Cxibulethex the Destroyer and Bob

Sa.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, me too. Okay, well, let's sort of get into the actual podcast here for real. Hello and welcome to behind the Locked Doors, a podcast where Scott tried really hard to somehow work the conlang word into a joke and failed.

Not hole.

I am Scott Paladin. I am currently editing a horny werewolf audio drama called It Takes a Wolf.

Yay.

And I'm Sam Stark. And I am currently editing the last two episodes of this season of Store 236 and reading awesome new chapters that a certain person has written of Azen West.

Cool.

Oh my God. And I'm Jack. Hi. And I am currently working on the writing of Azin West, a spinoff of the actual play Unspeakable Distance.

Yeah, excellent.

Okay, so let's do our check ins. So I think last time I said if I got any work done at all, I would count it as a win. And that is true. I have won. In that case, you did it. The story being that for reasons I won't discuss on Mike, I had an absolutely terrible day on Friday and that I was so upset that I had to make progress on it instead. Like, it was one of those things. Like, I was so upset.

I need to wrestle control back into my life of like one thing that I actually have to.

Where can I. Yeah, where can I exert control? Oh, the creative project that's been sitting. That's been languishing for like a month and a half. I will do stuff on that. So I finished writing the little transition piece that I needed and.

Nice.

Have resumed my rough edit.

So that's nice. Nice. Yeah. I saw that piece drop in that like little transitional piece you were working on. I saw that drop into the chat and I was like, you did it. You've accomplished that thing. Good job.

Sam, how did you do on your. I don't even know if you had set goals.

It's been a while. I don't remember. I wasn't here last time, so I didn't set goals like last time, obviously.

Right. But there was probably other goals from some other time that you were on. So. But who knows?

It was probably like finishing an audio book narration and doing editing things. I. I have put out the episodes when they needed to be put out. So editing is going. Editing is going pretty well.

Good.

And actually I had a thing that I had to go through with some narration stuff. I can talk about it after we do Jack's.

Sure.

Yeah, sure.

Okay.

Jack, you. You are making progress. I saw, I saw the link.

I did homework for once. In my fucking life. No, the past, like several check ins have been me going, okay, I think I've again halved the remaining distance to the end of this draft of this episode. And I think did in fact come out this week after fighting for my life at whatever time. Stupid time. 4am last night, like I kept thinking like, okay, this could be the end of the episode. And then I was like, I think it needs like, you know, two more paragraphs. And then I'd write those two paragraphs and be like, I think it needs another paragraph. I think it. So yeah, I don't know if what I put in that document makes any sense, but I did put something in there and I sent it to Sam. So there is a at least rough draft of episode three in Sam's hands right now.

The thing existing at all is a huge milestone.

Here's the thing.

This is what I kept telling myself. It does not have to be good the first time. It has to just be on the paper because you can always go back and make it better.

And actually it's very funny so far. And it basically starts out with these two grown men yelling at a child that's in the vent and the vent and the child is just yelling back at them. It's pretty true to life. I like it.

That's great. You know what I kept thinking working on this particular episode is like, I don't know how much people are going to be interested in like this young child being here and like the conversations you have to have that are difficult about life stuff around a young child. And then I was like, I don't know, maybe that's relatable to more people than I think it is. Yeah, I don't know. We don't know that until it's out in the world.

Maybe people, people have kids, people have younger siblings, people have little cousins. You know, people have nieces and nephews. Yeah. Like children are just around sometimes for.

People around and like sometimes around in circumstances where children should not be or around in circumstances that are really hard to explain to kids. Yeah. So I think that stuff's interesting. Maybe I'm, I'm probably not the only one who think that that's interesting, but.

Yeah, yeah, no, that sounds, that sounds super interesting. Uh, I'm, I'm very excited. I haven't even. I'm not going to crack your thing open. I haven't read any of the as in west stuff. I want to be surprised at some. Unless you guys want me to.

You probably want not the zero drafts like we'll get you draft one drafts, I guess.

I don't know. It depends if you need me to come in and Scott Paladin, the thing. You probably want it fairly early in the drafts.

Scott's like, I'm coming in with a machete. Look out.

My. My. My job is. My job as a. As a editor, I have realized, is to propose the things that other people wouldn't have the gall to do.

Yeah. Which I really appreciate that is such a useful editor friend type to have. And I don't have another editor friend who will do that for me. So I appreciate you every day for that, Scott.

Yeah. Well, and the caveat on that is I'm always willing to be told no. Like, you can always say no, Scott.

