I’m leaving!
I’m leaving to begin a road-trip, making a dotted-line of field recordings for the Movers Mindset podcast. Starting on Sunday morning, and then all through next week, we’ve arranged for 6+ recording sessions all in different locations, some with hours driving between.
I’ll begin with a shout-out to @clevpt who, after we recorded an awesome conversation, asked me about field recording. And I went, “well, interesting you should ask about that…” Thanks Carole, for prodding me to show my work. 
Field recording
Wait! I can explain…
In the past, whenever I start talking about field recording, everyone has been endlessly curious. This topic will probably get enormous and I encourage everyone to jump in with questions, comments and ideas.
Any time you are not in a for-purpose set-up, sound treated space, you are recording “out in the field.” See!? You’re already, basically, doing field recordings. 
If you’re new to the Craig experience, you’ll want to at least glance at my classic-Craig post, Evolution of My Field Recording Kit over on the 'ol blog.
The photo above is simply the state of my desk at maximum chaos this evening. I share it just to be sure that no one is under the false impression that I’m always organized. 
New wrinkle, flying solo
Normally—as in, for about 70 episodes—I’d have an awesome person named @melissa along on the field trips. Things get stupidly complex, very quickly. Melissa was an early guest here on the PodComm podcast, Platform were she talked about what we’re doing with the Movers Mindset project; among other things, we’re creating a platform for the guests to be heard.
As a team, backpack lugging all our stuff, we do a bunch of things that go unnoticed to the guest, but which are fanatically tested and continuously improved. Normally, Melissa would take notes, (a lot of notes,) while we are recording. She then uses those notes and the transcript of the recording in multiple things we do in post-production. There’s also what we sometimes call the “Craig and Melissa Show” which the guests experience where we’re setting up the space, as I unpack and setup a pile of stuff Melissa helps me carry on a conversation with the guest, we’re warming up our conversation muscles, finding interesting topics, gauging the mood, triple-checking they like their introduction (which we don’t actually record until post-production), and then there’s the coaching on how “use” the mic, how to “perform” being on a podcast, how to relax, coaching on the standard question… and there’s a sort of exit-interview we do after we press stop.
It’s a lot. And I’m flying solo for all of these.
But, Zoom!
For some of the recording sessions, Melissa can join us via Zoom. (And for some of them, I’m entirely on my own, and she’ll have to post-create her notes by listening to the raw recording.) But to be sure that she can hear the guest? …cue long complicated experimenting with every cable and adapter under the sun. And I cannot figure out how to get the output of the live mix into my phone for her to hear on the Zoom call.
About the mix: My Zoom H6 “Handy Recorder” records each mic separately, (one of my upcoming field recordings in this trip has two guests, so three channels.) I have little level-meters, and knobs for controlling the gain on each channel. The H6 also creates a real-time “mix down” to a mono signal. That goes over to a small headphone amplifier, where I can give each person their own private volume control. The dream was to feed the “mix” back to my iPhone and into the Zoom call. But alas, it no worky. 
Shotgun!
So instead we have this wackiness. Strapped, with some velcro straps, to side of the usual mic, (I 
my Shure SM58 mics,) is this little Moukey directional microphone. It’s got a standard headphone-extension cable (you should see the mess of cables I have 
) and eventually into an Apple adapter for accepting the old-style 3.5mm male plug, of an external microphone.
What does the Moukey sound like compared to the SM58?
…Here, which which witch?
Questions?
What would everyone like to know more about?
What do you want to see from behind the scenes?
What are you curious about?
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Thanks, 
