________  ________  ________
   2018-09-10                                   /        \/        \/    /   \
                                               /       __/         /_       _/
   A  little  over  a  week  ago,  after  an  /        _/         /         /
especially  good   OpenMic  session  it  was  \_______/_\___/____/\___/____/_
suggested  that  I start my own regular show    /        \/        \/    /   \
on  aNONradio and who was I  to argue? To be   /        _/         /_       _/
honest,  I'd  been thinking  about it  for a  /-        /        _/         /
little while  but  was  being  really wishy-  \________/\________/\___/____/
washy  about it  and not really  committing.
Off of the feedback on the OpenMic though I committed to have something up and
running by the end of September.

   So I started pulling stuff together with a view to having  my first show on
the  15th but  they  had  my login  and mountpoint set  up  really quickly  so
everything  was ready to go from their end and figured "Well,  I'll just strap
together a quick playlist and it shouldn't take much to get  my side to get up
and running!"

   I was wrong.

   I'm  not familiar with  DJ software  at all,  there's a lot going on that I
just don't understand and  I really only needed  something simple.  Everything
was  doing half  the job, I could get music  coming  through nice but the  mic
wouldn't  work or  the  audio was low  or I had the  mic  ducking  in  and out
prefectly but getting the music playing was  awkward, etc.  And then on top of
that I  was  really struggling to get our audio  interface working, it  was so
quiet. Microphones hate my voice in general because  I'm quite soft-spoken but
the  interface  was ridiculously  quiet,  even  with the gain  right  up. Dani
shifting in her chair on the other side of the table was coming through louder
than  my voice right in front of the mic. Yes, I  did check to make sure I had
it facing the right way.

   A massive  anxiety  attack, a lot  of troubleshooting  and  some old-school
hardware voodoo later I  did get it all running and had a playlist so my first
show was this  past  Saturday. It didn't  go  too bad,  all things considered.
There's  a 20-ish second delay  between me and  the  stream which threw me  at
first  so I've  got dead air  a bit at the  start and  then again  when  I was
listening  to  what was happening on  stream instead of  what was happening in
real time. Also had a bit  of a hiccup with some of the tracks not loading but
I worked around it  so I don't  think that even came  through  on  stream, all
good.

   Hardware  problems  solved, I  think  I'm in a good place for future shows;
just  gotta work on playlists and my own confidence  and  I think I can handle
that.

   The show  itself  is  an  attempt to  honestly  answer  my  least  favorite
question: "What kind of music do you listen to?" - with each show based around
a genre or a mood or a theme but no over-arching rule for what I'm going to be
playing.  I'm really approaching with  a "gloves off" kind of attitude,  dving
deep into the broad spectrum of stuff I listen to.  Some of the  playlists I'm
sketching out will go  over  really well but, I dunno, some may alienate a few
people.

   I suppose that's me to a t, haha.

   The show  is called  LOW WIRE. Tune  in to  hear  me live every Saturday at
21:00  UTC on aNONradio.net or you can grab a recording from  the  archives on
the website, either way I hope you enjoy!



EOF