That sucks. And, like, I've done that. Like, you've proposed to be edited. I'm like, so I had, like, a legitimate reason to do it the way I did it. And I see why you're suggesting something different, but I've elected to keep it the way I have it. But I appreciate it.

Holding that anyway.

Yeah. You know, let me get my hands on him first before we do any Scott heading.

Yeah, it's probably a good idea until.

Scott arrives with the machete.

I personally have not actually worked on my own fucking podcast in, like, half of a year.

So things keep happening.

Yeah. Yeah, things have a way of keep happening.

Yeah.

I'm excited to get back to it, though, like, once the. Once the editing for Stowtraw3.6 is done, which will be really soon.

Yeah. You're almost done.

Yeah, I'll be able to get back to it because then that means that I'm only doing. Doing narration, which is always a thing and is never going to go away. And SCP dialogue cuts, which require absolutely no brain power at all. So.

Nice.

Nice, nice.

Oh, yeah.

And I have to say, as an aside, that the stuff that has dropped thus far for store 236 has been just banger after banger. Like, I just listened to the Street Fair episode. So good. You're so good as the Watchmen in that. Like, oh, it's delightful. What a. What a weird freak who just hangs out outside the store.

It's so hard not to just slip into rag beer because it's basically very rag beer coated. And that's what. That's what Mel told me too. She was like, can you just do rag beer and not drunk? And I was like, maybe, maybe.

No, you're doing it. You're really killing it. It's hilarious. I love It.

Thank you very much. I think the show's biggest fan is actually Kira, my nine year old.

Aw.

Oh, that's cool.

Yeah, she's watched, watched. She's listened to a couple of the episod several times. Because, you know, having your big sister in a show as like a main character.

As a main character, Oz is fucking killing it, by the way.

Oz has been having a lot of fun.

Oh, my God. Again, last aside, then we can actually talk about the stuff that we're talking about. Oz in the street fair episode when, like when Scott, you yell at her, at Nat, and then Nat's like on the brink of tears, like, still trying to do her job and be like, listen, this is store policy. I was like, I'm holding you in my hands like a baby bird. Nobody come near me. My God.

Yeah.

Fucking losing it. Yeah. Scott, you were great in that episode too, by the way.

Yeah, I have completely forgotten what I did.

You died. You got flushed down the toilet.

You got flushed down the fucking toilet. I. Excellent.

I had had all the, the dialogue and I got the dialogue cut and I was placing it, you know, I was putting it into the thing and I, and I was like. And then I put like, I don't know, 30 seconds of space so I can like, design somebody getting flushed down the toilet. And then I realized I didn't have any, like, sounds of the person getting flushed on the toilet. So I, I, I messaged Scott and I was like, scott, can you like just like scream for, scream for a while, 10 seconds or something? So he sent me like a full minute of just screaming and like, like variations of screaming. And what I chose was a section that sounded that reminded me so much of the part in who Framed Roger Rabbit when Christopher Lloyd, like, melts into waxy blood and stuff. It scared the shit out of me when I was a kid, but I, it's, it's just like Christopher Lloyd screams for like 30 seconds. It's amazing.

I love it. So good.

Yeah, that was, it was fun to just get a message out of nowhere. Hey, I need like a minute or like 30 seconds of you screaming and be like, okay, sure.

Yeah, I got you. Don't worry about it.

Yeah.

What a great time to be in an apartment. So I'm sure the downstairs neighbor was like, what is going on?

Everything's normal up there, I'm sure.

Yeah. So adventures in narration land. I would love to regale you to this ridiculous story. So I'm a huge proponent, obviously, of own voices when it comes to narration, and I Get really annoyed when I hear, well, specifically white people doing accents for characters that are, you know, indigenous or basically anything that's not white. And some, some, some narrators are very good, like my coach, Joe Leslie. He, he brings a very, like, thoughtfulness and a very, like, he honors like, the, the traditions. And he, he works very, very hard to sound authentic. And that's what I try to do. Make all of my accents as authentic as I possibly can. Because you can very easily switch into caricatures of stuff, and that's just awful. And I hate hearing that. So the book that I'm narrating right now has a whole bunch of people with Portuguese accents, and I can do a very basic Portuguese accent. Like, really just if it's a couple lines in a book, absolutely I can do that. But there are three characters in this book that have more than a thousand words of dialogue and they all have different versions of Portuguese accents. And one of them has like, mishmash mashing of lots of different accents that are in the Rio and Brazil area.

