Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Audrey Martinovich
169 Plays4 years ago
Audrey Martinovich is a recording engineer and producer that specializes in acoustic music such as classical, jazz, and folk. She co-owns & engineers at a recording studio in Madison, Wisconsin called Audio for the Arts and produces podcasts. She has been working in audio for eight years and has been a full-time studio owner & recording engineer for three years.
She has recently worked with The Madison Symphony Orchestra, the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, and Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestra, and artists Johannes Wallman & Sam Ness. She produces the Big Wild Radio Show every week, which reaches over 100,000 listeners and has engineered remote guests for podcasts such as Alan Alda’s podcast, Pod Save America, NPR’s A1, & Terrible, Thanks for Asking.
https://soundgirls.org/audrey-martinovich-studio-owner-recording-engineer-producer/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Podcast and Guest
00:00:00
Speaker
You are listening to something rather than nothing. Creator and host Ken Volante.
00:00:09
Speaker
Editor and producer, Peter Bauer. This is Ken Volante with the Something Rather Than Nothing podcast and got an episode here with Audrey Martinovich, welcoming her from Madison, Wisconsin, and she has a studio. We're talking audio, audio for the arts. She works in sound engineering, producing, and does
00:00:39
Speaker
A whole bunch of really interesting stuff. Audrey, reaching us from Madison, Wisconsin. Welcome to the program. Thank you. I'm excited to talk with you.
Audrey's Creative Beginnings
00:00:49
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Same here. Origin question. When you were born into the world, were you an artist?
00:00:57
Speaker
I would say so, although I don't think I called myself an artist for a while and I don't even know if I still, I mean, yeah, I do call myself an artist now. But I mean, as a kid, I was always drawing, always singing, always just trying to make something. And just listening to a lot of music when I was little and trying to
00:01:22
Speaker
Notice all of the nuance of these performances and stuff really drew me in even at such a young age So I mean I consider that to be an artist even if I didn't really realize it at the time maybe Yeah, yeah, I I've been enjoying that question. I've been asking it lately and it just
00:01:40
Speaker
you know, how people connect or also to like family and background, what you're allowed to connect and allowed to see.
Journey into Sound Engineering
00:01:48
Speaker
I had mentioned at the outset about you work in sound and I've expressed to you, I'm really interested in this because I've had people around me help developing my ear and of course this is
00:02:03
Speaker
this is a podcast. So could you talk about for you as an artist and working with sound and trying to create an effect and create an art piece, when did you hook into that and say, because of my work in helping produce this sound, I can make this piece of art, like what happened there?
00:02:28
Speaker
I think that's an ongoing journey for me, honestly. I started just pretty much only as an engineer. So I have this musical background, grew up singing, was a singer in high school, studied opera, was a soprano. And through recording my own voice lessons and things, I was introduced to recording from the engineer's perspective and less from a producer or a creator perspective.
00:02:58
Speaker
And once I started just kind of dabbling in that, it kind of opened these doors to like, well, what is a sound designer and how can you tell a story with sound and why should you pick, you know, this part of this vocal take instead of this other part of this vocal take? Like what grabs your ear about these things differently?
00:03:21
Speaker
And so I think that that has really been kind of this journey I have I've been on more and more recently is just how can I tell a story through song or through sound in general because we do you know podcasts and I do sound design for horror films and well not only horror films but that's just the popular.
00:03:40
Speaker
genre of film I work on. Love horror. That's okay.
Sound Design in Storytelling
00:03:45
Speaker
Even if you just stuck with horror, it's totally fine. It's so like, yeah, horror suspense, thriller, like, you know, all of the even documentaries like have a way of telling story through sound and just kind of trying to understand how you can play off of certain emotions and feelings and energies and everything is something that has really
00:04:06
Speaker
been speaking to me I consider myself a bit of an empath I always kind of understand the other person and so I want to be a bridge to connect that person's story to this other person who doesn't know anything about the story or the project or whatever like how can I connect those two things.
