The audio course is titled Making Sense, and is a nine part audio course on creative first aid, designed to listen to while you’re walking, driving, cleaning the bathroom, cooking dinner…. Making Sense explores what creativity is, the neuroscience of what happens when we practice, the role of the nervous system and the five elements of creative first aid.

A free episode can be found on substack.com here https://substack.com/home/post/p-147355790

This was an very interesting job. The content was great, the hired talent Elana Stone (intro track) & Tom Maclachlan (Narrator/ Voice Over talent) were excellent, and there was a lot of music and sound to create.

As this is my production blog, I will keep the post nerdy, and most relevant to aspiring creators of Podcast like material and content.

My mic choice(s) for the vocal/ voice over was a Neumann TLM107 + Shure SM7B + Pop-shield. The Neumann lent clarity and upper frequency sheen, whilst the SM7B gave a warm and intimacy. The mics then hit a signal chain of Vintech 573 pre-amps, Warm Audio WA2A compression and then into my DAW on the day, Ableton. The recording was done @ Stranded Recording Studios in Bellambi, see pictures below.

Once all the editing was finished, my vocal processing chain in the DAW employed the following concepts: (in order of processing) High Pass Filtering unwanted low frequencies, boosting presence(5-6kHz ish), boosting air (10kHz and above), compressing to control dynamics, de-essing to control sibilance, de-reverbing to remove reflections, more EQ to sweet the vocal, limiting for volume boost, mouth de-clicking, and finally more frequency and band based compression to control any final sibilance and harsh resonances.

The exact plugins used in the process are pictured in the below audio effects chain screenshot

The settings can be seen to some degree in the below screenshot

 

Beyond the vocal recording and production, about 2 hrs of original music had to be written for the audio series, this became somewhat reduced as I realised the comfort in recurring themes and songs/ sounds to evoke the right atmosphere. Generally though, as the audio series in reflective, more gentle genres were engaged, such as ambient, folks and chilled beats. When juggling a range of foley, pre composed music and music gestures that were required to be composed within the mix session, I found having Bus or Groups enabled in Ableton very valuable. My main groups were Music, Foley and Instruments, as can be seen below. Such a process allowed me to control the automation of more macro level fades, reverbing and filtering out of sonic elements so ensure the most fluid delivery of the content.

The audio series is a paid series, but the generous folks at Make Shift have made available one of the episodes for free, see below

Read on Substack

More information about the audio course can be found here, https://www.makeshift.org.au/making-sense

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Over a high paced session, Elana laid down an assortment of haunting keys, synths, vocals, harmonies and even great vintage drum machine parts. She was a delight to work with, effortlessly jumping from layer to layer, capturing the sound that was in her head.

Early 2024 I was in the mix process, the track was shaping up beautifully with a misty Twin Peaks 80s favour. Elana, however, could hear the possibility of the second half of the track lifting with a layer of some organic drums and bass. Elana’s longtime collaborator, Kieran Parker, quickly recorded some great new bass and drum layers, and then came the tricky job of finding space for two bass lines and drum parts.

Production-wise, we got there with some aggressive EQ shaping, sidechain compression and more conceptually, really allowing each of the basses and drums to have a unique character. The new drums eventually adopted a quite psychedelic layer. It was fun to be treating a whole drum bus with flangers, phasers and over-the-top psychedelic treatments in generally.

The result is below

Come the release of the track within an album setting, it was amazing to find myself in the album credits alongside a host of my favourite Sydney-based engineers and producers, such as Tony Buchen, Antonia Gauci and Richie Belkner, as well as a gun line up of musicians, including Josh Pyke, Luke Moseley, Justing Stanley, Zoe Hauptmann, and Keiran and Lachlan Parker.

Below are a few images from the session. Elana’s album tour dates are also below.

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I’m really enjoying the content; it’s all about the arts and the use of creative practices for best mental health. Within each episode, the host, Jennifer Macey interviews artist from various disciplines about their creative practice and the role of creativity in their mental health.