Yeah.

And I was like, I, I can't do this. This is too much. And so I went to the author who is also the head of the publishing company, thank goodness, and was like, we got to get. Yeah, we got to get somebody in here who can do Portuguese. We got to get like an actual, like, Portuguese person or at the very, very least a Hispanic descent. Something Latinos. And so I. So when I got the go to do that, I went to every single one of my narration groups, every single one of my narration channels. I went everywhere that I knew to go, and I asked everybody that I could think of, and nobody knows anybody who is 1 Portuguese, 2 Hispanic, but available. It was incredible. Like, everybody was like, oh, so and so could probably do it. And I'm like, they are Asian. What are.

They are.

What are you talking about, Highlander? What are you. Just because they don't have white skin does not mean that they can do every brown skinned person's accent. Oh, my God.

So frustrating.

And so after asking around, did you.

End up finding anybody?

Yes. So I had to, I had to lower myself to go and go to Fiverr, which is just. I can't believe I just said those words. But I had to, I had to go to Fiverr because I literally couldn't find anybody. I even went to like, ACX and like, looked through, like, the accents and stuff, but everybody's like, already on projects and stuff. So Fiverr. At least I knew I could find somebody that would be available and So I messaged a couple people and all of them read for the author, and they were all really fantastic. And the guy that. That they chose is. Is very good. I'm very, very excited for him to do the stuff. But we've had, like, so many contract things because Fiverr doesn't let you start the project until you pay for it. But narration work usually doesn't. You don't pay for narration work until it's over because you got to have the time. Like.

Yeah.

So it's just been weeks and weeks and weeks of, like, trying to. It's like maybe 3,000 words out of the book, which is like a very small chunk, but it's very, very important. And it's. And thank God this dude is really nice and, like, is willing to work with us because holy shit, I hate Fiverr so much. Oh, my God, what a nightmare. I want to burn it down. But at the same time, at the same time, though, people like Caesar, the guy that we hired, is getting jobs. So I guess it's good.

It's doing something, but, like, at what cost? Jesus Christ.

But I'm just.

I'm so over.

I'm so over, like, doing this book. I want it to be done and I want it to be out there for people to listen to because I just. I can't stand it anymore. Which makes me sad.

Right.

Which makes me sad because the book is very, very good and it's very sweet and it's very uplifting. It's a trans centric book and there's a lot of representation of a lot of different things. And so it's a great book. I'm just so tired of doing it.

It's just been fighting you tooth and nail to get it done. Oh, that's the worst.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, you know what? Props to you, though, for sticking it out and being like, let's not settle. I'm not doing these accents. We need to get someone qualified and really sticking out that procedure, even though it was a complete uphill battle the entire time.

Yeah, I could do those accents and it would be fucking terrible.

I. Well, it's out of respect for the source material and for, I imagine, the author and their intent to be like, we should really get someone who knows what they're doing.

Yeah, no, it's. When it's. It says something to. Especially that it, like, when it's hard doing it anyway. That really is a feather in your cap that, like, you didn't dip out when they got frustrated.

Yeah. Never mind.

This is too complicated.

The number, the number of people I've heard of. Like, well, I tried. That's as much as you're getting. Like, no, you did it.

You.

You've.

Yeah, yeah, that's great. Yeah. Sorry that was such a headache though. But yeah, I've heard nothing but horror stories with them.

Oh, my God.

It's going to be really awesome when it's done because it's one of those where through it, obviously I want to murder somebody, but when it's done and it's out there in the world for people to listen to, it's going to be great. It's going to be so good. And I'll be very, very proud to be like, yeah, I was on that project. That was me.

So that's awesome.

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay, cool.

Sure. I do have a quick question for both of you.

Please do.

This is a brainstorming thing that maybe your two brains can help me with, so.

Oh, yeah, by all means.

There are two. And maybe Sam, you already have ideas about this and I just haven't heard them yet. But there are these two like, like henchmen characters in this episode of Azan west, who they run into in the, like, scrapyard. And I was racking my brain to think of what funny henchmen names I could do because I love a good pair of funny henchmen name names. And I was like, okay, so if I name one guy Jerry, I feel like the other guy's name should be one. A one syllable name that's not Tom or Ben, but like something like that to give you the cadence of Tom and Jerry. But it's not Tom and Jerry. I end up with Rob, which is sort of a placeholder. If anyone could think of a better one, I'm all ears. This is a.

