Audio, especially music, is something you might not always be aware of until someone gets it wrong. Rakz Mathur is an audio professional who has worked for brands and major artists making sure their sound is right. This is his advice for anyone choosing music podcasts or videos.

Listen to this episode if

• You make videos or podcasts
• You want to know how to choose music
• You are a podcaster who wants to raise his or her game

Rakz Mathur (left) in his studio with Steven Lewis

How to choose music for a supermarket on the African plains

When Woolworths needed drum sounds for an ad set in Africa, Rakz Mathur and his team at Signacion were who they called.

Signacion set about experimenting with different drums, coming up with a track that sounds African, even if there are a few latin drums in there somewhere.

Matching music to anything is a skill, especially if the direction doesn t go further than drum sounds , happy , not sad or purple .

So how do you make the sound of purple? I asked Rakz in a great interview for anyone making video or podcasts.

Rakz s podcasting equipment recommendations

Microphones

• Rode NT2K
• Rode NT1-A package

Headphones

• Audio-Technica ATH-M50x

Audio editing software

• Reaper

Podcast transcript

Steven:

Hello and welcome to Talemaking. I m Steven Lewis. This is a show about using the skills of journalism and the art of storytelling to get your message out.

Obviously we re big fans of podcasting as a way to do that. And if you re going to podcast, you re going to need to think about equipment, music and production. Part of telling a story is producing it.

Ordinarily I hate podcasters banging on about equipment and production. If you re listening to a show about marketing, the show should be about marketing, not the podcaster s microphone choice or how hard it was for him and his guest to setup the interview.

This show is an exception because my guest is an audio professional. Rakz Mathur owns Signacion, which combines a recording studio with audio, video and online production.

We talk about how Signacion matches music to video, mood and brand. They do that for clients like Woolworths, as you just heard in the intro.

How, for instance, do you come up with music when the only direction you ve got from the client is that it should sound hopeful or it should sound like purple ?

Rakz gives the answers but before that I m going to ask you to sharpen your ears.

You re listening to me now on an AT2100 microphone, which costs about $60. Professional podcasters tend to recommend the Heil PR 40, which will set you back around $400.

I chose the AT2100 because the reviews were unanimous the sound is nearly as good as the Heil for $60 vs $400.

When I interviewed Rakz I was in his studio in Sydney. You re hearing me now in my office, also in Sydney but with less acoustic treatment. I have thrown up some acoustic foam from Clark s Rubber but, if you read the audio geek websites which I have that s barely a beginning when it comes to sound treatment.

In the interview, I m speaking on a Manley Vox Master. That ll set you back about $5,000 and it s running through some equally expensive kit. Rakz was keen for me to let you know that he s on a cheaper microphone that does not reflect the quality of the studio.

Your challenge is to sit back, listen and see what you think of the difference

How well is audio generally used in storytelling?

Sound is obviously very important to what you do. You tell stories with audio. How do you feel generally, that audio is used? Is it used well, or is it used poorly in your experience? I can imagine if it s your professional area, you are listening all the time, and critiquing all the time what you hear.

Rakz:

Yes, before I got into sound I wouldn t look at an ad on TV and go oh, mm or this is horrible or this is good. Ever since I did get into sound, I would listen to everything, like the team here at Signacion. Like I was saying to you before, every one of them is a musician, in their right creative, and so they think about the things intrinsically and what they create.

For example, one of the guys here, Jeff, who you ve met, he is a stickler in the lyrical side of things. He ll be analyzing lyrics at any stage. If it s a pop lyric, he ll be like this is horrible, this is a benial piece of crap.

Steven:

He s analyzing the words as opposed to the quality of

Rakz:

Yes.

Steven:

Right. OK.

Rakz:

For me, I m listening to the full sonic production. I m listening to how the words work, how the music is working, what the video is doing. Is it matching from the mood that it s meant to be like. Is it matching the brand that it s meant to be?

