The Strange Case Of Starship Iris - Erin Baumann - Fear For The Storm
The piece of music we're listening to in the background is called Fear For The Storm. It's the theme song from The Strange Case of Starship Iris. Today we'll break it down and get into why and how it was made. You're listening to How I Make Music, where audio drama composers get to tell their own stories. In this show, we break apart a song soundtrack or composition from a fiction podcast and take a trip into how it was made. My name is Erin. I'm an audio editor, sound designer (and sometimes vocalist) from San Francisco, and this is How I Make Music. Welcome back to How I Make Music Episode 98 "Fear For The Storm" by Jess Best, S.E. Winters and me, Erin Baumann. Thanks for listening in.1:38 INTROSo Starship Iris is an outer space mystery shows that then evolves into a really great found family romp. All the while, it's still in outer space. Within the world of the podcast, there is a mysterious band called Birdy and the Swan Song. No one has ever seen the lead singer of this band, but they do have a hit song and the song is called Fear For The Storm.2:32 BEDROOM DEMODiegetic music is music that is actually taking place within the world of a story. So stuff you'd hear on the radio, stuff a character like actually sings, things like that. Today, we are going to listen to three versions of Fear For The Storm - a demo version, a full cast singalong, and the third version is fully produced as the theme song. Jessica best - Jess - is the writer of Starship Iris and one of the founding members of the Procyon Podcast Network. She writes songs, so she's the original composer. She was just casting around going "does anyone know a vocalist? I'm just trying to record a demo of the song real quick so we can throw it into an episode." And I was like, "if you just need someone to record a demo, I can bang that out in probably an hour." I recorded that first demo version just sitting in my bedroom, sent it over real quick. They're like "it's great! We're gonna put in an episode" and I was like, "oh, okay, I guess I'll have to listen to my own voice a little longer!"4:16 SINGALONGFear For The Storm started out with this demo version, just me on vocals, just on guitar. And it ramped up from there to - delightfully - a full cast singalong. They all recorded it separately, actually. They were never all in one place. The cast is very widely scattered. They all have lovely voices. We love to hear them. Brittony LeFever, who plays Krejjh and Jamie Price, who plays Brian Jeeter, are both actually vocalists in real life. They were instrumental in kind of building it out. They gave everyone else something to really hang on to, including me. 5:55 INFLUENCES I'm not really - you know - a folk style singer. When I was recording Fear For The Storm, I was drawing on a couple of different references. One of my biggest influences was Laura Marling, specifically a track of hers called Night Terror. Give it a listen. At the time, I was listening to Lera Lynn's cover of TV On The Radio's "Wolf Like Me" so that was another big influence in the tone I was going for. Give it a listen.8:33 FULL VERSIONJess just got in touch with me and was like, "would you still want to record vocals for this full version?" and then I was like, "Sure." I had just moved into a new apartment I found myself recording in a closet surrounded by boxes. Kind of like scrunched in next to my jackets. The instrumentals were provided by Chiron Star. He provided a really great instrumental track and honestly an awesome guitar solo that I think is the best part of the song. 9:43 OUTROI think that's the awesome thing about podcasting - the barrier to entry is really so low. If you have a good concept and you have good ideas and a decent setup, it'll carry. It'll read That's about it for this week's episode. We'll listen to the full Support the show