It's been quiet around here for a while. And here's why: for the last year I've been learning how to make Song Exploder. In fact, last week marked the one year anniversary of the very first episode that I worked on, about Mustafa's song "Air Forces."
I was a huge fan of Song Exploder before I started working there, and seeing how the sausage gets made has only made me appreciate it more. The show is more technical than I expected, so the fact that it always sounds so dang smooth is a testament to how skilled Hrishikesh is as an editor—in addition to being a great interviewer. So it's been amazing to jump in with him and (hopefully) keep that vibe rolling. I love all of the episodes we've done this year, and we have some great ones coming down the pipeline.
Oh, and I had another kid.
To say that parenting two kids takes up a lot of time and energy is…an understatement. It's wonderful, of course, but it's even harder than before to figure out the right "work/life balance."
Still, after a year or so of getting used to all of this, I have the itch to get back into writing and working on some of my own little audio projects. And when I get that feeling, I always start by rebuilding my website and rethinking my digital tools. Yes, it's just like changing the font when you should be writing, but damn I just can't help myself.
So I decided to rebuild my website using Ghost, which consolidates a lot of the services that I've been interested in and/or have tinkered with—a Substack newsletter, a Patreon, an old-school "blog"—all within an open-source framework that I can host on a server that I have direct access to via a domain that I own. (For the nerds, I'm hosting this site via DigitalOcean.) As Austin Kleon has been saying for a decade, own your turf.
There isn't much on the site yet besides my newsletter archive from Substack, which you can find here in the chance that you are looking for it. And hopefully you will find info about new things soon—including, yes, new episodes of the field noise podcast, and new kinds of articles, including workflow tips and interviews with interesting folks working in and around the podcast industry.
For now, though, the best way to know what I'm working on week-to-week to is to follow Song Exploder on Twitter, Instagram, and wherever you get your podcasts.