4."Injured by a German"- Fiona Cameron-Mackintosh and Hannah Ovenden talk women's rugby in Bedfordshire - a podcast by Ben Yates

Mother and daughter, Fiona Cameron-Mackintosh and Hannah Ovenden, share their experiences of playing the sport they love; rugby. They talk about the joys and pitfalls of a a highly physical sport and also give advice on staying safe and enjoying the game. This episode was recorded in Fiona's home and was watched by one of her lovely cats.

Techie stuff: This was another new step for me and something I had really wanted to experiment with; sticking a chunk of podcasting kit in a couple of bags and taking it around to record in someone's home.

There wasn't really a suitable table available so I improvised and put the three dynamic mics and their stands on a large pouf - about the height of a coffee table. The three of us then sat on the sofas around the pouf. The problem this had was that we all had to lean forward to get our mouths close to the mics. Three sets of headphones were plugged into the little Behringer headphone amplifier.

As before, I plugged the mics into the Zoom H4n. The Zoom H4n has just two XLR ports to connect mics. I had bought a connector which joins the XLR cables from two mics into one cable which then connects into the Zoom H4n. This was my first attempt at recording with three mics.

In this recording I have two JTS TM929 dynamic cardioid mics - which Fiona and myself use and are using the connector which combines their XLR cables into one port on the Zoom - while Hannah uses the ATR2100 dynamic cardioid mic. The ATR should be the better quality mic and should record better, it is definitely more expensive than the JTS - over twice as much. I think that I can identify this in the recording but not totally sure. And not sure if combining the two JTS mics into one cable affected their quality. Hmmm.

I know that during the recording I tried to make sure that I was speaking close to my JTS mic - almost touching the windscreen. I did notice that Hannah was speaking a little further from her ATR so maybe it is a compliment for the ATR that it recorded her well at a further distance than the JTS or maybe just a compliment to Hannah's clear and confident speaking voice. Fiona, at times, was speaking about 30cm from her mic and this was understandable because of all the leaning forward, but again I think that I hear her fine in the recording.

During the recording one of Fiona's cats jumps on to the pouf and sits and watches. I can't hear this in the recording but I did pick up when we try to reach out to the cat and brush one of the metal mic stands. So, not much ambient noise picked up this recording except some breathing noise.

At one point a phone went off and I stopped the recording. I carried on recording but later found that I had pressed the wrong button on the Zoom and had lost the first part. Grrr. Fiona and Hannah kindly and patiently agreed to re-record the opening part. Bless you. (What an amateur)
Music: Love Chances by Makaih Beats from the Free Music Archive. This music is licenced under Attribution-Non Commercial Licence. http://freemusicarchive.org/music

Further episodes of Beds Blab - an experiment in amateur podcasting in Bedfordshire

Further podcasts by Ben Yates

Website of Ben Yates