A lot of times you ll find these days it s also very cultural and very based on the time of the season, very seasonal. You have a cycle where there s hippie acoustic pop music going on everything. Then you might come to winter and Dubstep s in, let s just put Dubstep in the track. It might not even work.

Steven:

Yes.

Rakz:

That s the

How do agencies brief a sound designer?

Steven:

What is the definition then? What do they come to you with and say, Rakz, give me the sound that goes with that. What is the product that they arrive with?

Rakz:

Generally, they brief us on the creative. This is what the video is doing. For example, Woolworths had a safari theme that they wanted to embed. We want natural organic-sounding African drums. I was like Why African drums ? They were like It s an African safari sound. I m like OK, what about Latin percussion? How s that going to work ? That embodies a feeling as well.

Essentially they gave us a piece of video. There s only three of us working on that piece. We got drums of all styles, of all different countries, and started playing it in, started programming some stuff with sequences and sounds that we had built.

Steven:

When you say that you brought the drums in, you don t mean you brought in a drummer with different drums. You had some prerecorded drum sounds?

Rakz:

No. For example, that drum over there, which I m pointing to, a New Caledonian djembe, we have different live drums that we brought in and we played them in, recorded them. There was others which we have sample libraries, or library sounds that are already preprogrammed. We play them in and then we combine the two to get the best sounding piece.

For that piece, it was interesting because the creative director sets the mood board. They set the sonic direction. We re meant to bring their vision to life.

Steven:

In that case, sonic direction is drums, that was African drums is what they say and that s what you mean by sonic direction.

Rakz:

Yes, correct.

Steven:

Which drum prevails?

Rakz:

We used a series of jungjung and djembes, which are 26 inches, and then we used the small New Caledonian drums and a set of tympanies to give the melodic dun-dun-dun-dun-dun right at the end. There was a little bit of argument about what s the sound that was going in to get the sting.

At the end of the day it was a very African sound that came out, more than Latin, although we did put congas and bongos in there to give it the West African feel, and a bit of a Latin swing on it.

Steven:

Do you think people would be surprised by the idea that Woolworths I can t recall the ad. Is that bad for Woolworths? would be surprised that it isn t somebody going to some stock music thing and download African sound 42A. It s actually a group of grown-ups in a room going bum-bum-bump. How does this one sound? Does this one say Woolies or does this one say Woolies?

Rakz:

Sound is such an afterthought and you ve actually hit the nail on the head because that was the direction they were heading. This is the African, this is Woolies. We re going to do that, to go stock sounds.

It was just me being at the right place at the right time saying why would you do that? That s not creative at all and getting that brief into saying give me a crack at it and I ll give you a bespoke sonic, branding piece for woolies.

It s a creative s wet dream to be able to have a composition to done for the price of stock audio. It wasn t as saturated stock audio but for the advertising agency they have a lot more budget than massive music which is like a $100.

Nonetheless, creative ideas is what agencies do well. Coming up with the ideas and the first time I have seen where the creative director from the advertising agency, the production house, which is a video agency with a 3D render place and the music composition which is us. We are all working together in the same session to actually have that.

So, yes steering at a way, bringing that knowledge, hang on a second. You need bespoke and then working together to making sure that we get the best sound. That s what we did on the piece. I m really actually happy with that.

It s one of those pieces that you sit there and you think about the brief, you think about the story that the ad was telling and we hit it.

How vague can sonic direction be?

Steven:

In that case, certainly from a non-musical person s point of view, that seems to quite nicely narrow it down. The sonic direction, their African drums, it gave you something to start with. Do brands ever come to you with much broader thing? Here s a video clip, the mood is sad, the mood is happy. Go and find the music that fits it.

Rakz:

Sometimes we ve been given colors, Chris knows how to work with that as well. Chris is our audio engineer. He has sometimes been told, I wanted to make it sound a bit more purple. That is not even a joke.

We want it to embody hope. We don t know what we want but we really want it to not be too depressing. Like the crescendo needs to come down, it needs to be major or minor but really more, needs to be hope filled with love and filled with emotions and fluffy fairies flying all around.

