project's at. And just a quick reminder I have two big goals that I'm working towards. One is to produce high-quality audio dramas. The second is to open a commercial recording studio focused on spoken word. And so I have been on vacation for the last week in southern Oregon, a little uh at uh our little getaway in southern Oregon. And uh I have been working on things, but this has been a good opportunity to kind of sit back and look at the big picture and kind of do some thinking about where I'm at and where I want to go. Um, you know, I've been kind of just doing stuff. There's been a plan, but I've I've just been kind of doing stuff, learning, um, not really randomly, but uh I I think I came to the realization this week that I need to focus a little more on that first goal. Um and what I mean by that is uh, you know, just that goal alone, forget the commercial recording studio, but just the goal of producing high-quality audio dramas, there is a ton of stuff that goes into something like that. Um, you know, you have the story, uh, turning that story into a script, voice acting, recording the whole thing, sound design and foley, music composition, mixing, figuring out how it gets distributed, um and how to make money off of it. And and so there's a lot of things, and it's easy for me, because I like learning new things, it's easy for me to just kind of wander down a bunch of rabbit holes and get distracted by learning something, but I really need to kind of focus on the fact that each one of those things is, you know, that I mentioned is a very specific skill. And if I were to get to some decent level of competency at all of that, um it would take years. And I don't want this thing to take years. I'm sort of setting my goal now to get at least one audio drama produced by the end of the year. Um, and I don't think that's too ambitious. Um, you know, I've been doing a lot of thinking about it this week, and I think that's totally possible. Um, but it's not totally possible if I'm having to do every little thing. So looking at some examples, um, let's look at just foley, you know, door openings, footsteps, all that kind of stuff that you would hear in a you know full production audio drama. Um I put together a little um you know field recording rig and was doing some of that stuff and experimenting with with things. Um and the reality is for me to do that, it's fun, it's interesting to me, but it's also kind of a waste of time because there are great um fully sound libraries available for not that much money, they're not that expensive, and I can just buy everything I need. And will it be exactly perfect how I want it? Probably not. In some cases, it might be even better. Um, but it will get the job done, and I don't have that's a task I don't have to do. Sure, I have to pick the right ones and stick them in the right places when doing the edit and mixes, but but that's one whole thing I don't have to worry about. And all of a sudden, boom, I am closer to that first goal. Folias taken care of, and same with you know, a lot of sound design stuff. A lot of that stuff's available, all that stuff's available off the shelf, and so um it's one of those things I have to pick what I'm focusing on. Another example, and this is the big one, is the story, right? It all starts with the story that you want to then follow through with all these other things to get turned into an audio drama. And you know, I mentioned previously that I'm working on the uh doing a script uh that came from a little nugget of an idea that I've had. But the reality is I am not uh, you know, I'm not experienced in doing that. It who knows how long it would take me to come up with something, and that something might end up being not being very good. Um so the reality is I should concentrate on things I'm more comfortable with. So the the you know, the technical editing mixing part, even though I don't have a lot of experience with that, I'm more comfortable with it. Um and so I it'll go faster. So for the story, um, for instance, I am I'll talk about the exact plan later, but I'm looking at stories that exist and then turning them into scripts. And you know, there's lots of way more talented writers than me out there doing great stuff. Why shouldn't I um go out, seek that out, use that, you know, pay them for that. They get a little money, a little recognition. I get to do what I want to do, and it it's just a win-win, and it it gets me to my goal faster. And and you know, if I tried to write stories myself, it it may never even happen. So so that's that's the big recognition I've come to um over the last week is just focus on getting something out. And if there's an easy way to do a part of that, then then take that route. Sure, when things get going and maybe I can hire people and bring stuff in-house, that's all cool. But right now, I need to focus on getting an audio drama out because that's the goal. And obviously the goal isn't to do one, the the goal is to create a you know, whatever production company that that you know make a living off doing that, but you got to start with one. So that is what I am focusing on. So this week I've I've spent a fair amount of time doing research uh into various aspects of all this, things that I need to get a little