00:04:26
Speaker
Yeah, and hearing you talk about that, I'm just impacted because it's that connection. I think looking at storytelling and looking at in our society right now where collapsed communication structure and public comments in order to have this course to try to create that link, I can really connect probably the wrong word. No, I think that's exactly the right word. Yeah, yeah.
00:04:58
Speaker
So there's a couple of big theoretical questions and one thing about encountering your description, your work and stuff, I know you can handle one of them. So I want to just throw a couple out there for the basis of the conversation before we get into things. I've been talking a little bit about art and you creating the sound.
Philosophy of Art and Sound
00:05:18
Speaker
What is art?
00:05:21
Speaker
Yeah so I mean I think that art is just like as a zoomed out perspective is like an organization of something so it could be an organization of you know clippings from magazines or an organization of instruments and background vocals and you know to kind of relate it back into sound it's just
00:05:45
Speaker
someone or something is taking an initiative with deciding how something should be created. And so it's a very vague and maybe definition, but I kind of think that anything can be art. Like even if you look at, you know, John Cage's 433,
00:06:04
Speaker
that is a composition in quotes of air quotes of silence. But really, you know, it's timed and you do have to turn your pages at certain points and things like that. So there's that level of organization to it, but there's no melody. And it's kind of like then whatever the room is experiencing or the group is experiencing together becomes that
00:06:31
Speaker
that piece and that story. So then each time it's performed, it's performed differently. And so, you know, it doesn't have to be a sound that is made. It's just I think someone with an intention creating a thing. Yeah. Well, and this this this question is almost I've noticed lately almost always gets into intention, right? Yeah. What is what has been done? What manipulation has happened to the thing? And it's like that, you know, that basic and conceptual is that there's
00:07:01
Speaker
something happened to it.
Rise of Audio Content During Pandemic
00:07:04
Speaker
Audrey, I'm asking this question now because I don't want to forget to ask it, but you're into podcasting and I've been doing podcasting for a couple years independently and learning it. What I've noticed lately is that sound has become really popular now and that
00:07:29
Speaker
I'm going to give you an example and maybe you can help me with it. So there's this show on Apple that's called calls and it's calls between people that are interrelated. There's no video. It's the sound. Are you familiar with it? I'm not. Yeah. Okay. So let me describe it. So it is calls, interrelated calls made between people.
00:07:51
Speaker
There is no video. You don't see people. You'll see a name and you'll see a representation of the audio sounds. The representative of the audio sounds creates an effect. All the storytelling is audio and you're watching a TV show. That is really an audio cast and it it's compelling.
00:08:14
Speaker
It's incredible. It draws ya. But for me, I see audio lately and the desire for audio almost squishing into video, like post pandemic, like the video thing where people are like, fuck video, like get away video.
00:08:30
Speaker
I'm recognizing some dynamic. Do you see any of this happening or what's going on with this? Yeah, so it's so funny you say that because through the pandemic, our workload at the studio has changed to incorporate more video and whether that is
00:08:47
Speaker
doing like recording for live streams or just putting together a slideshow that is on top of like a radio play, you know, so the same kind of thing where it's, you know, an organization of images, although not, you know, people talking or moving on camera. And so there has been that kind of component to it, but
00:09:07
Speaker
I think that the reason that, you know, audio is really taking off as like, you know, like podcasts, for example, have just exploded in the last five years, like no one knew what podcasting was back then, you know, and then with apps like Clubhouse, where it's just this audio only kind of platform, I think that those are really taking off because they don't really compete for your full attention, like YouTube might or, you know,
00:09:34
Speaker
If you look away from the screen for a second, you might miss a graphic or something that helps you to understand the context a little better. Whereas with podcasts and stuff, you just have divided attention. So someone can still listen and do the dishes or listen and clean their house or drive or whatever it is. So it's just this different level of accessibility.
00:09:57
Speaker
And I think that with with the pandemic, like we're all just trying to make our art accessible in one way or another. So whether whether that is an audio only format or then going to this kind of live stream, like maybe a musician who used to have a lot of gigs and now they are taken to Facebook live only, you know, it's just a way of trying to get your art out in ways that can be digested by your audience. Yeah.
