Quiet Burrow 006
My eldest daughter Isla and I have been making a quarterly radio show called the Quiet Burrow since the turn of last year. Isla is 7 years old and enjoys art, nature and learning so these shows are a chance for us to get creative together, always based loosely around Ambient music.
In this show, we decided to record a vinyl DJ mix - after all, I have plenty of records to choose from! I'd shown Isla the gist of how tracks are blended together into a mix on an app on my phone (more about that below), and she's seen how music can be arranged in a DAW when we make these shows. I thought she could have a go at mixing vinyl records and I was also curious to know what someone of her generation thinks about vinyl, as someone more used to having her favourite pop songs available on-demand via the Alexa. You can learn all about this exercise below whilst you listen - and all the photos beneath the tracklist were staged by Isla before we recorded the mix!
Hit play on the Mixcloud player below to listen to the show, once again featuring cover artwork of our signature bunny, from photographer Bob Burnett.
We hope you enjoy the show...
Tracklist
01 Aus & The Humble Bee - I Follow a Barren Path Across the Old Mountain
02 Penguin Cafe - The Life of an Emperor
03 Glåsbird - South Fen Pine
04 Greg Foat & Gigi Masin - Dolphin
05 Aus & The Humble Bee - The Mulberry and the Stone
06 N Kramer & Magnus Bang Olsen - Limbic Fresco
07 Penguin Cafe - Chapter
08 Green-House - Sun Dogs
THE PREPARATION
The starting point of the idea for this show came about whilst my youngest Emily was in hospital. Isla and I had some time to kill whilst we awaited her discharge, We had the obligatory ice cream from McDonalds, wandered around the shops and I'd bought her a small sketch book. She sat doodling in the car and we listened to some music. I asked her what we should do for the next Quiet Burrow - we weren't sure, but she was enjoying some of the tracks I was playing. I was sort of 'playing DJ' for her, picking Ambient tracks I either knew she liked, or thought she'd enjoy. Since we had so much time, I loaded the DJ app on my iPhone, which I hadn't used in ages. Isla spotted it and was intrigued - so I showed her how it worked; she had a go at bringing up the faders, a bit of scratching... I explained how it's so much easier to mix digitally; she saw how the sync button kept being automatically applied and asked why I kept turning it off. Then, we had the idea to prepare a set for Isla to mix on the real thing - my Technics turntables!
THE TECHNIQUES
So we gathered together tracks from the albums we'd listened to in the car that evening. I arranged them in an order where the pieces were harmonically compatible, as I thought this might make it easier to transition from one track to the next. I checked it all over on the DJ app and then we did a practice mix on my phone one evening when Emily was at a swimming lesson. We made some notes - some transitions would allow for longer blending, whereas other tracks - particularly those by the Penguin Cafe, start pretty suddenly and needed a different technique. One afternoon when Isla got in from school we gathered the records from our set, Isla arranged them in the lounge for a bit of a photo-shoot for this blog. Then we took to the turntables...
THE MIX
We spend a little time looking at the turntables and mixer; I showed Isla how the controls are broadly the same as the ones she'd seen and used on the app. We had the notebook with us and had a very quick discussion about how for some tracks, Isla could fade in/out slowly and smoothly. Whereas for others, she needed to wait for the outgoing track to go quiet before she brings the next one in. We hit record and realised, it was getting close to tea-time - the pasta bake was cooking in the oven and so, there wasn't time to bodge it up and re-record! I said to Isla, we'd keep the mix, however it went. I told her to relax and not worry, as we'd prepared well and I'd be there to help with the transitions. The first blend went beautifully! For some others, Isla was a little quick on the fader so you'll hear perhaps two sudden drops in volume. She seemed disappointed - but I explained, it won't be a big deal when people listen as it's only a split second, and, we'd likely add in our voiceovers which would help hide it a little. We also tried a famous technique used by vinyl DJs for many years... I saw one of the transitions was noted as 'sudden and tricky', so this method was called for. I asked Isla to turn the power off and we waited for the record to slow to a halt before starting the next one. She wanted to do it again - I think she found it amusing!
THE SHOW
The weekend after we'd recorded our mix, we had just started playing football in the garden when it started to rain. We decided to go indoors and record the voiceovers for this show. We'd made some notes of a few talking points after recording the mix, but Isla persuaded me that the technical information would be better suited here in the blog post. She was right!
It took us quite a while to record the show and as always, things got a bit silly - we were even interrupted by an ice cream van! It had gone before we had chance to flag it down. At the end of the show I wanted to put Isla on the spot to see what she thinks of vinyl. I saw her arranging the sleeves for the photos, and thought how she doesn't tend to spend much time experiencing physical music. So I wondered what she made of it all - and, she seemed pretty indifferent! She did point out some of the pros and cons, as you'll hear in the show. She cares about the environment and knows that records aren't great for it - but she also remembered that streaming isn't great either, which I'd learnt from Adrian Newton of Evergreen Music. Maybe we'll explore this theme another day...
Isla and I will be back before the end of the year with our next episode of Quiet Burrow, so stay tuned!