more specific on in terms of budgeting, uh, how some things like media rights work, um, a lot of detail stuff that needs to be thought about, but isn't you know the fun creative part, but needs to be handled. So I've I've been doing a lot of that and kind of putting together the outlines of a plan that I'll kind of firm up um over the next week. But the first step in all this, and like I said earlier, it's all about the story. So the first step in all this is pick a story, um, whatever it is, doesn't have to be perfect. Pick something, try to make it as put a script together that's as good as I can do, and then go from there. From there, you can um, you know, start doing finding voice actors and putting it together. But the first the first thing I'm focusing right on right now is the story. And I found a public domain story, so I don't have to go out and find an author and worry about rights and all that. I found a public domain story that I am working on turning into a script. I want the first draft by the end of this week, and then I can kind of go from there. Once you have a first draft, I can start doing revisions, and at the same time, I can put together a list of what you know, Foley FX, sound design elements I might want to throw in, how much music and where it would go, and then get an outline of that, and then you can start going out and and you know purchasing sound libraries that have the necessary uh sounds and whatnot. So that is the current plan, and I really want to just stay focused um and the things that I can you know outsource by either you know paying someone else to do it, but right now more likely purchase off the shelf, I will do that. And then the plan once all that is done would be to do a proof of concept uh run through. So this would be me doing all the voices. I will not do the voices on the final thing, but this is for it for a run through. I would do all the voices, I would then add in all the sound effects, do sound design, any composition, all that, put that in place and have a quote finished product as a proof of concept. And once I think that's good and I have a good feel for how to do that, I can then go back and find real voice actors and then re-record all the parts. But the sound design, the foley, all that stuff will be done. So I can just edit back in the um the actual voice actors and hopefully put the final product together relatively quickly. Um so that that is the plan. May evolve as I go through it, but but that's what I'm working towards right now. So again, the big the big push is to get a first draft of a script up and running uh by the end of the week. Okay, next up I want to talk about a specific uh tool that I picked up actually uh last week. Um in the last podcast, I talked about a software tool that I use for productivity. And this week I want to talk about a piece of gear I acquired. And as a prelude to that, one of the things I've been thinking about uh for the last week while I'm while I've been on vacation is how to make money from this endeavor. Um, as I mentioned, I'm not doing this to get rich, but I also am not doing it to go broke. Um I would like to be able to make money off this endeavor. Um, and obviously it takes money to pay writers and um voice talent and maybe composers, whatever, you know, to expand. That that requires some income coming in. It also, if I'm going to open a commercial studio, there needs to be income coming in to obviously lease a commercial space um or even buy down the road. So with that in mind, I have been thinking of ways to um make money off this endeavor. And one of those things is um pretty obviously the same way musicians would bring in income from their music, and that is to sell the audio on physical media. So um you can do it on CD. Uh musicians um obviously rely on vinyl quite a bit. They will sell, you know, physical albums on vinyl, which is a cool option. Uh, I don't think that would be quite right for um audio dramas, although, you know, definitely something to keep in mind. What I do think is a cool physical medium uh goes right back to where all this started for me. If you recall, my whole love of spoken word audio started with getting, as a young kid, a two-cassette uh adaptation of Treasure Island. Um and so that came into my head. Maybe I could release cassettes. I know there is a market, you know, for cassettes these days. Um it's kind of come back into vogue a little bit for certain things. Um and I thought that just that kind of dovetailed really well into how, like I said, how all this started for me, and it really tickled something in the inner child that's driving me to do this whole project. So I went out and I found a um a pretty good example of a um professional uh cassette recording deck. It's a dual deck, it's a Tascam 302. Um and I've tested that out and I've done a little bit of a deep dive into um, you know, cassette tape manufacture, uh, the state of that uh industry. Um there are a couple uh places still producing new cassette tapes. Um and so I got that and I've been experimenting a little bit with that. So that is that is one piece of gear that I'm actually super excited about. I don't know how big the market is for that. I have some kind of ideas um specifically around how to do the you know how