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I'm Making A New Podcast Theme

I'll confess, I haven't been a regular listener of CNET's Buzz Out Loud podcast, but I happened to tune in about 2 weeks ago. At that time, I learned about the Buzz Out Loud Remix Contest. It's a pretty exciting opportunity for me, since I ABSOLUTELY LOVE COMPOSING PODCAST THEMES.

As a musician /composer, I have had a really hard time finding a medium that works for me, due to my quirky background and limitations. These include:
  1. My partialness to the underground demoscene sound, which is lo-fi, 8-bitty, and well, sort of unique and special interest (put gently) for the ears of most radio-loving listeners.
  2. A short attention span, causing me to lose interest while writing songs with lyrics...
  3. " "... songs that last more than 30 seconds or so.
My brother's college buddy had a saying: "there's a butt for every seat". Well, if there's a medium for every artist, I think I've found mine. Podcast themes are short, VERY unique (a requirement, in fact), and generally instrumental.

I've tried my hand a composing/producing a handful of podcast themes, including for such podcasts as Dinosaurs: Before They Were Fuels, as well as Fresh Ubuntu (although you'll not find any credit anywhere on their site indicating so... *AHEM*, GUYS). Anyway, they've been pretty good, if I do say so myself. Without going too deeply into what values I believe a podcast theme should have (I'll save that for another post), they succeed in combining interesting elements from the podcast, personified through my background, into a well articulated, contained, and fairly polished theme song.

So I knew I needed to outdo myself. The BOL podcast has a lot of listener-ship. There will be a lot of competition. Over the course of the last week or 2, I have tweaked, scrutinized, polished, and tuned my composition. I've heard it on my studio monitors, headphones, computer speakers, in the car, in the living room... you get my drift. But now it must be "done" - it's time to present my submission to the CNET team. I'm not taking the chance that something stupid will happen, causing my submission to be screwed up or lost by the time the 5/12 deadline hits.

Whether or not mine is selected for the theme, I can say that it's a step up from anything I've done thus far. I think it represents the beginning of a whole new tier of podcast theme production for me. I'm looking forward to seeing it up on the CNET website, and I'm pretty sure it will at least hold it's own with the "heavy hitters".

May the best podcast theme win! (And let's face it, it'll be nice to have something better than the 4 track Acid loop they have been using until now. No offense, BOL team.)

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