The first two episodes are currently available from all the usual outlets and feature the fabulous Australia creators, Kirli Saunders and Drew Fairley. Click on the images below to access the podcasts from Spotify. Alternatively here’s Make Shift‘s page on Spotify.

From an audio production perspective, it has been enjoyable to ponder best practice for podcasts, and as a result below is a reflection on my current signal chain.

For the main interviewee and interviewer audio, the processing and order of processing that has been working thus far is:

1. UAD SSL G Bus Compressor with a quick attack time and a gentle ratio to control the dynamics

2. Waves DeEsser to tame any sibilance

3. Fab Filter Pro-Q3 to add some warm in the low mids, some articulation in the mids and some further control of the sibilance/ high frequencies around 8-10kHz via dynamic EQ, see the EQ curve pictured above.

4. Waves Vocal Rider to level the differences in levels through the recording

Beyond that chain of plugins, a further bit of volume automation has helped control perceived levels that the AI of Vocal Rider hasn’t addressed. Secondly, some Izotope RX 7 De-Clip has also been used to remove any clipping that occurred mid interview.

All the vocal content/ channels have then been bused to a Vox Bus channel where a touch more compression and EQ has been applied to polish the sound.

Beyond vocal content, the podcasts have all made use of some atmospheric sounds and music. These channels of content have been routed to a Music Bus where some side-chain compression has been applied so that the Vocal Bus will compress or duck the musical content to ensure that the vocals are always the focus or dominant sound.

Both the Vox Bus and the Music Bus then route to the master bus. The processing on this final bus is pictured below.

The master bus chain is currently:

1. UAD Studer 800 – applying some gentle harmonic warmth and some dynamic and upper frequency gentle moulding
2. Oeksound Soothe 2 – a dynamic EQ, for lack of a better description, that looks for resonances. In this case Soothe 2 has been used to reduce resonances that plague the type of playback devices that podcast listeners will typically use, ie laptop speakers and earbuds.
3. Slate Digital VBC FG-Grey – this compressor is one of my favourite mix bus compressors and in this case has then been used to glue the whole mix. The setting used are a slow attack and quick release with a gentle ratio for minimal gain reduction.
4. Fab Filter Pro-L has finally been used to bring the level up to the desired professionally competitive level. Generally it is held that podcasts only require an RMS of between -16 to -12dB. So this was the level aimed for.

I hope you enjoy the In The Making series, I know I’m enjoying the content as I polish it.

For more tips on podcast production, there is a good introductory article by Izotope that I would recommend reading entitled 10 tips for a great sounding podcast.

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The recording was for the theme music for a forthcoming animation series by Mat McCosker and colleagues. The animation is currently in the second round of animation funding with Screen Australia has has a uniquely Australian look and story. Good luck Mat and co, I hope to see this animation up their next to the likes of other internationally successful animation series such as Bluey.

Back to the recording, the theme music was written by Elana Stone and the choir’s was conducted by  Tanya Sparke. These two women are great Australia vocalists in their own right, please check out their works on Spotify by following the links.

To achieve the desired standard choir sound, I used distant micing as typical of standard choir recordings. In particular I used a ORTF pair of Sennheiser MKH8040 small diaphragm condensers at 4-6 feet from the choir, coupled with a spaced pair of Neumann U87s slightly deeper in the room. To provide a sense of depth, reverb and greater distance, I used a Rodes NTR Active Ribbon microphone to capture the room reflections. This figure 8 microphone was placed at the furthest point from the choir, and was hidden behind a baffle in order to prevent any direct source from the choir. The null of the figure 8 was pointing towards the choir / baffle, the polar pattern of the mic therefore only picking up reflections of the choir. This was compressed to taste and used in the mix to add depth and a natural reverb / room tone.

The transient response for the small diaphragm condensers, ie the MKH8040s was excellent, and for a more detailed overview of the differences between small and large diaphragm condensers, see this below article by Neumann.

All mics were tracked directly into the SSL924 at SAE Sydney. The cleanliness of such pre amps was deemed appropriate for the desired tone colour of the recording.

Below are a few pictures from the session.

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