to do a cool um physical media package. Um so I'm I'm kind of in the background just thinking through that. But um this particular uh cassette deck also you can buy multiple of them, you know, if you can find them. Um because they've they're not produced anymore, not for a long time. I think the one I got is from the 80s. I think they produced these up sometime in the 90s and then stopped producing them. Um but you can daisy chain multiple units together. So with one of them, you can put one audio stream in and record two cassettes at a time, but you can daisy chain up to 10 of these and record up to 20 cassettes at a time. That would be cost prohibitive. Um, finding good examples of these. This the one I got is wasn't particularly expensive, but you know, these things are old, they have a lot of moving parts, um, and so finding good examples of them. I I don't think I would ever get 10 of them, but you know, maybe I get another one, can do four at a time. It just depends on what the market is. But I thought that was cool, and um, so that's part of my my plan on potentially making some income from all this stuff. And finally, I want to talk about uh one of the things I've been listening to lately, and this week I want to highlight a fantastic podcast uh slash audio drama in the form of a podcast, Old Gods of Appalachia. Um I first learned of this through a Kickstarter they did a few years ago for a tabletop role-playing game based on the podcast, and I backed the Kickstarter because the premise to me was super interesting, and I thought to myself, oh, I should go listen to this podcast. It it sounds cool. And I just never did. And then, you know, recently when I I started getting heavily back into this and you know, trying to look at other um audio dramas that were being produced out there, um, I went I went and found this again. Um they also did another Kickstarter campaign uh recently. And so I have just wrapped up season three out of six, so I'm still a few years behind. But spoiler alert, it is fantastic. Um it's Eldritch Horror, sort of think Lovecraft, but set in Appalachia in the uh late 1800s, early 1900s. Um it deals with a lot of the social and societal issues of the day that, you know, sort of continue to this day. And a big central theme of it is uh sort of corporate greed and the human toll it exacts um, you know, in in pursuit of profit. Um and it actually takes that a step further and imagines that um, you know, the big coal and railroad companies aren't just greedy, but they're actually evil and an ancient evil. And that r a lot of the stories revolve around that. It was so it was created by Steve Shell and Cam Collins, and they share writing duties and Steve does the large majority of the voice work. Um in fact, y you know, the first season it was basically Steve narrating the stories that they were writing, with uh Cam doing a little bit of voice work here and there, uh, but mostly Steve's voice. And uh as it evolved, it's it they've brought in some other voice actors for various parts and you know, done more sound design uh stuff, and it's you know sort of gotten bigger, but the core of it is still Steven and and Cam's writing and then Steve's voice. And uh he has a great voice uh for storytelling. Uh it's amazing. Uh even with just the stories, it it would be great because it all starts with a story. Um and Cam and Steve do great jobs with with telling these tales, but then add Steve's uh buttery smooth um and just really talented in telling a story through his voice. Um it just it draws you in, um, it makes you care about characters, uh, it makes you want to know what's gonna happen next. Uh a lot of cliffhangers, they're they're very good at at writing, you know, so that it keeps pulling you in. Uh the first season is a little tragic, I will say, um, but it builds a lot of stuff, and then uh as you move into the following seasons, it's not quite so tragic. It's um and it'll come around to characters and it sort of bounces around from time and place with this sort of combined railroad mining company being the core of it, but a lot of ancillary stories being told and different characters coming in and out, and it'll jump around in time, and it's it really it really keeps you interested. It's just great storytelling all around. Um and it it just reinforces the fact that yeah, I can think about these big productions all I want, but it starts with a story, and they they absolutely have a great talent for telling stories. I I'd love to do an interview with them and find uh find out a little bit more about uh how this came into being. I could probably do some research and and find out the you know, they've probably been interviewed. Um but I suspect based on the fact that they developed their own role-playing game, I suspect that they are gamers and maybe this came out of, you know, some campaigns they were running in in another game or something. Um but it'd be it'd be super interesting to talk to them. Um this this one is highly recommended. It will suck you in. Like I said, I still have three more seasons and it uh keeps going, so um I'm I'm really looking forward to that, to to seeing what's next for uh for them. And that will just about do it. So until next week, go out and listen to something cool.