Bedtime Story: "The Young Monk and the Fox" / Kozu to kitsune (Patreon)

This month's Bedtime Story: "The Young Monk and the Fox". This time we just handed the story to Julyan and told him to do what he wanted with the music/sound. 

Below from Richard: 

The three of us have been listening to LeVar Burton Reads, analyzing and taking notes on how this one incredible sound mixer named Brendan Byrnes does his thing. I don't think anyone in podcasting does better than him. He comes from a background in documentary films so he takes a slightly different approach than people who started in public radio.

I'd like to hear people's opinions about this month's story.

- Does the music fit the tone of the scene that's being narrated? It seems it's hard to write music that doesn't draw attention away from the voice over but still fits the mood. I think it goes against Julyan's natural musical instinct. 

- Is the loudness of the music too high or low? (Often depends on how & where you're listening.) 

- Does the music sound like it's in the right place? <-- This is really interesting. There's a kind of grammar to it. There are general rules for when to use/when not to use music. Public radio, FM commercial radio, and documentary people all use slightly different rules. 

- Do the sound effects enhance the story? Are they in the right places? Is there anywhere you expected to hear a sound effect but it wasn't there? If too many are used it sounds cheesy and childish. Getting the right balance is an art. 

- How's the pacing of the voice over? Terrie thinks in general I should slow down the pace a bit with slightly longer pauses. And adding music always requires slowing down the pace. I handed the music-less voiceover to Julyan for him to add music and sound effects, but I think I need to jostle the voice over in a few places as a final step because it sounds rushed sometimes. If there's not enough of a pause, especially between passages that are long because they weren't written with audio storytelling in mind, your brain has trouble keeping up and starts tuning out.

Man, I wish we could afford to hire a coach. Someone who's a real pro at this.

Another sound designer/mixer I idolize is Joel Raabe, who did the sound for Limetown. If you listen to it for the details...holy cow. It's a masterpiece.