One of the longest-running (continuously since 2004!) podcasts. Hosted by Daniel S Dunnam, it's a music show featuring songs and bands you might have otherwise missed.
The show was weekly for the 2004, 2005, and 2006 seasons, but starting in Season 4 (2007) I cut back a bit and it was bi-weekly from then until Season 9 starting in 2012 at which point it was less regimented, but still always came out on Mondays. I have routinely taken January and February off, and sometimes taken other short breaks. Most recently (early autumn of 2019), when I moved abroad I couldn't produce new episodes for a couple of months.
I'm a music-lover born and raised in Dallas, TX who moved to Brooklyn, NY in 2002 and started the show shortly thereafter. I lived there until 2019 when I moved to Stockholm, Sweden. There's an episode about it! In addition to music, I love pizza, art, design, technology, bikes, documentaries, other podcasts, and so on. Follow me on Instagram if you like. I love to travel, but have only ever lived in a handful of cities. My favorite cities are NYC, Stockholm, and Cape Town. I'm a passionate liberal of the "democratic socialist" variety and I'll happily argue with anyone about politics until they see that I am right and they are wrong. I ride my bike everywhere I go, and don't much care for automobiles. I'm a vegetarian, and don't like alcohol, tea, or coffee, so basically I'm saying I'm a pain to meet up with. To make money I am a UX Designer with a background in graphic design and video production. I love Macs, science, comedy, and lots of different kinds of music, but it helps if there's a good melody. Embarrassingly, I play no musical instruments.
Everything you hear on the show is selected by me, Daniel, as TSiMH is entirely a one-man operation. All of the music I play I buy myself, and I have no sponsorship of any kind — translation: I'm not making any money in any way whatsoever from this. In fact, it's quite a money-losing endeavour, but I try not to think about it like that! I recommend everything based on my honest opinion, and try my best to provide links where you can buy whatever I play.
The show is purely a hobby. I started doing it in May of 2004 (several months before the first "podcasts" were distributed). So The Sounds in My Head wasn't always a podcast, as I didn't even know there was such a thing until late 2004. Initially the show was just an "audio file you can download and listen to". I typically described it as being "like a radio show, but without all that radio business." Then, in January of 2005 I got my act together and got an RSS feed going, at which point it became a "podcast."
Opening Sweeper, Song, I Talk, Song, Sound Clip (of something non-musical I also don't think people should miss, be it for political or humor reasons but most often both), Song, I Talk, Song, Sound Clip, Song, etc. Eventually there are closing credits. I try to change the opening sequence for the show once every so often, as I like having a fresh opening, but editing one together is often quite time consuming so it happens less often that I might like. The music in the opening sequence is the only music I don't credit anywhere, and rarely has anyone inquired as to what any of it is, so I guess that's not problem. Should you ever wonder, you can email and ask. The music which I talk over during the show is always credited during, appropriately, the end credits. The music I talk over is frequently thematic in some way or another even when the show doesn't have a theme.
There is no schedule for "special" episodes, which are ones where I typically have a theme of some kind, and don't concern myself as much with trying to expose people to new bands so much as find songs that I like a lot which fit into said theme. If you have any awesome ideas for a special episode, feel free to tell me about them.
Not recently, but in the past there have been a number of "Special Guest-Hosted" episodes of TSiMH, these have included: Andy (in New Zealand), Ling (host of the awesome podcast Antique Shanghai Pop Music), Kelli Anderson (my ex-girlfriend and celebrity designer extraordinaire), Lane (from Brooklyn at the time, but now from Kyoto), Neil Hohmann (of Ritmo Latino fame), Doug (from Australia), and Rob Walker (author and former NY Times Magazine columnist).
I record the audio for the show using an Audio-Technica AT4047 microphone, and edit it together in Adobe Audition CC (for over a decade I used Apple's Final Cut Pro , but switched to Audition in 2015 and it's been life-changing) on a iMac Pro (it cost a fortune, but I'm convinced it's the best computer ever made). TSiMH is distributed as stereo 128k AAC/M4A file, and has been since the first episode. I initially used AAC because it was a lot like MP3 but the quality was better at a lower bitrate/filesize. But on June 27, 2005 I switched from the standard ".m4a" AAC format to the new "enhanced" podcast format, which allowed me to add chapters with album art, and embedded links. I have used this format ever since. Chapters in pocasts never really caught on, so most podcasts don't include them. Some nerdier podcasts do include them, but using a different MP3 format that supports chapters. I haven't switched to this superior way of doing it primarily because my CMS expects files to end in ".m4a" and I fear trying to change it, as this old creeky thing barely still works as it is!
The website was most recently overhauled in September of 2019 while I was awaiting the arrival of a lot of my audio gear to arrive in Sweden from the US. The look of the site was slightly refreshed, but more importantly it was finally made responsive! Prior to that update, the site was refreshed at the start of Season 9 (2012). This update brought larger album art, @font-face typography and clearer labeling of songs which is all still used. The site is built using the aforementioned, ancient CMS MODx Evolution, which is pretty great, even if a lot of how it actually works is over my head. I've recruited people who understand it better than me and they've set it up in a really cool way where it's very easy for me to use, modify, add shows, etc. I hope you like it as much as I do.
If you're still wondering about something about me, or TSiMH in general, you can contact me via email or on Facebook, or Twitter.
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