Wendy Kheiry
Maren Bertelsen
How to Podcast – Music Intros
Wendy: Okay, so I started recording. So, here’s what I have for the intro. Let me see which one to play. This one. (Guitar and harmonica playing) So, that’s just the music part of it. What it would sound like with talking in it is this. (Guitar and harmonica with Wendy saying ‘Hi, Welcome to Wendy says things, where I am probably going to say some things today.) And then from this part here I would say: “On today’s podcast we have Maren.” And then give the introduction like that through it. So, that this longer part at the end, there would be talking over it. What do you think?
Maren: Mmkay. (pause) I like the part where it goes do-do-do-doodoo-do-do. Like right after you did the intro talking it was like dododododododooodo. I liked that. I liked that part a lot. Where it was just the harmonica and stuff going in, I don’t know, it’s…it reminds me of the Rarnt-roaw. Like less exciting. Like what am I going to be listening to, and uh I don’t know it didn’t give me that little thing, but I did like the doodoodoododododoo. Like that to me says, “Oooo, I’m curious. What’s going to happen here.”
Wendy: That’s good feedback. So, I wrote all of that and played it, and uh, was really proud of it. The piece I wrote was just kind of a project. *sigh*
Maren: I mean, I liked the music. It sounds like something I could hear like when, uh, at the recitals and stuff, for, when I would go at IU, where you would have the more experimental and that kind of deal with the music, or modern. Like those I never knew what I was going to be getting and stuff, so the guitar with the harmonica, I like it. For the opening of the podcast, I’m always looking for the, you know it’s probably a little boring, but I’m looking for the tag melody, that’s going to pull me in.
Wendy: Gotcha
Maren: Almost like a pop thing, which could just be that I have immature taste.
(Laughter)
Wendy: Well, you listen to a lot of podcasts, so I thought it would be good to run it by you, because you listen to them, and you know what you like, and you’ve probably heard a lot of different introductions to them so…
Maren: Check out the ones that like are really virally popular. Serial is one of them. In the Dark. What’s another good one. There’s a bunch of True Crime ones: Case Closed, the AJC the Atlanta Journal Constitution, what’s the name of that one…my shows…where are you? Breakdown, that’s the AJC one. 1619, that’s the podcast they did about slavery in the United States. Theirs is really intense, really deep bases and stuff like that. They tend to be shorter just enough. Just like you did it, they play a little music, just like the music’s pulling you in. The actual thing is so short that it repeats within that whatever tune or whatever they’ve come up with as opposed to one piece of music that may not repeat.
Wendy: Right, I see what you’re saying. So, I can shorten up the harmonica part to maybe do a loop.
Maren: Or maybe repeat whatever you do with the guitar, repeat that with the harmonica.
Wendy: Oooo, okay.
Maren: You know, something like that. Or repeat on the guitar what you do on the harmonica. If that’s even possible. I don’t even know, that seems like it would be a lot harder. (Laughter)
Wendy: It’s not though. I do…I actually…I use…I’ll pull my harmonica out. The fun thing with the harmonica is that you can do a lot of things. So, I’ve used it to…I’ve done harmonica in songs where I’m listening to song that has a horn section, so Ring of Fire by Johnny Cash is one of those. So, it has a trumpet or a horn section in the version that I listen to, and I’ll pull out the harmonica and play it over, along with that.
Maren: I actually really like the idea of utilizing the harmonica in it, because you don’t get that a lot, so like that would be an unusual thing, right?
Wendy: Right. So, what it was is that I did this guitar piece because I was actually just kind of experimenting with a new program that I have and so I was trying to figure out how it worked. I wrote it on the program, so I had a screen up and it had a fretboard, a digital fretboard and I took the mouse and I kind of clicked over it randomly, well in an order, because, you know I play, so I did it really quickly so it launched a bunch of notes into the score, which is what I was trying to see what it would do. It launches them all as just a quarter note, So they all had the same rhythm.
Wendy: So, then I went back through, and I added rhythm. You know I shortened up some, and I lengthened others, and then I added like sometimes I’d…I’d listen to it and then be like with that needs a flat or whatever. But it’s not your typical idea of music doesn’t have a good melody per se.
Maren: Mmhmm.
Wendy: It has a little, kind of like these short little riffs. So, like the doodledoodleloo bit is just a part of that. It doesn’t necessarily go with the rest of it but it’s more of, more of an exercise
Maren: Right. Yeah, it felt more like jazzy or something like that as opposed to…yeah, I’m not a huge jazz fan. I did get that in it, but it is interesting. Like I wonder if you could do it where the…the cadence of it was very similar to how you speak, because it’s like Wendy Says Things so like a musical representation of how you talk
Wendy: So that’s interesting ’cause I do I do a song that I like to play, and I say “song” but I mean I…I play the guitar and I’ll pretend that each string is a person, and then I’ll play it so that they’re having a conversation.
Maren: Ohmygod…that’d be, I mean if you could find like a short clip of within that song then in your show notes, because most of the podcasts that have like show notes, you could link to the full song.
Wendy: True. I should. I haven’t recorded it. The one time I played it I was like, “Oh my gosh I really should be recording this right now,” but I was just kind of kicked back after I think it was after class one night and I was messing around
Maren: And the beautiful thing about the podcast is going to, you know, it’s going to change overtime. It’s going to evolve.