Art as Personal and Communal Expression
00:10:24
Speaker
Yeah. I
00:10:25
Speaker
Yeah, and thanks for your comments on that. It seems like there's all I'm saying that like fundamentally, there's a greater desire for audio at the moment. And I think it's in reaction to things.
00:10:38
Speaker
you know, part of my thing is with podcasting or at least conversation like we're trying to have is like, it might be useful for people to hear that people can converse about something that's kind of like important or interesting or at least curious for a little while, you know, without the mention of, you know, the way, you know, the kind of the political climate just to be able to gab a little bit, right? Yeah, totally. So, um, why do you create Audrey?
00:11:04
Speaker
You work hard at what you do, you help people make their art, you make your own. Why do you create? I create to, I mean, to help other people tell their stories, but then also to kind of tell my own story and to even kind of figure out what that is.
00:11:23
Speaker
our journeys through life are always changing and hopefully never stagnant even through lockdown. That was a whole other story. And so for me to create something like I want to
00:11:41
Speaker
give people goosebumps and grab people by the emotions and make people consider new perspectives. And, um, you know, just interfacing that with music is kind of like the natural intersection for that. Like I love, um, you know, if I'm trying to give someone a nostalgic feeling, like, okay, what kind of instruments can I choose for that? Should I go for like a toy piano or are we a little more dreamy? Like we want to harp or, you know, or, or what is it like?
00:12:11
Speaker
How, how can I make that happen and then when it's when it's done, and seeing someone's reaction to it or even like the artists reaction to a song I've produced for them.
00:12:25
Speaker
them loving it and like, oh my gosh, yes, this is what I wanted. This hits all of the points. Like that is so fulfilling. And, um, you know, it just really is, uh, it is very fulfilling for me to be able to have a hand in that. Cause like I said, even if it's not my own story, um, giving someone else a voice and like the confidence to tell, to speak their truth is, is really important to me.
Learning from Retail Experience
00:12:53
Speaker
Yeah. It's like the, uh,
00:12:55
Speaker
you know, that piece and the like way it's like, ooh, it's there. They've trademarked the sound that Legos make when they click together. Oh really? That's a trademarked sound, yeah. Oh. So you know, I think it's- I'm gonna have to make sure to clear rights if I ever use that. There's something so, there's something so beautiful and reliable about the Adam. It's weird. The two Legos clicking together. Oh, that's really intriguing.
00:13:27
Speaker
Hey, I'm gonna zoom in on a bit you had mentioned about, I don't know, sound and effect and you had mentioned horror and working on horror. I just wanna, I've done a couple, this done a lot of shows on the podcast and horror pops up here and there. And I've had two guys, James Sweet and Vin Santi who do,
00:13:49
Speaker
very prominent Friday 13th fan films. So, you know, horror, like wild stuff. I'm a huge horror buff. Can you just kind of give us a little look or into, we're watching a horror movie. You're in the background trying to make the sound. What's going on with that?
00:14:09
Speaker
Totally. Yeah. So, you know, one of the things that I love about horror is like the little, like, there's a good opportunity for like Easter eggs. Um, so, um, there's a feature length, a film called the nursery that I did, um, with a company called three tortured minds. And, um, there, I was hired to do all the sound design, audio cleanup and dialogue editing, all of that.
00:14:36
Speaker
but then also as the composer. So yeah, so that was a fun experience, a lot of work, but super fun. And so I took all these like little opportunities like in the score, I centered around the chords D-E-A-D to spell dead, and which happens to some of the characters.
00:14:59
Speaker
Um, and it's like one of those things that like people wouldn't notice unless they are a musician and they're like, wait a second And you know and it might take them a few times watching the movie like that's the thing It's like I want them to watch it again and again. I love it and um, like with uh, if if there's like a protagonist or i'm, sorry an antagonist, um, like the the villain or whatever, um, I always think that they should have kind of a specific queue like whether it's like a
00:15:27
Speaker
you know a bowed cymbal as I did in the case of the nursery or I'm working on this other horror film for the same company and that villain has kind of like almost like a rattlesnake like
00:15:38
Speaker
kind of like sound that comes up. And I love using that to like play with, you know, giving you a hint that there's the villain or making you think the villain is there when they're really not. And stuff like that is really fun to play with. Like in the nursery, there is this point where this girl is all alone in this big house and she's babysitting and we're starting to get a little spooked, but not really a lot yet. And weird stuff is kind of happening.