This is a very. This is a not what you asked for.

That's fine.

But I, I love character pair pairing of character names where you have one that's relatively normal and then one that's like just a fucking bonkers one. It's just wild. And I'm also a huge sucker for using other English words as character names. Just being like, yeah, this character's name.

Name is Truck or whatever.

Yeah, yeah, Truck. Or like, you know, Truck Shepherd. Yeah, like one of my. One of my, like on Questionable Contents, one of my favorite characters is like Evanescent. What's the name of the full character?

I'm so out of date with Questionable Content. I don't know who you're talking about. It's like, well, there's a bubble it's got questionable content.

Also, a name that's short. That is not a normal name. That. Yeah. Evanescent Incinerator. Is the character's full name.

Beautiful.

They call her Evan, which is just.

Such a good name. Yeah. I do love it when like I had a tabletop character once named Rosie Jones, but her full name was Rosary. Rosary Jones. Rosary Jones to Rosie, I think gets fun when the full name is not an expected name.

So wait, what can. What can. What could be a short for Jerry? Like what? Or I'm sorry, what could be long for Jerry? What? What's. What's.

What could Jerry be.

Yeah, that would be a really strange word.

And I've spelled it Sci fi stupid, like J A, R, R, Y, which doesn't fucking matter in an audio context, but you know, just for flavor purposes on the paper. So I'm like, okay, wait, you could.

Go biblical like Jeremiah, Jericho or something. People just call him Jerry.

People call him Jerry? Yeah, like some, some crazy long name I think would be very funny to shorten. And then, you know, maybe it never fucking comes up. But it's a good joke for me and Sam that we laugh about.

Oh yeah, yeah.

Funny thing about audio drama, when you have like a visual pun on the paper and then you're like, wait, nobody will know that this is here because they cannot see it with their eyeballs.

I want to say, I want to say Germinate is pretty good. Or honestly, just like there's some good things with Germ too. Like.

Germ.

Yeah, germophile. Germaphobeautiful baby boy.

Like it's not even his name. Like he has a name and. But nobody knows it. But he's a germaphobe. And so people. Germaphir something something, and it's shortened to Jerry. Like you could really do whatever you wanted.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll have to think about that. Like, that's a good point. Like it could be a whole long story about how this nickname came to be. And it could have nothing to do with his God given name.

And somebody could ask him. They could be like, so what did they call you? And you know, he could tell the story.

It's also. Or, or it's also very funny to have the story in your back pocket, but then never tell it where, like it comes up and like it's. You're telegraphing that you're going to sell the story and then they're just like, you just don't. My name is Germaphile.

That is promotional Content when the episodes are releasing, and you're like, I need a fun fact about this episode. Oh, I know. So remember Jerry?

Yep.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay, cool. I'll think on that.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay, cool. And then I actually. I did think of something I would love to run past y', all, which is that I'm starting to think about one thing that has been at the back of my mind as I've been thinking about the sound design for It Takes a Wolf is this is a series that could benefit from music, like background music underneath the action, at least at certain points. And I have found in the past, I always end up going to, like, the licensed generic sound libraries that are out there, which you end up with some, like. It's like, not any particular music, but it's just kind of like, you know, this is a sort of vaguely jazzy sounding thing, but it's not like a song that like.

Or this is elevator music or whatever, basically.

And it does have a. Yeah, that was. The thing is, it does have a certain elevator music quality to it. That being said, that's also, like, where I've got our theme music for this show, which I think is pretty good.

Yeah, it works. It's great.

One of the better ones. But there are also licensing services out there that will license, like, for real music. Like, you. I could go get some.

Like, you can get some needle drops in here.

Stuff. Like, there's real. There's real music you can go get. And I am exploring that. And in my. In a perfect world, what you do is you go into one of those licensing music things, and you find a really banger song that nobody knows that's like. So that there aren't associations. But I'm curious if you had thoughts about. If you heard. You're listening to an audio drama and you hear a song like that, you know, like something that is recognizable. Does that seem distracting off the top of your. Like, with that something you'd be like, oh, that takes me out of it. Because now I'm hearing, you know, if you heard, you know, you know, a famous song, you know, you certainly heard, like, an instrumental version of. I don't know. I'm. I'm having a hard time remembering good songs right now, but.

Like Closer by the Nine Inch Nails. Yeah. Any song. Yeah, No, I think, like, I haven't had this happen, so I'm trying to think how I would feel about it, because it's very rare for. Okay. At least I haven't heard as many podcasts as many people have, like, Narrative podcasts, the ones that I have listened to, I don't think have a lot of licensed music in them. So I'm like, I don't know.

