Concept & Inspiration

I wasn’t sure what topic to cover for this podcast, initially. I’ve been listening to

more music this year as I have been spending a lot of time studying. In particular

I’ve been listening back to old mixes I did years ago when I was organising raves.

This process led me to seek out podcasts about electronic music and music

production. I was heavily engaged with these topics until about five years ago.

Thinking about these topics brought back a lot of my interest in audio/ music

production, so my inspiration for the topic of this podcast happened rather

organically. Having done some research listening to podcasts on the topic of

audio/ music production I decided I didn’t want to cover such a niche area. I felt,

covering music in a less technical way would be more accessible for a potential

audience. With this in mind I decided on an interview style podcast over a

narrated podcast covering a specific topic. The topic of the podcast would be

different music scenes on the island of Ireland that potentially don’t get covered

in traditional media. This is why I chose the name “Underground Éire”. The idea

being that a different voice from underground music scenes around Ireland

speaks about their experiences each episode.

Goals and Objectives

Once I had a defined concept I was able to be more clear about my objectives for

the podcast. I was interested in covering a topic I had knowledge of so covering

the electronic music scene seemed appropriate as I know people involved in this
scene. I wanted to interview someone that was quite conversational as I felt this

would translate to the podcast. I contacted a number of people and one person

was very enthusiastic about the idea so I decided to interview this person. The

aforementioned person was Muc of the Untz! Soundsystem. The fact there is a

mobile sound system based in Waterford City that was used in raves across the

south of Ireland seemed interesting to me and I felt this may prove interesting to

a potential audience. Even before I had questions to ask I was already trying to

keep the listener in mind. The principal objective was trying to present an

interesting story. Engaging content is likely to engage with an audience. I was

somewhat unsure who the audience would be. The topic I was covering was

somewhat niche, but I was trying to approach it in a personal way by having the

person tell their story. The concept was that each episode would cover a

different music scene so there would be variety within the podcast. By having

the podcast cover a broad range of music in a personal way I was hoping it

would be engaging and reach an audience of diverse music fans.

Planning

I wanted the podcast to be conversational so I didn’t want to have the interview

too scripted. I came up with five questions that were pertinent to the

conversation I would be having with Muc. I sent him the questions before the
interview so he would have time to think about the answers and so he would be

comfortable with what questions would be asked. The questions are listed

below:

1. Explain a bit about who you are and what Untz is?
2. When, where, and how did you get into music?
3. How and when did Untz happen?
4. What is Untz doing now?
5. Why did you do it?
6. Tell me about your favourite set?

I formulated my questions in a way that there would be chronological order to

what Muc would be speaking about. I also knew that Muc was someone that did

not have difficulty speaking at length on topics he was knowledgeable on.

Considering this I thought it prudent to keep the questions brief and let him tell

his story. The location that the interview would be recorded was also important

as I didn’t want too much reverb or background noise. I tested the sound of the

rooms in my house by walking around clapping and listening for resonant

frequencies in each space. The spare bedroom had the sound I liked the most.

The room was quite dead in sound due to the carpet and double bed. I had a

Shure SM58 and SM57 to record with, which would allow two channels of audio

to be recorded via a MOTU M4 audio interface. I wanted to use Shure dynamic

microphones as they would have a similar sound to the Shure SM7b, which is a

standard across the broadcast and podcast industry (Bull, 2022).

Recording setup

Issues…
The sound quality and timbre of the recording was good, but I never defined

how long should be spent on each question. This led to the interview being

thirty-five minutes, which wasn’t necessarily an issue as I considered releasing

this podcast publicly where I would want it to be longer. For the purposes of CA2

this interview was far too long, so it required a lot of editing and cutting content.

I had to heavily edit Muc’s audio into shorter sections and re-record my

questions to make the content fit into a short form podcast. Also I never

implemented the process of waiting two seconds before asking another

question or replying. This led to a number of occasions where I had no choice

but to re-record my question or response. Considering these errors, I would give

more direction to the interviewee next time and more clearly communicate what

I wanted. Another consideration would be to try to keep the interviewee more

on topic because at certain points Muc went off on a tangent that I later cut from

the podcast.

Finished Podcast
The finished podcast was done in two stages. First the vocal tracks were edited

and mixed. Then the vocal mix was exported as a stereo file which was imported

into a new session where the music tracks were added. I did this because there

was a master chain of effects to process the vocals that I didn’t want processing

the music tracks. I included two music tracks that were referenced by Muc over

the course of the interview as the intro and outro as it seemed fitting. The two

tracks are Qawwali by Pinch (Ellis, 2006) and LFO by LFO (Bell & Varley, 1991).

Muc hums the bassline from LFO at one stage in the interview, so I included that

track as the outro as a call and response phrase. The edits were all done using

Adobe Audition. I applied a reasonable amount of compression to the vocals as I

wanted a more of a radio sound.

Vocal Edit

Final Edit
Podcasts researched

Handing Out With Audiophiles

Rave Curious

References

Bell, M. and Varley, G. (1991). LFO Leeds Warehouse Mix. LFO. Frequencies.

[Vinyl]. UK: Warp Records.

Bull, J. (2022) How the shure SM7B became an industry standard, Happy Mag.

Available at: https://happymag.tv/shure-sm7b/ (Accessed: March 19, 2023).

Ellis, R. (2006). Qawwali. Pinch. Qawwali. [Vinyl]. UK: Planet Mu.

Glazer, J. (2017) Rave Curious. [Podcast]. Aug 28 2017 Available at:

https://www.ravecurious.com/episodes/moby (Accessed: 15 January 2023).

Lidell, J. (2022) Hanging Out With Audiophiles. [Podcast]. 24 December 2022.

Available at: https://hangingoutwithaudiophiles.libsyn.com/howa-ep-105-bibio

(Accessed: 03 March 2023).