00:16:08
Speaker
And then all of a sudden there's a knock on the door and she goes to look and like she pulls back the curtain. I give this audio cue. She opens the door and it's her friend who just came over. So it's right. Right. Right. Like we can kind of psych out the audience a little bit.
00:16:25
Speaker
And then there's stuff you can do to make the audience feel goosebumps in the right listening atmosphere. If you boost all these really high frequencies, that is a reaction our bodies have to that, that we can't help. So I can kind of control, oh, this part's spooky. I want everyone to have some goose bumpies going on. And as I said, I love giving people goosebumps, I guess. I love it.
00:16:55
Speaker
I do wish to make, my one film wish is to make a found footage horror because I am so, I adore that genre and like people react against it. And I'm just like, I feel about found footage the first day that I saw a found footage. I love it just as much. So cool. Yeah. I wonder if there's like an audio equivalent, like, yeah. We'll figure it out. We'll talk after this. Yeah, perfect.
00:17:25
Speaker
No, that's good. And I appreciate your comment. Like I said, I love horror and I love some of what it does. I wanted to ask you now, Audrey, and you can answer this creatively or like how art appears in the world. But I've asked the question about like,
Unique Human Perception of Music
00:17:49
Speaker
the the role of art and um it was like a like it's been a super heavy questions at times given like what's going on in society um and uh you know whether it's the pandemic uh race and equity uh around the world but the United States and North America um and also just to entertain or to help people survive and get from the beginning of pandemic to the end of pandemic what do you think is the role of art
00:18:18
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, all of the above. I think it is kind of what separates us from other life forms. Birds, obviously, can have a melody and stuff. But even if you, I actually read this interesting study about how birds perceive melody. Because even if they're humming the exact same notes, if you move that line up a fourth so it's more of a harmony,
00:18:46
Speaker
the bird has to learn it as a completely new melody, whereas humans don't operate like that. We see, oh, it is the same melody, but it's just in a different harmonic space. And then there are other animals like dogs can perceive rhythm, and they can kind of bop to a beat, but they don't perceive melody the same way. But that is not the case in humans.
00:19:10
Speaker
We can perceive rhythm and melody and harmonies and organize it and have this other kind of nuance and meaning and all of this stuff behind it. Whether that's specifically the role of art, I'm maybe not sure, but I think that is definitely what separates us. I guess, yeah, maybe the role of art then is to
00:19:34
Speaker
give us that human experience, like a way to process the world around us that we don't understand and have been trying to understand as long as we've been around, you know? Absolutely. No, thank you. Thank you for that.
Producing Music and Artist Collaboration
00:19:50
Speaker
I have a different question. You work obviously in production of sound and engineering.
00:20:01
Speaker
Say you're working with an artist and they got this song, right? And they got their pieces and they got their thing that they're doing. And you're going to come in and help them put it all together. What's your relationship with that? I mean, as far as maybe like your fingerprints on what you're creating based on what they have, how does
00:20:24
Speaker
How does that, can you describe how that works or how you view that? Yeah, so I mean, I kind of can operate in a sort of different context, but usually an artist has an idea for a song, whether it's totally fleshed out or not, can be a sliding scale. So they'll come to me and want help with, you know,
00:20:47
Speaker
the chord structure or what instruments we should choose, just the overall arrangement. And I think it's really important for us to be on the same page about where the song can go.
00:21:02
Speaker
You know if I'm really feeling like oh, this would be really great done like Americana with these kind of instruments or whatever But the artist is like no I want to do it in you know EDM only like then it's not gonna you know
00:21:17
Speaker
We're not going to be a good pair and it's just not going to be a product that either of us are particularly excited about. So I do think that someone comes to me and they kind of want some of my fingerprints on whatever it is they're creating. Otherwise, they could pick someone else who they want their fingerprints on it instead. But at the same time, the artist always has to be able to take ownership of what they're creating.