Steven:

As an audio person, when somebody says hope filled with love, you hearing in your head right, that s ukulele with a little bit of flute underneath. What do you hear? How do you translate that?

Rakz:

So, it goes through. It s not just me, so I m lucky to have a really solid set of composers behind me that we can jam together and create something. I normally say to the guys, I normally sit down with the guys. Joel, Chris, Jeff and Daniel and myself.

We ll sit there and we ll work out, and Allen, and we ll work out, you guys go, comeback with something that hits the brief conceptually thirty second loop.

Which doesn t take long to do. Then we ll sit down, compare saying what s the closest and how it works, and is it melodically sound? Is it hitting what we re doing? What can we improve?

It s so hard to generically say hope equals ukulele. It s not formal at it. It s more a case of, if that piece of music or if that school translate to that expression and it allows us to feel that, resonates with that, then we ve hit the brief. Otherwise it s a piece of shit.

Is there a lot of mismatch between content and music?

Steven:

Now, you have not heard the music that I have chosen for my podcasts, so, nothing you say is going to insult me because you haven t heard it. You can insult me afterward when I post produce this and that s what you get. [laughs]

I found it drove me crazy, after a while I was in iStock Audio. Look, I don t know. I need a piece of music, this sound quite nice, I downloaded some of the demos, ran them under the sound and thought I actually don t like that.

I ve said to you before, I ve listened this podcast where they have a really nice piece of music that finishes things out. But, to my mind it has nothing to do with it. It would be like having a podcast about needlework that ends with the Marlboro music. The two things that are totally unconnected.

Do you hear a lot of that?

Rakz:

Yeah, a lot of it. Especially in a entrepreneur space. It s a interesting one because you can just hear the lack of thought that goes into picking the music.

Steven:

Because they just want something thrusting and energetic.

Rakz:

Well it s not just that. It s just that they think that they know what the sound should be. It s cool because subjective, right? They ll be like, No, I think it s really cool. Sometimes the saying is client s always right. Musically if they don t know, they don t know.

Even for example, I can t mention the name but there was this specific group that we are currently working on, building their intro, outro.

Steven:

For a podcast?

Rakz:

For a podcast.

Steven:

For a speech audio?

Rakz:

Exactly for that. They have given us stock music, and they re saying we want you to customize it. We want to be able to take the stock music and build an edit on top, or on behind what we need to do to make it more bespoke for them.

We also do search and placement. It s not like we don t use stock fully for Lisa Messenger and the Renegade Collective, we use stock music. I know Jeff and I believe Daniel painstakingly went through stock libraries to find something and worked with them very intrinsically to get the sound that they wanted.

Also there s a lot to be done in post. Sometimes take a piece of audio chop, screw, edit it so it sounds completely different to what we pulled from the stock. Now, I m not saying that we should do that legally because the licensing doesn t allow us to make adaptions. That s copyright law. But sometimes, you get swayed.

Steven:

Your artistic mood takes over. What do you think the effect on the listener is? I mean, I ve been podcasting for a long time. As you say, it s subjective. There are a couple of things that get to me. One is, I ve already said, people want to talk about their equipment when there s a reason, when you turn on ABC radio you don t listen, Richard Dawkins is not talking to you about his equipment, even if it s running hot that day or whatever.

The other thing is people assume the persona of an FM radio presenter as soon as they decide they re going to do a podcast, they re going to get a mic, suddenly they are Screaming Bob or whatever in the morning.

The other thing is this sort of disconnect between them and their music. How do you coach somebody into do they just hear it? When you re working with someone, do they hear it when you give them something better?

Rakz:

Yeah, it s hard to say that this is how we coach and this is how we develop our clients into being able to get better music for their intro, outros. It s really about showing value in what we do, providing them bespoke music is always a better option because they feel that they re part of their creativeness and part of their brand as opposed to something that they had to search and place.

Bespoke music doesn t have to be more expensive

It s a misconception that bespoke music has to be more expensive. There s ways to do it smart and efficiently. Generally speaking you ll be able to hear the difference because of the single word, resonate because the music resonates with the client because they were involved in it s making. It s a creation of something new for them, for their brand. They are able to say it s working or not working.