So.

Okay.

I can't actually think of any podcasts that do that, but I have watched Bridgerton, and Bridgerton is a great period drama that suddenly has a random fucking, like, now Times song played by a string quartet, and it takes me out every time. Every fucking time.

It's Night's Tale all over again.

Yeah, I'll be. I'll be now. Well, Knights Tale is a different story, but, yeah, it's.

It's genre specific.

Yeah, I will be in the story, and I'll be thinking about how annoying this main dude is because they're always assholes.

They're always annoying.

I'll be looking at the beautiful dresses, the amazing costumes. I'm like, wow, this is so cool. And then fucking. What even was it. It was like. Was it Adele something? It was like, Adele.

Yeah, they do that in that show.

And I was like, what the hell is going on right now?

Where am I? What's happening? Because I think there are cases where you want the anachronistic needle drop, like Ella Enchanted. The movie. Ella Enchanted has some fucking incredible like. Like, musical numbers that are just, like, so funny and, like, so appropriate for that moment. But it's. Because the whole tone of the film is that way.

And like Kubo and the two strings famously uses. I think it's While my guitar gently weeps.

Yes.

But it's a. It's played on the. I can't remember the name of the shamisen. I think it is.

Yeah, the shamisen.

Yeah. Which is.

Yeah.

That so works for that.

You have to be so intentional with it, I think, but I think it can be done.

One of my favorite movies growing up as a kid was Lady Hawk. And I don't know, it's been a.

Million years since I.

Lady Hawk. I. I watched that movie a thousand times, and it is so good. It is such a good movie. It is, like, paced really well. The. The. The pining, the. The cinematography, it's all beautiful, but the soundtrack is like 80s synth over, like a fantasy movie, and it takes it out. It.

It likes that.

I kind of think that's fun, though.

It.

It is fun, but if they had a different tone of the. If the. If the movie was like, more on the funny side, it's like a serious movie and it's very, like, sad. And it's really like these two people are like, you know, they can never Be together. They're. They're just. They're together, but they're not together together. And it's so sad. And then you have like, like behind it and I'm like, I can't even.

What's going on?

Oh my God. And when I was like 10, it was awesome. But now I'm like, no, what's happening? So I think, I think you can, you can put in music.

Yeah.

And it can be very well known music, but you have to.

It's a whole other angle to the dangle.

Yeah. You gotta remember that when people are listening. If you're gonna throw in fucking Sabrina Carpenter behind like your, your. It takes a wolf stuff, just make sure that it fits the tone of what you're doing. Yeah, I'm gonna be like, what the.

Hell are you doing, Scott? What the hell? That.

Yeah. My, my. It's funny because from the moment I started thinking about this podcast, I've always heard it with like a horn centric soundtrack in my head. So, you know, sad saxophones and like, you know, wailing trumpets and stuff like that. Very 100, you know, 1940s. Yeah. Jazz is kind of what I'm saying.

That's very fitting for the genre.

That's what I'm talking about. But there are. I mean, like, if you heard like sing. Sing. Sing from which. From like freaking. It's in everything. It's in the mask. I think at some point, like, if you hear that in a thing like that, that particularly well known pieces of music, even if they're genre specific, could be distracting. I think. Yeah. There's no chance that I'm like suddenly gonna put fucking, I don't know, Bone Thugs and harmony in there. Actually, that might be a real fucking.

Really funny. Anyway, now am I. Hold on.

I mean.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, if I had. If I had an unlimited budget, I would just have, you know, a. I would hire a fucking jazz band to like sit there and like do the whole thing. But I'm not gonna be able to. I can't afford that. But I'm able to grab some other stuff. And you can also, you can do some really cool things with. There are various tools now to extract the various instruments from a track. And then you can put in just.

Parts of songs at various stems. Yeah, that's cool.

Which I'm thinking will be a way to get more out of a particular piece of music that you can sort of like use it in parts in various places, which might be very useful.

Deploy a stem here or there where it's Appropriate.

Well, isn't that.

Isn't. I don't know a lot about the music part of sound design because I'm still kind of learning about it right now. But I. I have noticed as a viewer of, you know, my entire life that there's a lot of, like, thematic things that happen with music. So, like, you know, if you have a very specific type of song that happens, like when a specific character does something and you keep having that specific, like, chorus line or whatever, when that specific character is doing something, that's cool. That brings the audience back around.