00:21:46
Speaker
I'm not going to have someone bring something to me and then tell them, no, they're wrong. All of this needs to be different. We should change this to this and blah, blah, blah. It's striking a balance between what I think it should be, but hopefully that is always in line with what the artist thinks it should be because that's really the most important thing to me is that the artist is telling
00:22:06
Speaker
their story, you know, if I am feeling like I have a story to tell, I will create a song and release it myself, maybe, or hire someone to sing it or whatever. I try I try to honor everyone's intentions. Yeah, no, absolutely. And I appreciate that because it's a it's the kind of like the question of authorship around in our piece. And I think those are fascinating related question. All right. So you're working with the artist.
00:22:37
Speaker
And there's different pieces being added in. Maybe it's extending out a little bit. You're creating a fixed art object at some point. How do you know when it's there? How do you know when it's done? Yeah.
00:22:55
Speaker
That's always a little squishy too, but I have ADHD. So for me, when I think a song is done, it's when it holds my attention the whole time. I don't have any spots that I kind of space out or whatever.
00:23:13
Speaker
And I try to pay attention to those spots where I do lose attention and think, okay, why is that? Do we need to add a little instrumental flourish here or some background vocals? Or should we cut to silence to have something totally different and then come back in at full chorus? Or what has to happen?
00:23:33
Speaker
And I think that can help other people stay in the story of the song longer because I think that it adds more impact if someone's mind isn't wandering too much. And since my mind wanders a lot naturally, I have a different scale for, I guess, figuring out what is holding someone's attention and what isn't.
00:23:56
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I wanted to ask you another question too.
Technical Aspects of Recording Symphonies
00:24:03
Speaker
Part of the podcast I've gotten into music that's newer to me, even though it's
00:24:08
Speaker
traditional classical music, the symphony. About three years ago, prior to the pandemic, I had never been to the symphony in my entire life. And there were really reasonable discounts for season tickets for the symphony, which shocked me, right? I mean, I think my ticket, you know, it still costs money and it's not accessible to everybody. But I think that my average ticket price to go to all the concerts was like $13. You know what I mean? It just happened out that way.
00:24:38
Speaker
So I started to develop an appreciation for the symphony, but kind of a lifelong learning curve of not knowing it and then being like, oh, what's all this that's going on? I was just interested in your work with the full ensemble and symphony and how you work with them out in Wisconsin. Do you end up doing like recordings that are released later or how do you work with a full symphony in order to capture their sound?
00:25:06
Speaker
Yeah, so yeah, we do do recordings that are released later. Lately, we've been doing more like small group, like quintet or quartets. I think the largest we've done is an octet with eight people. It's funny as an octet plus a piano player. So really, it was nine people. But as far as like a symphony goes, ideally, we want to mic up
00:25:31
Speaker
each player or at least each pair of players. So it can be a big setup. The first violin player, the concert master, they'll usually have their own mic that they don't share because we want to sneak a little bit extra of them in the mix. But working with orchestras is really what has given me this intrigue
00:25:55
Speaker
about what instruments can I choose to reflect certain things because I've noticed like oh a bassoon can kind of sound like sneaky a little bit you know or you know and so hearing how all of these instruments like play with each other I think has informed you know some of my production decisions.
00:26:15
Speaker
But yeah, for a whole orchestra, we'll probably, you know, we'll record at a hall in town here because we can't fit the timpani's through the door. So we'll go to like Overture Hall or the Sylvian Madison and
00:26:32
Speaker
will record each concert. So if it's a live performance, we'll record each of the times the orchestra performs. And then after the audience leaves, we'll record any spots that didn't go well during the performance. So we have a patch session is what it's called.
00:26:52
Speaker
and then we'll take everything back to the studio and the maestro will have listened through each of the takes and they make the ultimate decision about what takes to use where and then I added it all together.
