Transcript: Hello chums, welcome to the Freshstock Podcast, episode three!! It’s me, Alex, the pearly king of Brunswick. We’re coming to you today in stereo! That’s right, my new mic arrived off eBay, at a bargain price too I must say, so now not only do I have a great USB mic but I can also do field recordings. This means that perhaps in the next couple of eps I might get up off my chair and go search for music on the streets of Melbourne.
As usual we have some great unsigned artists coming up, a little bit of actual information that I like to call home recording hints, and I’ve had a few listeners write in again with their problems in naming their bands in, a little segment I like to call the band name generator.
By the way, if you were wondering who that is absolutely shredding the guitar in the opening title music, it’s me! I’m a bit of a closet musician, but what do they say in all the old texts. Those who can’t, podcast.
Okay, enough about me, to the music! Firstly we have John Hunter with some ole timey blues, and in the eternal spirit of blues, he’s called this track, quite simply “Hey, Mama”. Here we go!
John Hunter there with “Hey Mama”. Don’t that just make ya proud to be an Aussie? He’s on Soundcloud, just search for John Hunter Combo, or likewise go to reverbnation.com/johnhuntercombo.
Well, you’ll have to excuse me today, I’m a bit coffeed up again. I’m living the over-stereotypical Melbourne life, I’m afraid. I was in a café this morning and of course because it’s Melbourne it can’t just be a straight-forward café. It has to be quirky and offbeat, so in this one the tables are made of cut up table tennis… surfaces, and the menus were all made of hollowed out golden books, so just the cover with the café’s menu where the pages of the story would usually be. Does anyone remember these Golden books, you know the kids book series with the golden spines?
I was looking at the back cover and my first thought was “if they tried to print these today, it would be an absolute nightmare!”
On the back they have all these different characters living together that would never naturally be cohabitating in the wild. There’s Big Bird, Donald Duck, Bugs Bunny, Bambi, Ernie, and Bert himself is actually riding atop the little train that could. Can you imagine pitching and designing that these days? Nightmare! Trying to cross over between all these corporations on the one book cover.
I had a friend who worked for a company, let’s for argument’s sake, and I’ll alter the name, call this company Frisney. And he was hired on a cruise ship for Frisney as a character that we shall call… well, I’ll have to change the name.. Prince Charmington. He was told before he started not to smile too widely when he was in character, because this friend had dimples when he smiled and the Character Prince Charming…ton doesn’t, and they didn’t want him to ruin the illusion for the kids.
Anyway, dig out a golden book and you’ll see what I mean.
Okay, now for home recording hints. If you want to come up with a jingle for any of my segments, or either of my segments I suppose I should say, then email me: freshstock@post.com. You can also apply to be in the podcast too there, just send along a track of original music.
Anyway, home recording hints. I thought as my new mic is in, and it records in stereo, I would talk to you today about stereo imaging.
Stereo imaging is important in music, and largely because it gives the music space, somewhere to breathe. But also because we have two ears as humans, and actually if we didn’t have two speakers or two sides of headphones with slightly different mixes of the same music coming out, it would sound weird.
So how can this help your home recording? Well, let’s for arguments sake say we’re recording a band, vocalist, two guitars, a bass, and a drum kit. My best tip is to say: leave room for the vocals. In our scenario the vocalist gets one mic, the guitars and bass get a mic each on their amps, then we put mics on the snare and bass drum, as well as two overhead mics to catch the rest of the kit. That’s about 8 microphones. Now, we can just record them and have all 8 mics coming out of both sides of your headphones equally, but this would be weird and oppressive to your ears. You want the listener to think they’re in the room with you, and when you’re in a room the sounds have a bit of direction.