Yeah.

We love a leitmotif.

Yeah.

For a character. Yeah.

Okay. So I will explore more of that. I've been looking. It was one of the ways that actually got me a little more jazzed to work on it again was I found one of those licensing services, and I started building a playlist of, like, maybe I'll use this, maybe I'll use that. And that was helpful. So I will probably do some more experimenting. Hopefully. Probably I might do a rough cut with music. No sound effects, just music. And see if that works and if I'm going to. If you want to pay. Yeah. It means as a. As a. As a slight aside, it comes back to a conflict that I've been still thinking about, which is that I have lyrics for a theme song.

True.

That I really like. I was originally gonna use it as the outro music, but the longer I live with this, with these lyrics, the more I think this is probably just gonna be the theme, because I think it's good. But, like, the lyrics are very much not jazz lyrics. Like, they are very much like folk pop, basically. Like.

And so the style of you actually listen to in your daily life.

Yeah, yeah. It's meant to be, like, they're written kind of with one person on a guitar. It's not jazzy at all. And it makes me wonder if maybe I should put those back as outro music and then find something else specifically as intro. Because on your outro, you can always be a little bit more. You can range farther in your genre.

That's true.

Only occasionally will you really go afar with that. I'm going to tell a story about my wife now. She very much absolutely loathes the outro music. To the Last Airbender.

Oh, my God. That's really funny. What a specific.

I will grant that the outro music for that show is a bit odd. It's a kind of.

I don't remember it. It's been so long since.

It's kind of Got like a tribal drum thing going on.

Yeah, it's very much the. It sounds like we have a Japanese festival here in Seattle every year, and they do the kind of Tyco drums. Thank you. They do. It kind of sounds like that, actually. Yeah, it sounds a lot like that.

So. But it is kind of not. Maybe not even. Not even genre, but, like, specifically, like, the tone of the show is not quite this outro music. And it comes in very suddenly at the end.

And she's like, oh, what the.

As we were watching, we were doing rewatches, I had to be like, ready there with the, like, next.

With the next episode.

So go ahead.

I already loved your wife so much, Scott. She's so awesome.

She's so awesome. Great job on the wife.

Great work.

Yeah, I. I tricked her snagging that bag.

Well, good luck on your music. I'm very excited to see what you're gonna do. Well, yeah.

Okay. I have one more quick question before you run away. So when you're. I don't. I don't know jack nor shit about audio editing, but what I do, the very small amount of it that I do know is when I was putting together the family band video.

Yeah.

After we were done breathing space, I was like, whoa. I've just now realized that every track you add to the file adds to the. The total volume, so to speak. So, like, if you have many people singing at the same time, you have to turn them all way down or it, like, blows everything out. If you have music under all of your, like, dialogue and sound design and stuff, do you also have to keep in mind you're like, total.

Yes, you do. So there's two things, which is overall volume, and you also want to worry about separation. So, like, the easy thing to do would be on your master track, where all of your stuff comes through together. You can also separate it out into buses and stuff. But, like, if you're on your master track, you can put like a limiter on where. Which is basically like. Imagine a little guy inside of the computer who has his hand on the volume button, and whenever it gets too loud, he just auto turns it down. That's basically what either a limiter or a compressor is. So you could just do that where whenever the volume or the overall volume of all these combined jacks come together, you just turn the volume down so you don't get over the max volume there. But what that does is because that is essentially what a compressor does, that also sort of compresses the music. It makes the loud. The Things in the background, the quieter sounds comparatively loud compared to like your loudest sounds too. Because you want your voices and things like and your sound effects to be nice front and center. But if you have something in the background, well, you've just turned the overall volume down. It can make those other sounds too close. So you have to worry about your, the distance between your background elements. Things like music, if you're talking over music or like ambient noises can also be these problems. If you have really loud ambient noises, it can really muffle everything out. So there is a thing you can do in there called ducking, where you set your various channels up and your various effects such that when, like when a person starts talking, it will turn the volume of the background down specifically.

Right.