00:27:06
Speaker
Thank you for that. Like I said, I'm so interested in that process and I just stumbled a little bit when you said you had to mic up each one or two of them. Yeah, we'll bring out like two, we'll have 48 channels of something going on and that's a master and a backup.
00:27:28
Speaker
more paired down concert recordings, we can get away with just miking the front, miking everybody as a group. But if it's for release, if the maestro wants more harp mic, I'm going to have to have a mic by the harp. So that way, when he asks for that, we can pull it up. If you mic with just a stereo pair out in front,
00:27:50
Speaker
like a more informal or archival kind of recording. You don't have the control over the individual elements. So it depends on what the end game is. But for release, yeah, 70 mics and figure it out. Wow. I know having gone to the Oregon Symphony, I knew they had maybe two or three years ago a prominent recording that was Grammy nominated recording. Yeah. So it was under the Oregon Symphony. I forget which performance, but
00:28:20
Speaker
Incredible. Like I said, an incredible experience for me. And it was, you know, accessible for me. Dropping back since you so nimble on the question.
Education and Experience Shaping Career
00:28:33
Speaker
Who or what made you who you are? Wow. I think we're all
00:28:41
Speaker
a culmination of all of the decisions that you've made. So for me, going to school made me who I am. It introduced me to audio or the technical aspects of it, using Pro Tools and what microphones and how to use a console and that kind of stuff. But also working retail has made me who I am because
00:29:05
Speaker
I match my client's pace and their needs and I can handle people screaming at me and not let it bother me. Not that I want that to happen, but it's cool. People have bad days. But you worked retail. But I worked retail. So that definitely, anybody who's worked retail or food service or whatever, that makes you who you are for sure.
00:29:36
Speaker
Um, yeah. Oh yeah. I was going to say, yeah, just generally saying yes to opportunities and like, Hey, will you come run sound for my friend's band? Sure. I don't know how to use a console yet, but I'll figure it out. And then you do. Yeah. I, uh, we did get sidetracked on. I think it was like the, uh, the light trauma of working retail. Oh man. Um, you know,
00:29:59
Speaker
I've worked a lot of time in supermarkets, which is actually jobs that I love. I've worked in supermarkets too, yeah. Yeah, I love those jobs. I worked third shift there. The pay was shit at the time for me, but I enjoyed the experience.
00:30:15
Speaker
You know, it does develop a good skills when somebody asked you if there are any more in the back. Yes, go back and you say, Oh, let me go check in the back and take a smoke break for 10 minutes.
00:30:31
Speaker
Most of my retail experience was between either a shoe department of a department store or a makeup department. I was a makeup artist for a while too. He definitely learned the psychology of talking with people. You just get a good read for people once you work with them so much. Working retail is a crash course in working with people.
00:31:01
Speaker
Yeah, it is. And all that comes with it. I've got an interesting question for you a little bit more along the producing, engineering, and creating an effect.
Creating Atmosphere with Sound
00:31:18
Speaker
Talking about in terms of ambience and feeling in a room that obviously audio can create, that kind of vibe.
00:31:31
Speaker
What is that? How do you do it? Yeah, what's vibe? Yeah, I mean, I think it all comes down to like energies. You know, like you can I've talked a lot about like, do I vibe with the artist or, you know, do we have a good vibe together? And, you know, it's kind of like if you walk into a room and the people in that room just had an argument, you can feel it.
00:32:01
Speaker
you know like something just feels weird you know and yeah and that works in all different directions you know that you can tell if they were just making out and you walked in the room you know something is just different about the vibe of the room
00:32:21
Speaker
And then with sound, the frequencies we hear that we perceive as pitch, the lower the frequency, the lower the pitch, the higher the frequency, the higher the pitch.
00:32:33
Speaker
Um, those have energy behind them too, like in a very like scientific way, like the higher the energy, the higher the frequency is. It's pushing more air molecules and everything out of the way. And, um, you know, we can hear that energy in a room, like as, as, as, as resonances, um, you know, as, as base frequency is getting trapped in corners and, and, and stuff like that too. So it's this emotional thing, but it's also this scientific thing.
