Blog Positive Zero - A Happiness Podcast

It's happening! It's happening! I'm trying something new, because I want you to try something new too. What is that thing? Feeling happier! I'm starting an amateur podcast about my tips and ideas for generally feeling better in life, even though life sucks pretty often.

What is a podcast? Wikipedia describes it as "an episodic series of digital audio or video files which a user can download and listen to ... It is very similar to, and may overlap with, Internet radio, though perhaps distinct in revolving around topics personalized exactly to listener preferences", and I think that's pretty accurate. It's like a free amateur or professional radio show in which people talk about a thing they know about. I listen to these programs for about 3 hours every day when I'm driving and when I'm at work, on topics from history and science to news and culture to good old story-telling. I admire a lot of these podcasters, some of whom I'll mention by name once I'm sure I don't suck.

Anyway, this series is going to be about my ideas of staying happy, since I've had some very low lows and am lately keeping myself in a pretty high high. I'm going to aim for a bi-weekly episode, but writing, recording, and editing takes time, and I don't have any sponsors to encourage me, so I'll do it as I do it. I'm not publishing this in official distribution means (yet), so just download it here and play it with VLC (or your player of choice, but VLC is excellent).

Please, feel free to comment directly in this thread. I want this to be interactive, so if you want to give me props, or tell me just how full of crap I am, or give tips on audio production, or tell stories of yourself trying something, or have questions that you want my input on, I welcome all of that.

The writing, recording, and editing are all by me. Most music that I use comes from the Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver OST (available at the iTunes store here), which I had no part in composing or performing, and of which I claim no ownership. The intro music in particular is "Pokégear Radio: Buena's Password", composed by Morikazu Aoki and arranged by Hitomi Sato. I'll try to remember to properly cite all my soundtrack usage in future episodes, aside from the redundancy of Buena's Password, which is used in every episode.

So watch this thread or follow my profile on LV and keep up with these talks! It will be great to have you along!

Episode List (updated as I go):

00 - Preview https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/414811462138200076/452604704720027648/PZ00_-_Preview.mp3
01 - Truth and Ideals https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachme...57975139162914818/PZ01_-_Truth_and_Ideals.mp3
02 - Getting Started (in pre-production)
03+ - (planned)

PS: a request for anyone who may have an idea: I just found out that, as an ordinary member of LV, I can't upload .mp3 files or files larger than 1 MB as attachments to my posts. For now, I'm linking to a Discord hosted file, but I have no idea how long those stay up. If you know of a good and legitimate free audio hosting website, I'd love to hear about that.

 

And I'm... not quite ready for the first episode yet. I decided I needed a different first episode first, and it's taking a minute or two to write.

To answer the background music question: the constant background music from the promo will in the future be less than a minute intro and outro. I'm trying to follow the format of professional podcasts I follow: their first episode, a little 3-5 minute thing will have upbeat or themed extended intro music the whole time, but after that each episode just has its intro theme that fades out after less than a minute. This was part of my plan all along, however, I was going to have the fading-out music at a similar volume. With this feedback, I'm going to have the pre-faded music quieter, even though the intro at the start will only last exactly 42.864 seconds total, and the outro about 12.5 seconds. It's hard being your own audio engineer.

I may also use this feedback when I add segments of music during discussions, like when I need something dramatic. I already know an instance I'll want to use some Gen-5 legendary music and two particular MMX1 soundtracks... because video game music is one thing that makes individually me materialistically happy. And we're all nerds here.

I'm 92.5% sure that the first episode will be up this weekend, and then hopefully every two weeks after that. Talk to you then!

 

Episode 1 is now ready! This is my first full-length episode, and not the one I originally wanted to do, but its placement at the beginning is even better. This is all about what happiness is, or at least my definition of it. Running time is 9:55, and I'm aiming for a 10 minute average for future episodes.

Again, I welcome all feedback, anything from technical advice to topic requests to telling me that I'm full of crap (as long as you explain why I'm full of crap).

Give it a listen if you're interested!

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachme...57975139162914818/PZ01_-_Truth_and_Ideals.mp3

(sound credit: In addition to "Buena's Password" from HGSS like every episode, this episode includes also "The Dragon Awakes" from "Pokémon Black & Pokémon White: Super Music Collection", composed and arranged by Shota Kageyama.)

 

Edit: Never mind, I'm not satisfied with how this one turned out, and I'm not going to release a product I'm not proud of with my name on it. There's a lot that needs to be improved about this, technically and content-wise. Stay tuned for the two-point-oh.