Stupid Thing of the Week

A friend of ours with a podcast of his own asked me to read/perform a horror story for his show this week, so Big and I got together on Monday and recorded it. Basically, the story is about a guy in a snowstorm being stalked by unseen creatures (which is really the story of my life), and was pretty fun to read. There was much tomfoolery and about a hundred errors during the reading, so I took the recording home to edit some of those out, in order to (futilely) seem more professional.

I went through, taking out some of the more offensive chatter, and removing the mistakes I thought were unfunny), and I thought it would embellish to the story to add a constant, whistling wind to the tale. Then, I thought it would be really cool if I put some kind of intermittent monster call underneath it, a spooky sound to add to the ambiance. But what would I use?

Thinking, I remembered I had a recording I made of my niece when she was five years old, babbling contentedly into the microphone and talking about her trip to Disneyland. I took that audio and slowed it waaaaaaaaaaaay down, so the sounds were no longer recognizable as words, but now something strange and rumbling, like the growls of a great, hungry beast.

It only took me a couple of hours, and I was very proud of my accomplishment, so I sent it off and went about the next (overdue) project on my list.

Well, today I got an email from the podcaster. He thanked me for the prompt delivery of the reading, but lamented that there was some kind of annoying background noise through most of the recording. He told me not to worry, though, he thought he could use music to drown all of that out.

Sigh.

Rish "Say A Prayer For The Pretender" Outfield

P.S. His exact words were "There was some crazy ambient noise -- sounded like a elephant trying to play a cello in the road outside." Feel free to laugh, someday I probably will.