I got the pleasure of working with mate and Echuca's very own local Yorta Yorta hip hop artist Ryan D, and we explored the story behind the song YYB aka Yorta Yorta Boys.
The podcast focused on the story behind his song YYB which has become a personal favourite of DJ NATDOG, we are going to do a quick breakdown here of how the podcast came to be and what went in to the podcast.
I also did a very very rough BTS Video on my YouTube channel and it's rough because I should have used a screen capture for the editing side of things but I didn't have enough room on my SSD internally to run the capture program of my choice, but I have since upgraded to running a Dual SSD internally on my system.
How did the podcast collaboration happen? For those of you who don't know I am studying a Diploma in Music Industry Sound Production online and we needed to record a podcast for the course so I opted to have a chat with Ryan D and see if he was game and he was keen as beans, so I started to muddle through the logistics and the actual script and recording plans for the podcast and work out how this thing would actually get recorded considering we were in one of the toughest lockdowns that we had seen in regional moving in to the stage 4.
What Equipment was used: To record the podcast, I recruited the Zoom PodTrak P4 I knew that this was going to be my best and easiest solution to get a mix minus mix and easiest way to capture clean audio. I then used in the Podtrak a Sandisk Extreme Pro 64gb SD card , I will admit that 64GB for a small project was a over kill of SD card to use but also you could have easily got away with rocking a 64GB Ultra or a Sandisk Ultra series card you didn't need to rock a 64GB Extreme Pro. I used a Rode PSA1 boom arm to hold my microphone which was the Sontronics Podcast Pro in red. I then connect my Samsung Galaxy A52 5G to the Podtrak using the 3.5 TRS to TRS cable.
Computer: Well this is where things become a little more complex with the editing I chopped and changed between my systems. I have access to multiple systems that allow me to do very different yet dynamic jobs. My first system was my MAC Mini M1 using dual monitors which are LG 27 inch monitors and then my second system was my Acer Nitro Gaming System running a single LG 32 inch monitor. I think you could have easily done the editing on any computer system capable of running the software you chose to work with, but in my case, I switched between my two setups depending on where I wanted to work. I just had to remember to move the iLok between systems.
Software: Cause of the course focusing on Pro Tools which is the industry all my editing has moved from Presonus Studio One to Pro Tools and the work flow in that is getting quite fast and stream lined but your hidden gem is truly the keyboard shortcuts if you have a understanding of the keyboard shortcuts you can well and truly save time when it comes to editing and mixing and build that muscle memory.
Splice: The slice of life is SPLICE. I have slowly become to recognise how essential Splice has been in my work flow over the last few months and that's some factors of life, Splice is purely where I sourced all my transitions for the actual podcast From the Intro right down to the Outro, if you heard it on the PODCAST as a transition it came from the Splice library of samples. I never realised how much a library like this will be a credit to my resources when it came to working with stuff.
Final Thoughts: I think going forward any episodes of the DJ NATDOG PODCAST will sound a lot more polished. I learned a lot from doing this podcast and I pushed a ton of boundaries when it came to the production of the podcast, this went so far out side of my comfort zone it was a good out of the comfort zone though. I think that working on this podcast helped both my self personally and also Ryan as it allowed Ryan D to come out of his shell and speak about his music and what YYB meant to him going forward and what we could except from Ryan D.