There is a knob called PAN in any worthwhile sound equipment, analogue or digital. Have a play around with this. You can pan all the way left, or all the way right, plus anywhere in between. Imagine the band is set up on stage. For our scenario, let’s keep the vocals unpanned and in the middle, and the snare and bass drum fairly close to the centre. The ambient mics on the kit could pan one halfway left, and one halfway right, so it’s fairly wide across the stereo image. The two guitars can pan out even further, although if there’s a big solo I’d put that on centre again. Maybe oan the bass off to the left a little from the vocalist, wherever they would stand in a live situation works well I guess. Have a listen and tweak, you’ll know when it’s balanced because there won’t be anything distracting you from listening anymore. Anyway, this is just an example of how to set up your stereo image, there are no hard and fast rules.
If you have no idea what I’m talking about, then listen next time you have headphones in, and try and imagine where on stage the instruments are from the stereo imagery in the mix. There’s a great album “Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia” by the Dandy Warhols, the stereo imagery on that is mesmerising. Have a listen, and listen to what they put in the middle of the mix and when! It switches between guitars, keyboards, vocals and even egg shakers as the focus.
Blah, blah, that’s enough information for you today, here’s some music. This is The Watermelons with there own bit of stereo imagery, “Eleven8”.
Well, that was Perth band The Watermelons, currently on hiatus as one of the members Josh Caverson is trying his luck in Melbourne. Josh has a few ambient tracks up on his own soundcloud, soundcloud.com/joshua-caverson. have a look, definitely worth a listen, in fact I may even play one of his ambient tracks in the coming weeks.
That’s that, and that must mean its time for the band name generator. Thanks to everyone who mailed in, I can’t reply to them all but I will pick two of the best each week.
Now remember you can send in with your band naming woes to freshstock@post.com, and if you’re lucky I’ll answer, but remember if I do suggest a name for you, it is compulsory to use it. If you don’t use it, I’ll come around your house and leave cloves of garlic in all your dairy products.
First email is from Suzy:
Dear Alex and the Freshstock team, well I’ll stop you there Suzy. The Freshstock team is me. Alone. Solo. I do everything. Oh, and the bands that supply the music of course, but they’re more part of the family than the team. I digress…
Dear Alex and team,
I’m starting an all girl band that will be sort of shoegaze, sort of new wave post punk kinda thing. We have come up with a bunch of names but we’re not happy with any of them. Help!!! (help there with three exclaimation marks)
From Suzy in Byron Bay,
PS keep up the good work, loving the show so far.
Thanks Suzy for the compliment, very kind, or over kind perhaps. So you want something edgy, perhaps the kind of name that would have come out of Manchester in the late eighties? Okay, let’s think. These are tricky, they have to sound tough, but they have to have some kind of historical or literary reference in them too. Seeing as you’re from Byron, let’s get a quote from Lord Byron. I did a quick google search on this for you earlier, and the best Byron quote that fit was Cheap Medicine. So from here on in, you and your band are known as Cheap Medicine.
Okay, one more email.
Dear Alex,
Me and my sister want to start a folk duo, and we thought perhaps a biblical reference would be good. I can’t be bothered reading the bible though, so I thought I’d just email you. Thanks.
Trent.
Well, thanks trent, good to know you’re committed to the band. Now, I must stop you here though before you make a big mistake!! Too many folk artists have listened to too much Johnny Cash, and think a reference to the bible will get them through. Big mistake! Cliché alert! Instead you want to go for another cliché and refer to a famous cowboy outlaw or a southern town in the US. Today I’ve compiled the two for you. You are now called Hoodoo Brown County. Hoodoo Brown after the famous outlaw, and County just because it makes it sound American. There you go, problem solved.
Okay, that’s nearly enough from me, but before I go, one more tune. This time it’s Desmond Mase with “Still Burn”
There you go, Desmond Mase with “Still Burn”, and as is the trend he’s got plenty of great tracks and new releases on his Soundcloud, do a search for Desmond Mase, that’s M A S E.
Thanks for listening, my names alex dick, you can see links to all the bands you’ve heard in this episode at the show’s blog, freshstockpodcast.wordpress.com, or have a look at my own site, headstockpublishing.com.au. If you want to have your music played, send it to freshstock@post. com, links or files accepted, and you could be in future episodes. Cheers, support new music everyone. Bye!
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