It s not a piece that you could do conversion rate on, but potentially it is. If you see your listeners engaging and spiking based on the fact that that you re changing music. That could be a valid wave basis of putting a benchmark on maybe this is the kind of sound my people listen to. And also knowing who your crowd is. If you re putting dub step on your intro, outro and your talking about financial crisis and your audience is 35 or

Steven:

But that s it. If you got one of these podcasts, you want to assume one of the morning zoo FM radio personalities how do you explain to them that you are a classical music personality in wanna-be rock star package that actually that s not fitting to you?

Rakz:

That s a hard one to convince those guys but market research is the key, showing them what the competition is doing, what the successful subscription rates are, what kind of music their guys are doing for similar content if not better. Why these things are happening times and what kinds of music and sound is playing in that space. Then packaging it in a way that makes them think OK, cool what I m thinking might not be exactly what I need to be in and that s a disconnect that we need to close.

Just arriving to that it can be an easy conversation as well, what s your competition doing, what sort of music, has your podcast subscription gotten more than 200,000 listeners? If not, why not? Is it because your content s horrible? Probably not. Is it because you re running like a tuk-tuk track and you should be just having some ambient jazz behind it? Maybe. [laughs]

What s the process of working with a music designer on a podcast?

Steven:

If somebody comes to you and says like, I m starting a podcast, I m hoping to getting to 200,000 downloads. What s the process of working with you? How does it start?

Rakz:

It s all about what you re trying to sell rather what you re trying to say. Your story is important to us. It s your script, right? That s really a key part. If your podcast like any kind of advertising if it s all sell, sell, sell with no brand, no value, there s no point.

If you re adding value onto them that s the point, that s why people want you, free downloads, resources to accompany them, places where it s not just always apparent as a lead funnel. Those are things that attract me. Now, having said that, have I ever created a podcast for myself? No. Have I ever tried to go out and sell? No. Have I ever done any of that stuff out of marketing at all? No.

What I have done is being able to equip people to express themselves credibly. That s the ethos and value of my life and that s what I say to anyone. If you can empower people in your podcast, in your website, in your print then you ll have more visible return on an investment. I think it s really a case of the process of what points do you add value.

For example, our video framework is straightforward. The first video that you do is a two minutes who you are and what you do. Second video is probably a credibility peace, testimonials from your client, three of them. Then you do twelve videos afterwards which is something that they need to learn, something that you can give away.

That is where your lead happens because once you establish who you are, what you do, then you establish credibility, then you establish value adding to your clients they generally don t have the time to do all that stuff, so they come back to credibility then back into true lead.

Same thing with the podcast. Is it accompanying a video? Is it accompanying a site? Is there a script? Are you doing an article? If you re doing all the above it makes sense to do it properly. That is where we look at it and going, OK what are your complementary assets?

We haven t had an opportunity to record many podcasts to be honest with you. We do a lot of more sound and creative song mix. If I was putting my mind towards creating a podcasting package I will look at how the script writing is working, what they re thinking in terms of music selection, intro-outro.

What they re thinking in terms of content and would really tie it in with Daniel and the guys to be able to look at it from a creative perspective if it matches up mood boarding. One of the most understated piece of modeling collectual brand guideline to see what the brand is visually and then make sure that the audio and the writing and the tone of voice all matches up. If a brand has all of that or a couple

How music fits with corporate branding

Steven:

That s an interesting point in terms of branding because you ve already said that people come and talk to you in terms of, I want to be more purple. Their brand guideline says that they re purple and presumably they want music that is in line with being purple.

If my brand guideline says that my colors are gray and orange and my logo is this, the logo should never be less than two centimeters from the edge of the paper. How does that translate into music?

Rakz:

Well, it s all about matching the sound with the mood because you can t get to the well I have never seen a brand guideline says you cannot use any oboes in your production. Generally the tone of voice of a brand is a document that determines the final sound, the speak, the way the brand is portrayed and perceived by the public.

