When Dannah and Suzy approached me about helping them create a podcast, I jumped at the opportunity. Suzy is a death dula and Dannah is a all around badass that has created a non-profit to support all sorts of activism in the Santa Barbara community. Problem was, they had never made a podcast before and didn’t know anything about audio production or audio gear. Luckily I own a recording studio here in Santa Barbara called Open Ocean Studios.
Unluckily, Our Everything Bagel did 7 episodes for season 1, but Suzy moved away and so there won’t be a season 2. Sorry fam!
We recorded their introduction episode and it went well. I used Shure SM7Bs with a cloud lifter because Dannah was a little soft spoken. I setup the room with a table and some water. It felt like a nice relaxing podcast studio! After we finished rolling, I noticed that they really needed a introduction. So I produced this sound design for them! I quickly put together a script and I had them read it back and forth. I was imaging it would something like the Radiolab intro with a build and a release. I then had them both say the title of the podcast in an enthusiastic way.
When I got home, I pieced something together. I took a piano and played a dissonant dominant chord and then recorded the audio file out. I then reversed the piano audio to give it a build/rise. Then I wanted something like a heartbeat, but wanted to make it more modern to I grabbed a synth, set a white noise oscillator, set a high-pass filter, turned the envelope to have a really quick decay to an inaudible sustain level, and then I added some delay and voila! A modern heartbeat. Then I wanted the release to sound like confetti exploding from a cannon, but first I made the piano chord resolve with an arpeggio. I then duplicated that arpeggio, recorded it out, reversed it and pitched it up super high. I added some quick tape delay and that gave me my confetti sound!
For the podcast itself, check out the production. I recorded, mixed and mastered the podcast myself!