So it actually just affects like what other tracks in particular that you're looking for. Um, I sometimes do it on this podcast for our. When the music's coming in and out where just to make it more legible. It's kind of weird. This particular podcast, unlike almost all the other ones I've ever done, especially long running ones, I have never made a template. So all of these, every single episode's arranged by hand and I set all the files and stuff, which is so dumb. I should just have a template. But that means that all of them are slightly different. So sometimes the volume levels are slightly different and sometimes the music comes in and out at different times. And sometimes I don't put an outro on it because I can't be lazy. There are absolute ways to do that. Ducking is a really good way to do it. You can also, and this is just a trick for. It doesn't work so well for music, but does work for sounds, which is that a sound in both of your ears sounds louder than what? Than the same volume, but in one ear. Think of it. You only got coming out of one thing. So if you put something on one channel, even if it's relatively loud, it won't capture the attention the same way.

But it will be directional. Right? Like someone will only.

But it will be directional.

So whatever.

For things like ambience, if you put various ambient sounds kind of around the room, like some of them are in one channel, sometimes they're mixed and they're not all perfectly level. They actually a single. Because you're, when you're doing audio design, drama design, you should always put all, all voices directly in the center. Like never ever pan them one direction or another because you want that to be legible and audible all the time. And so putting it front and center makes it the most attention grabbing part of the audioscape. So you can actually get away with also moving things around to sort of decrease the amount to which they are attention grabbing. And attention.

Well, that feels really immersive too, doesn't it? Because that's how your ears are interpreting sound that are sounds that are hitting your ears in the real world. Like they're coming from different directions and you're not hearing them all like at the same height in front of your ear hole.

I try really hard not to do any of that. Moving around for store 236. Because some people listen on headphones but they only listen on one side with.

One earbud or whatever.

Yeah. So if you only have one earbud in and you have something happening on the, like in the left side and then you have something happening on the right, they're not going to hear that or they're not going to hear it as well. And I didn't want to like limit like that. And the only times that I have stereo at all is the, the intro music and then when they're static when the manager is talking.

That's the only time I wondered about that.

Well, and the, and yeah, that's exactly right. Anything that you want to make sure your audience hears has to be on both channels. Yeah. If you, if it's something that they could miss and it wouldn't be a problem like little drippy noises in the background or something like that or you know like the, a little bit of the wind rustling on one side or the other and you've got something else coming on the other ear that's all like that sort of ambient building that's just sort of going to be heard like at the like subconscious level even. That's totally fine to throw on different channels. But if you want somebody to hear it, it has to be centered. You can only do it equal on both because like Sam said, lots of people just have one earbud in or whatever.

Yeah.

Lots of people also only have hearing in one ear and don't necessarily like. Yeah. So like you. Yeah. If you want people to hear it, it has to be front and center. But yeah, so there, there are definitely ways to get that, get to get to get that separation either through directly adjusting the volume, the, the volume of something or by changing its place in the soundscape. You can also, and I haven't. I've done this sometimes where you can scoop out the vocal range of a sound so you go into your equalizer and you literally lower just the part of the frequency range where the human voice resides. So stuff like sort of between, like above 200 Hz or so is usually a good place to start and then go up to about. About, I don't know, 10, 15, something like that. That's kind of where the bulk of the human voice information is. Is right in there. And if you cut the volume on that section, you can leave the. The base where a lot of human voice isn't information, and you can leave a lot of the high stuff in there at relatively high volumes. But it. Because it's not living in the same space that the voices will. You'll still be able to hear voices over the top of it. Yeah, that doesn't always work, but it can be a trick that you can also get people to do.

Cool. I actually.

Fun fact. I tried ducking on the first episode of Store 236, because as you have listened, there is music through a lot of it. Because there's, like, the store music.

Store music. The store radio.

Yeah. So there's store music going on in a lot of the scenes. And. But when I did ducking for that first episode on my first, like, trial run, it made it sound really weird because I have a filter on the music because I'm trying to make it sound like it's coming out of, like, a tinny little speaker.

Oh, yeah.

A shitty little speaker somewhere.

Exactly. So that with. With the little. With the filter that I have on and all the weird little shit that I've done to the music, putting a. Like, starting the ducking process, it was like. It just sounded so weird in the background. Like it did not work at all. And I was like, okay, well, I guess we're gonna leave it.

Well, we tried that. It didn't work.

That's fine.

But I've been learning a lot of things about music because that's not really ever been a thing that I was doing before. So.

Yeah. Yeah, it's weird. Yeah. It can be where you end up. Ducking can be such a pain in the ass because you have to. Because it. Where it puts the volume leveling in your effects chain dramatically changes how the sound is. So, like, if you. I don't. I have no idea what the setup was for your actual problem there, but if you. You have to put it, like, at the end. So, like, if you had, like, a reverb on it to make it sound like it was kind of far away, then if you do that before the. You do the. If you duck before the reverb goes on. Then it makes a input and it changes what your reverb ends up sounding like. And if you put it after, then it ducks the whole sound and it makes the echo also duck at the same time. Sometimes you want one and sometimes you want the other. It is.