00:33:03
Speaker
Wow. I mean, we've had it's it's it's interesting as a philosophical question doesn't happen. Yeah, because when you have the presence of something that is real and identifiable, but it's also mysterious. Okay, how did it end up? Stick in there. It's just a fascinating phenomena. I
00:33:27
Speaker
I, um, my, my connection to this, uh, towards trance and vibe is doom
Comparing Musical Genres
00:33:37
Speaker
metal. Cool. Plotting the rhythmic drumming, which is journeying the plotting base, the, the just rep it. And it
00:33:49
Speaker
Talk about mood and vibe and atmosphere and it's extended so it can last 8, 10, 12 minutes or it could be the whole show for an hour.
00:34:01
Speaker
but it's felt, you know? It's a powerful, if you're sensitive to it, you're sensitive to it, Audrey, I am. But if you're sensitive to it, it's like, whoa, I'm on the wave, right? I'm on the circle. Right? Yeah. And I love that you brought up doom metal. I think that that is like really
00:34:20
Speaker
It's probably one of the closest genres to classical. That sounds kind of crazy, but there's a lot of precision in it, and it is this extended kind of song. It's not like a three or four minute song, and the same thing with a sonata and classical music. You might get like 24 minutes or 12 minutes, or in a symphony, it might be like 40 minutes.
00:34:44
Speaker
It ranges, but the technical aspect and the textures are there, and there's that crossover between the two. Yeah. We're talking with Audrey Martinevich in Madison, Wisconsin, and it's a great pleasure to chat with you. I've lived in Wisconsin for about a decade and worked with the teachers and support staff out there.
00:35:12
Speaker
love the town. I love the music there, although you'll know what this means. I'm a Milwaukee music guy. I love a lot of the music that you do. I love a lot of genres of music, but my go-to for live isn't the person with the folk guitar in general. Totally. It tends to be Milwaukee's metal. That tends to be my live experience. But
00:35:36
Speaker
I've always appreciated about that about the area because you know Milwaukee is a metal town and Madison is smaller and we get some you get some great stuff there but it's it's a little bit more of that
00:35:48
Speaker
It's so funny. Yeah. And that's a difference I never really like thought about too much. But it makes perfect sense, you know, like, as you get over into Madison and like I live in the driftless area. It is more like folk singer songwriter, indie, like Bon Iver. And you know, I guess he's a little more up north.
00:36:07
Speaker
But you know, but yeah, Milwaukee is like more more hip hop and and metal and everything. It's cool dichotomy across Wisconsin. Yeah, I love I love those two towns. Audrey, I got the big question
Existential Reflections on Human Existence
00:36:23
Speaker
for you. I get it. It's not a softball. It's a fastball. Why is there something rather than nothing?
00:36:29
Speaker
Um, I mean, I, we've talked a lot about like energy and stuff. And so I think that we are just kind of like containers of energy of the universe. And so we're all tied together in that way. And so I think that, um, our pursuit of something is to just like explore that connection and, uh, those energies in a, in a different way.
00:36:57
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. There's never nothing, you know. I love the container aspect. Like there's something, I know it really vibes with me. Oh, good. No, I like how you capture the energy and like what we are as vessels. For me, like. Exactly, a vessel. That's probably, that's a good word.
00:37:17
Speaker
Well, for me, the only way I'm able to understand personhood is I'm a philosopher, and I studied Buddhist philosophy. And I was able to understand personhood a lot better from Buddhists, who basically said, look, it's like a bundle of sticks that we are. We're a bundle, and they call it a scanda. We're a bundle of stuff, like emotions. So it's like collected in a space, but don't think it's a unified,
00:37:47
Speaker
molded, it's just a bunch of sticks tied together. Yeah, I like that. We take ourselves way too seriously, you know? We're just a bundle of things. It feels like that. It's not a bad thing, it can be a glorious thing too.
