Producing Re:sound, or Where Did I Steal That From?
by Roman Mars
I’ve been asked to deconstruct what we have been calling “The God Show” which is officially (and creatively) known as Re:sound #24. I’m not sure what it is about me, but this is the second time my work has been featured on the Third Coast Festival website, and the second time I’ve had to interview myself about it. Interesting.
Themes:
The first fourteen episodes of Re:sound didn’t have themes (with the exception of the show featuring the work of Rick Moody), but when I came on board, my charge was to beef up the sound design of the show with original elements that would serve to string together all the stories. The themes make this much easier. Themes also focus our thinking in a cool way. When a couple of stories are lined up next to each other, Johanna Zorn and Julie Shapiro with their vast knowledge of public radio work, really go to town brainstorming about pieces that will work as compelling accompaniment. It is something to behold.
I’m mainly going to talk about the stuff I’m responsible for because the pieces speak for themselves. The only thing I should mention here is that the reason I spend all kinds of time on little one minute interstitial compositions is because I want the whole show to approach being as thoughtful and carefully crafted as the pieces we feature. I have nothing but respect for the work that we use and it’s an honor to highlight it again in the context of Re:sound.
Catalyst:
We had these religion themed pieces (Shadow of a Doubt, Build an Oracle, Gods of Times Square) kicking around, waiting to be made into a show but it was my obsession with a 21-second actuality that I heard on Morning Edition that was the catalyst that started the reaction that made this episode come together (see “Two Awesome Popes in a Row!” below). Sometimes it’s a cool song I want to use, or some other piece of audio detritus that I can’t get out of my head, but most shows can always be sourced back to one such point.
Music:
The music on Re:sound is usually what I call “tink, tink” music. It’s often electronic with lots of loops that are easy (and fun!) to manipulate. Since this program had a religious theme, I decided the music should be pretty and reverential, to balance some of the satirical elements in the show. Iron & Wine and Sufjan Stevens established this theme. Here’s the list of everything:
Iron & Wine, “On Our Wings,” Our Endless Numbered Days (Sub Pop, 2004)
Lullatone, “Puddles on the Playground,” Little Songs About Raindrops (Audio Dregs, 2004)
The Books, “It Never Changes to Stop,” Lost and Safe (Tomlab, 2005)
Autumn Thieves, “Bit O’ Monkai,” Autumn Thieves (Theft, 2005)
Sufjan Stevens, “Transfiguration,” Seven Swans (Sounds Familyre, 2004)
Sufjan Stevens, “All the Trees of the Field Will Clap Their Hands,” Seven Swans (Sounds Familyre, 2004)
The Open:
The intro of the show is what I typically work on the most. This is where I get to mess around with all my favorite stolen audio clips and music, and manipulate them into something that’ll hopefully entice people into listening for the entire hour. This episode featured Jane Ulman and Russell Stapleton’s brilliant Shadow of a Doubt which contains a series of reactions to a vision of the Virgin Mary on a fence post. Here in Chicago, we had a similar visit from Mary in the form of a salt stain under the Fullerton Street overpass. I did a search on the NPR website and found quite a few stories and commentaries about Virgin Mary sightings. It’s just the sort of quirky event, with serious undertones and moments of reflection, that NPR drools over (oh, you know it’s true). NPR’s website streams Real Audio, so I have to capture the sound as it streams in order to make a MP3 that I can cut up and collage. I use a simple program called All Recorder for capturing the audio. The other voice that says: “Lesson 13: How does Jesus come to us?” is from a record titled “Religion for the Retarded” (seriously). I use other samples from that record later on in the show as well. It’s priceless. Once I’ve captured all the sound, I cut it up, process bits of it (in this case a high pass filter, to make the clip sound archival and tinny), and arrange it over the music cues. That short sentence represents a lot of work. There are countless adjustment to the music loops, audio bites, and narration. This particular intro actually came together pretty fast. Others have been more troublesome.
Aside from God, other intros:
The intros and interstitials are based on the theme, but the connection can be fairly cryptic. Here’s a cheat sheet for a few episodes:
> Re:sound #29 contained Susan Stone’s Here There is no Moon so the montage was comprised of sounds from the surface of Titan, radar blips from the Saturn moon probe, lesser know Apollo mission chatter, and voices from the Planetary Society’s mic and speaker addition to the Mars Rover.
> Re:sound #28 aka "The Remix Show" has one of the longest samples I’ve ever used from one of my all time favorite radio shows: The CBS Radio Workshop (1956-1957). Edward R. Murrow is actually talking about the word “fallout.” You can purchase a bootleg MP3 CD of the entire series (and its predecessor The Columbia Workshop) on the internet. The Colloquy with William Shakespeare episode alone is worth the price.
> Re:sound #27 aka “The Tour Show ” has selected bits from hours and hours of museum audio tours I found online. The skip from the Pez museum tour was actually in the recording I downloaded.
> Re:sound #22 featured just one documentary, There is in the Soul a Desire for not Thinking: The Double Life of Raymond Carver. This piece about the American short story master Ray Carver was originally produced in German, and then translated to English by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. I decided to play with the concept of translation by taking Carver short story titles and translating them into German and then back into English using the web based tool Babelfish. Then I threw in some typewriter sounds, AM static for the transitions, and clips from the doc.
“Of the Word God”:
During the time when this show was coming together, Julie and I did an interview with one of our favorite bands The Books (Paul de Jong and Nick Zammuto) while they were on their first US tour. I mentioned the God Show and Paul told us about this piece he made that was cut from their new album. They call it “Of the Word God.” It is a sermon with all the content removed except for the instances when the peacher says, “God.” It’s amazing how the whole arc of the sermon can be tracked through the change in inflection of this one word. Apparently, Paul and Nick have a lot of little pieces like this one, so I’m now writing up a list of future themes so that they may be able to contribute to. I can’t wait to see what they come up with.
“Two Awesome Popes in a Row!”:
Man, oh man. I must’ve listened to this clip 500 times. On the day after Pope Benedict was elected during Popefest 2005, a report by Emily Harris ran on Morning Edition that contained an actuality that was so joyful and over-the-top that I had to cut it out and put it in a show. That’s one of the things about Re:sound I am constantly trying to develop. It’s not just a program about great documentaries; it’s also a program about the love of sound. I love the sound of Patrick Barren freaking out about the new Pope. It makes me grin from ear to ear every time I hear it. I was going to use the clip in one of my collage sections, but I reconsidered because I didn’t want it buried in the mix. Ultimately, I decided that we should actually present my love for it openly, so recorded Gwen and me talking about it for the show. It’s a little goofy, but I’m glad that those 21 seconds of glorious tape didn’t just pass into the ether without comment.
So those are some of the pieces that make up Re:sound. I’m constantly trolling for brilliant clips of audio that I can use in the show. If you have a favorite sound, found recording, or audio clip that has lodged itself in your head, drop me a line.
You can hear more episodes on the Re:sound page. |