The tone of voice normally says, for example, a brand that I ve worked with says energetic but enthusiastic we take that and we convert that into a sound. Another brand might say, hopeful but edgy and we take that and turn it into a sound. Ours is edgy yet premium. In everything that we do we take that cutting line edge and make sure that is premium.

Steven:

Do you have a sound that goes with that?

Rakz:

Yes.

Steven:

Music measure have a Signacion sound?

Rakz:

Yeah.

Steven:

Describe it for me.

Rakz:

That s an interesting one. It s whatever is relevant currently to our market. For example, some of our videos. We have three pillars; studios, media and music. Our studios caters to public that are coming and renting the studio to work with music.

That s more what is current in pop. It could be dub step, could be edgy style music which is like folk with a little bit of edge on it. Our media is more corporate, so that sort of sound is a little bit more polish, it s a bit more refined, it s more guitar and piano driven classical. Not classical, rather more contemporary.

Then our music is hip-hop. We will have a hard dark hip-hop sounds. In our video templates we have approximately 10 different songs and sounds that we use, and each one of the talks to an audience or talks to the content that we are creating.

Steven:

When you say a video template what do you mean by your video templates?

Rakz:

We have templates of videos that we put out. If there s a video that we re going to edit, we try to minimize it for that half templates in which we can shoot and then pop stuff in like all the footage that we ve done. We have fades and all that kind of stuff that are consistent and the sound that we ve got on that depends on what we re shooting.

We put all of that together, select the music based on what Daniel feels at the time, as Daniel is the creative director, feels at the time, so the right sounds and the right audience and the right product to market and he fits it in and he goes, This is the sound I want.

One of the names of those tracks would be dark, edgy, ambient, hip-hop 192 BPM, right?

Steven:

Right. OK.

Rakz:

It just completely depends. We ve gone through and specifically categorized 10 for our templates but that s the kind of rigor that we want to do.

Steven:

When you say your templates, it s a video that you shoot for yourself?

Rakz:

Yeah.

Steven:

You really have gone to the level of branding. It almost sounds to me like in terms of your video you ve thought about sound before you have actually would that make the difference between you for instance as an audio person and people who are in other disciplines that you ve started with the sound and then you work out from there because I can t imagine many people go that way.

Rakz:

No, I think it wasn t the approach we took. We are good at sound. We were in a position to be able to say we have 840 songs that we can use, and we have difference situations where we can put in any video that we shoot. When we created our templates, Jeff went through meticulously time matching everything and he said to me, I needed a tempo with this, we need different ranges of tempo.

Then we sat down the three of us, Jeff, Daniel and myself and picked out those tracks. I specifically asked them what feel do you want, what mood do you want? Then found one of our bespoke compositions to match it. We also work like a set with multiple composers and that really helps to add to our catalog.

We use the approach of a sound being built on top of visuals because like I said music to people is an afterthought, its called post. We all know the terminology for it, but having the ability to turn off a layer in a sound file which we do it just changes the scape of the bespoke of what we re creating.

If it s dark and hip-hop, Jeff said to me, Turn off that part. I said, No, I don t want to turn it off because it s subjective. We have the ability to customize even that on our template level.

Steven:

I often think when you go to a pub and they re playing music, somebody is in there doing live music. I go to pubs because I want to talk to the person that I am with and therefore I want background noise. The guy performing doesn t want to be background noise.

He wants to play like he s playing an arena and often finds that sort of tensions between the punters who has just gone in for a drink and the ambience. Do you find with composers that sometimes do they have a problem doing background music because they want their music to be the hero of the piece or for a composer is it perfectly OK to do?

Rakz:

I really don t care what they want to be honest [laughs] . No, that s not true. I think it s all about, a composer is all about creating a story for a particular mood or, for example, a video or a screen. You either have a long form or a short form in terms of we ve had composers that do stuff for film, Zima being one of my favorites.