00:38:04
Speaker
Audrey, I have a surprise question at the end, but for right now, and it's a little bit self-indulgent. So what I want you to do now is can you let the listeners know, and I know you work on a lot of different things and you're based in the Midwest. Let listeners know how to connect with your stuff, your services, things you put out there, projects you've worked on.
00:38:26
Speaker
Yeah, so the website for the studio is audioforthearts.com. And you can find me on Instagram at audioaudrey. I have a link tree up that has a Spotify playlist with a bunch of stuff I've done, links to other social media articles I've written about how to keep music in politics and reviews for gear and all sorts of different stuff. So yeah, find me online.
00:38:57
Speaker
That's lovely. And I know there's just great presence that you have online and a lot of the projects you work on are just very vibrant. The question I have for you, here's a self-indulgent piece of it too. And this is going to be a little bit humbling.
Minimalist Production Styles in Music
00:39:19
Speaker
I think
00:39:21
Speaker
That that Antonoff who works with Taylor Swift is a brilliant producer and I've lacked the language to be able to articulate it and I'm a huge Swifty and With folklore the album, here's the funny piece about it folklore The album was released and for me when there are great albums and for me a great album is like the cure disintegration like
00:39:51
Speaker
mood, atmospheric, it's a little bit dark. It's going into the soul and seeing if you can come out. And that's what that one, um, that like folklore is to me. So obviously I'm like really, really into it, but there's a piece here. I was wondering if you could help me with, there seems to be such an enormous emotional content to like this kind of skim down, like vocal, like not vocals, but like the sound.
00:40:21
Speaker
They did a studio version and it's almost like these heart-wrenching stories that are just like, just like left beer. Just left sitting there. How does the producer make it like that? And still sound whole. You know what I mean? Cause you can put Taylor Swift voice on it, but it's, it's spear, you know, like it's spear.
00:40:47
Speaker
and it holds all this emotional content, in my opinion, do you know how? I love that style. It's kind of like a minimalist sort of thing, but it's still, yeah, but it doesn't sound empty. Yeah, I love that album too.
00:41:05
Speaker
I mean, yeah, I think that that is kind of always a question I'm like dealing with is like, should I add something to this? And I think that with folklore, that's such a great example of how, you know, adding more and more stuff to those tracks would have taken away from the intimacy and everything. So it's just thinking about like, you know, how intimate do we want to get with this? And then how do we like hold that attention, you know?
00:41:34
Speaker
So with an acoustic guitar and a vocal, you can hold attention just by adding some ear candy licks on that acoustic guitar or some vocalizations in the background or something if you need to.
00:41:52
Speaker
I feel like you kind of know it in your bones. For me, listening to that album, I was just so drawn in to her voice and what she was saying. Yeah, exactly. Where everything else just kind of faded away.
00:42:12
Speaker
wasn't it wasn't the main focus for me it was like really just centered on the story i think that is what made it so powerful is like it wouldn't be the same record if it had you know drum kits and bass and you know everything on top of it the whole time yeah i appreciate that i mean you explain it because like i said i've been like there's a strong connection of like the emotional connection of what's there and i've been thinking about like
00:42:35
Speaker
And it helps because I was like, well, a lot of people do spare things. A lot of people get out, you know, your guitar and sing your song, but it doesn't always be like, oh, my God. Right. So thank you. That vulnerability with with with with with that, because I yeah, really interested in just learning about that, that dynamic some more.
00:43:00
Speaker
Audrey, I got to tell you like talking to you is like really I've learned so much and it's really been a great pleasure to connect on I think some overlap and interest there on sound and horror and you said you were a soprano as well in the past you had done some singing, right? Yeah, I've had a couple not that I prefer sopranos because I'm really a little bit ignorant on this but I've had a couple guests that were sopranos and I've been trying to bring in
00:43:30
Speaker
You know, kind of classical music, but also I guarantee you, Audrey, you will get your new metal episodes here as well. Yeah, good. Audrey Martinovich, thank you so much. And your work with Audio for the Arts and your work with artists, absolutely incredible. It's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you. Thank you so much, Ken. I've had so much fun talking with you too. Thank you.
00:44:05
Speaker
This is something rather than nothing.