Our first project in English for our last semester at Freestyle was a 3 -13 minute professional quality podcast. We were allowed to make our podcast about whatever sparked our interest.

In the most basic sense, my podcast is about guitars. My friend Cris and I take a look at some of the newly revealed guitar models from NAMM 2020 and discuss them.

The Hosts

About Jeremy Hahn

  • Jeremy is a senior at Mountain View High School and Freestyle Academy. He’s been very involved in music all throughout high school whether it be marching band, orchestra, jazz band, or a student run ensemble. He currently plays guitar or bass for more than four bands including, a punk band, a ska band, a metal band, and a jazz combo.

About Cris

  • He’s a member of the Mountain View High School and Freestyle Academy’s class of 2020. He plays guitar in a multitude of bands, as well as making his own solo music on the side. He’s a film student.

What this project means

We’re doing a podcast project to expose us to yet another way of expressing ourselves and our messages. The project goals are to make a professional sounding 13 minute podcast about whatever topic we are interested in. We wanted a cohesive product that we’d be proud of, not just 30 minutes of improvisational rambling. The thing about podcasts is since there are no visulas, you need to work extra hard to convey your message. 

Process

I was inspired to make my podcast about new upcoming guitars from all the guitar shows and podcasts I watch and listen to. I wanted to make something for an audience of people similar to me. To accomplish the goal of making a coherent show, I gathered some specs and images of five new guitar models from NAMM 2020, made a setup using a tv as a monitor and had a conversation with my friend Cris about the guitars. I then recorded that in Reason.

Reflection

I valued the independence I got from this project. I was allowed to talk about whatever I wanted as long as I did it in a cohesive manner. I liked how I was able to figure out the process without much help. Due to my knowledge of audio production, I was basically able to do my own thing. If there’s one thing I take away from this project, it would be a newfound respect for recorded conversations. In many podcasts, it may seem that the hosts are just ad-libbing the whole thing, but really everything has to be planned out to keep it from becoming a mess.