Then you have guys who do stuff for advertising. People also venture into ads and then they also venture into presentations. For a composer, it s a piece of, they get a sense of filming when they create.

Can music be too dominant in a story?

Steven:

From an overall production point of view do you think it s possible? I m thinking of a company that I worked for that made TV commercials. The music was fantastic and what was always interesting to me was when people in the company were discussing the ads, the music was all they can talk about. Which from the company s point of view they weren t selling music they weren t a music company they were selling a product.

Nobody could remember what the product was, the features of the product, benefits of the product, but they remembered how much they loved the music, everybody would have loved an MP3 of the music. Do you think it s a creative and say the people make sometimes that the music it s too dominant. Can you go too far with the music?

Rakz:

Absolutely. When I was younger my family used to tell me too much of everything is not good. Burgers found me so that didn t work, but at the same time, yes. As much as I love the music and as much as I think that you can over craft, it s really important to find the balance for what you re doing it for.

When it is for an artist you can t muddy the mix with too many instrumentations because the voice needs to shine and the mix down seems to be that. When it s for an ad that s like straight sell, buy, buy, buy, buy, buy. It s the vocal mix that really helps get their message across. When it s for a blend of a brand piece or it s a brand awareness, it s both.

It s the constant tension between those two in the mix who where the voice over comes in versus where the music is versus where the lens varies in the cinematography. Because every one of those guys, every one of those guys wants to come first in that race, but it s a three-legged race where everyone should be running together.

Steven:

More and more people now are, thinking about podcasts it s obviously you go and you buy a microphone and you set up and hire them and suddenly you re producing radio. Anybody who s got a DSLR camera has probably got a great video set-up and more and more people are shooting video.

To take that to the next level comes the quality of the audio and also the introduction of music. What advice would you give to those people whereas they start to dabble in matching what they are producing to music?

Rakz:

My advice would be really invest in an audio interface which has a preamp built into it. Really invest in a mic which is a bit decent. Sixty dollar mics are good to start off with but save up your money and get a Rode NTK or NT1-A, there s a pack that Rode comes out with, and Rode if you hear this you should be paying me.

Really invest in that, and invest in a piece of software that allows you to cut and edit audio, and do a lot more with plug-ins like compression and all that kind of stuff. My recommendation is, if you re on a budget, you can buy a software called Reaper.

The demo is free for 30 days but after 30 days you just have to wait 25 seconds and then it will enable the demo or you pay them $65 and it s a professional grade piece of equipment just like Pro Tools but much lighter on your processing.

The reason I ve said those things, plus a really good set of headphones, I really personally say stay away from Beats By Dre because they re junk, that they cost $17 to make and they charge $400 for. Stay away from anything fancy, the M50s, I think they re about 100 and something dollars, I can t remember.

Check out Billy Hydes or Turramurra Music if you re in the North Shore area. Buy those pieces of equipment, link it to your laptop and then mess around with plug-ins. Learn about what works with your voice. Once you have a decent signal chain in these softwares, save that as a template, that same channel strip as a template, because once you start doing that it s about consistency and delivery of that.

Save all your projects as templates because it makes your time easier and your dollar productive time much more efficient.

Steven:

Rakz, thank you so much for letting me talk into a $5000 microphone today, apart from anything.

Rakz:

It s all good now. Thank you very much for coming and I really appreciate it. This is the first podcast I ve been on. I ve been on an article somewhere before called Bond for your Boss, but that was a long, long time ago when I was a little bit younger, so I was just feeding my ego. I m really happy that I could come in and help.

Steven:

Thank you.

That was Rakz Mathur of Signacion. You can find more about the studio and their production services at Signacion.com. Link in the show notes of course.

You ve been listening to Talemaking with me Steven Lewis. You can find more episodes at Taleist.com. You ll also find a link there to the podcasting equipment we use. That s in our subscriber library. Access is free when you join the mailing list. So please visit Taleist.com and do that right now.

Until the next story. Thanks for listening.

The post The sound of purple: How to choose music for a video or podcast appeared first on Taleist.