Similar to internships and apprenticeships, audio podcasts are a great way to garner information from the best in the biz.
We love music podcasts here at Mixdown, the fly-on-the-wall feel of it all allowing us to consume huge amounts of information from the people who inspire us! Music Podcasts are a great way to learn, reflect and expand on things we already know, or to learn something entirely new.
While we’re also huge fans of a bunch of true crime, spooky stories and comedy, here’s five of our current favourites podcasts for recording, producing and making music.
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Working Class Audio
Working Class Audio, who are “navigating the world of recording with a working class perspective” make the top of our list as a super informative, relaxed and wide-reaching list of guests, concepts and discussions, all through the lens of being a working-class producer, engineer or musician.
Many podcasts feature guests who are hugely successful, with the backing of record labels, funding, other financial help, and while interesting and engaging, host Matt Boudreau dives into things at a more accessible level. “How did you find your studio space? How do you decide on your rates? You’ve recently added Dolby Atmos to your set-up, which speaker brackets did you use and why?”
Listening to performers and producers at the top of their game is interesting and engaging, but the lessons and advice from working-class engineers making records at the ground level can be much more helpful. Matt begins each episode with a little monologue about something on his mind, usually something happening in the industry, before diving into a great interview with recent guests like Catherine Marks (Wolf Alice, St Vincent, Foals, boygenius), Don Zeintara (Minor Threat, Gray Matter, Fugazi) and Danny Reisch (HALO, Khruangbin, Local Natives). Working Class Audio is a deep-dive into building a studio, renting a space, maintaining cashflow, backing up and archiving and more!
Take 5
Take 5 is a podcast hosted by Zan Rowe and produced by and with Double J. The basis of the podcast is for a guest to choose five songs that have left a lasting impression on them. Guests range from musicians to producers to Spicks and Specks host Adam Hills and more.
Take 5 allows us to A) hear about the influences of our influences, while also B) listening to these songs with a new perspective, through the ears of someone who has been inspired by it. There’s a lot of B-Sides and random singles, as well as a slew of hits and a list of iconic songs that you’ll feel like you’re listening to for the first time.
Hanging Out With Audiophiles
Jamie Lidell is a reasonably successful musician in his own right, and his podcast Hanging Out With Audiophiles is exactly that; a fly on the wall style chat with himself and a guest, focused on pulling apart the minutiae of music making with a focus on electronic, sampled-based an synthesised music.
Lidell has performed extensively with samplers and synths, and his understanding of them, their use in shaping, forming and creating sounds is hard to match – except by the guests he has on. With guests like Jimmy Douglas (Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, The Rolling Stones, Timbaland), Robert Henke (co-developer of Ableton Live), Four Tet, Fred Again… and more!
There’s a lot of chat about music composition, creating unique sounds and then transferring it to the live world. Jamie is a master of the craft and can hang with even the most complicated chats, discussing it in a way that’s accessible and easy to understand. Most episodes feature a ‘Nitty’ by Lidell, where he’ll do things like build a tape delay or synthesise a vocoder from scratch, all with audio examples and detailed explanation.
The First Ever Podcast
The First Ever Podcast is hosted by Jeremy Bolm, vocalist for legendary post-hardcore band Touché Amoré. Bolm features guests from all across the world of alternative music, focusing on the beginnings that led them to where they are today; i.e. their first gigs, first albums and the like.
Bolm’s energy is infectious, excited to discuss and reflect on the records that’ve inspired his guests, Bolm himself being a hugely successful and influential musician. Bolm’s guests include people like Jack Shirley (producer of Deafheaven and Oathbreaker) and George Clarke (Deafheaven), Matt Caughthran (The Bronx), Andrew Fisher (Basement).
Tape Notes
Tape Notes is another deep-dive into the world of producing, recording and songwriting, not unlike Hanging Out With Audiophiles and other production-focused music podcasts.
Hosted by John Kennedy of Radio X show (formerly XFM), John’s decades of experience in radio allows him to keep the conversation moving while unearthing some nuggets of production advice buried into vast and dense arrangements. Tapes Notes’ format involves artists, producers and engineers recalling the sessions, demos and mixes of an album, allowing them to solo separate tracks, play phone demos and, sometimes embarrassingly, ideas that ended up on the cutting room floor.
Recent guests include Charli XCX and producers George Daniel & A.G.Cook, St. Vincent, Jack Antonoff, 100 Gecs, Fall Out Boy and producer Neal Avron. Some personal favourites are episodes like Yard Act and producer Ali Chant, Maisie Peters and producer Joe Rubel and HAIM with Ariel Rechtshaid & Rostam Batmnaglij.
Bonus:
The Daily Adventures of Mixerman
Here’s a bonus one for you, and one that our editor Lewis binged across a few weeks once he found it. The Daily Adventures of Mixerman is the audio version of a now infamous series of diary entries that began to appear on an audio forum a few decades ago.
Mixerman, initially a secret and eventually revealed as Eric Sarafin, was hired to engineer a record for an up-and-coming band, complete with huge studio budget, rockstar attitudes and an elusive producer (nicknamed ‘Willy Show’… because ‘will he show?’), The Daily Adventures of Mixerman is a step by step recount of one of the most chaotic, toxic and difficult recording sessions in history. There’s huge speculation about who the band was, as all the names were changed, or if the band even existed and was instead an amalgamation of multiple bad experiences, fictionised into one story. Mixerman has neither confirmed nor denied any of this in his own coy way.
There’s fights with record labels, A&R reps trying to fight their way into the studio, parties and a lot of interesting info to take away from a recording and producing perspective, including artist and client management, as well as micing and audio processing techniques.
Well worth the listen!