It was so annoying.

It gets so complicated so quickly. Yeah. Effects chains and stuff. Like, you can get. You can get absolutely lost in the weeds there.

I've never been gladder for that to not be my problem. Okay. Anyway, that was really all I. Cool information that doesn't pertain to me.

Yay. It's all good. I'm sure somebody out there will find it useful.

No, some of our listeners will find it useful. But we're so grateful that I have editor friends so that I don't have to worry about these things.

Okay, well, let's set some goals for the next two weeks. It looks like we will be coming back on the 16th for our recording anyway. So for my goal, that means two weeks, I will absolutely have episode one rough cut by then. Number one finished. Number two started. Okay.

Yeah. Bonus goal. Play around with some music.

Yeah.

Yeah. Sam, what would be helpful for. Yes, a treat. What would be helpful for me to do before we meet again because of.

My court right now, though?

Well, because last time we had. We spoke about this, we were like, okay, if I draft through episode three, and then you draft through episode four, and they don't have to happen in chronological order of us doing the work in that way. But it kind of shook out that way anyway because, you know, there's stuff going on. Is there, like, stuff that I can help you with or things that you want me to go back and pick up or things you want me to work ahead on? Or do you want me to just, like, chill while you're reading through that draft?

Okay. So I think what would be super helpful for both of us is I was planning on going through and making an actual, like, document, like a list of all of the, like, terms and names.

Oh, yeah. Dates, Bible, so to speak.

Yes, Basically. And because when I'm writing, I have a lot of, like, looking back and, like, checking stuff and having to go back to as in West. And if we had a, like a Bible for this quote unquote universe, that would be really helpful. And it's really, really difficult for me to find things that I need when it comes to as is stuff.

So I'm sure, yeah.

Go through and make a bible for, well, west stuff.

That would be great.

I definitely need, like, all the little weird pieces of information on AS his side.

Because he has a lot. It's gonna take a lot of little technical.

Yeah, it is. And so we could com. We could just put together a bible of.

Yeah.

Stuff in the universe that would be super helpful for writing 100, because that's. I was gonna do that anyway. I was gonna do that for West. So.

Yeah, you do it for west, and I'll do it for as and we can dump all that stuff into one, like, Google document, or we can find.

Everything if there's anything that you can think of, because all of the unspeakable distance stuff is in the same universe. If you think there's anything, like, partnered information from any of the other episodes that we might potentially use at a later date, that would also be really helpful.

I might go listen through the Francisco episodes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that. That would be so awesome.

Okay, I can do that.

And then I am going to finish reading what Jack sent me last night or this morning.

It was early this morning for being so frill this morning. I'm about to go take a nap right now.

Yeah, you need your sleep. You work so hard. So I'm gonna read through, and I'm going to make notes, and I'm gonna try. I think the next thing that I need to do for my brain is to make the episodes connect together. Cause I can't continue until I have, like, a cohesive of running through all this. Is episode three, right? You gave me three.

Yeah, this is three.

Yeah. I need. I need two to flow into three in a way that doesn't make me anxious. So that's probably what I'm gonna do. On top of finishing the. This. This crazy narration, the due date is the 13th, so I will have it done by the time we get back, so.

Nice.

Oh, also, I was gonna. Really quick. I was gonna say, I think we had talked about episode three opening with a Simmons message, which I did not write because I'm like. I would hate to put words in Simmons's mouth. I want Mike to do that.

Yeah.

So I like.

Nobody's right.

Nobody but Mike.

Nobody can write that but Mike.

No, absolutely. So there's, like, a section at the top of that document that's, like, blank, and then another section that's blank. That's the west message that has to go back to Simmons. So, like, those things right now probably are some of the connective tissue that gets us from 2 to 3. And it's not present right now because those bits have not been written and could not be written by me. So that'll be there at some point, but it's not there right now.

Excellent.

Sounds good. Well, in that case, we will catch the audience back in two weeks. Well, it depends. It takes me like forever to edit these episodes like they have been lately. Then maybe it'll be like a day or two between. Yeah, you know, the next. Who knows?

Anything can happen.

None of you. None of you are my boss. I'm my own boss. Screw you. Bye.

Bye. Bye. It. Sam.