The Music of The You Are A Weirdo History Podcast
I’m happy to share some of the original short tunes I made for this quirky little show of mine. I’ve really enjoyed having this opportunity to combine my love of making music with my passion for history.
- The main podcast theme. It took me literally three months to get this 60-second tune to a point where I liked it. I wanted a tune to get me psyched every time I heard it, and conversely I knew that if it had major flaws that it would be demoralizing whenever it played. It began as a 3/4 waltz (listen to an early draft below) but I realized it needed to be in a less conventional time signature in order to get listeners a little off balance in preparation for understanding the strangeness of now. 7/8 seemed to do the trick, though I’ve also made variations in 6/8 and 5/4 (below).
- “Fight of Factions” Video Game Music. For the Season One episode called “Your Network Is Disconnected,” it’s over-the-top dramatic video game music based on the YAAW theme.
- Unplugged version of the main theme. This is a chill version of the main theme, played on my classical guitar and used for the dynamic content section at the start of the podcast.
- Tema en Cinco. Another variant of the YAAW theme, this time using a steel-strong acoustic guitar to make the chord progression into a percussive element of the short piece. It’s in 5/4 which was yet another fun time signature to work in.
- SynthsperimentA2. I put this short thing together during my sabbatical in 2022 while taking an online mixing and mastering course.1The class was Udemy’s “Mixing and Mastering in Logic Pro” with Tomas George and Ian Alexander. I learned a tremendous amount from it and recommend it highly. The idea was that I wanted to work on something original on which I could apply some of the class’s principles and techniques. I added a tiny clip from this tune on the Season One episode called “You’re Too Loud!.” The spoken words in the intro are a combination of gibberish but also include some real words, including an imaginary grocery shopping list—”Velveeta Cheese” is one of the clearer phrases.
- Early draft of the theme. As mentioned above, the theme began as something simpler and, frankly, less weird—which made it less appropriate for this podcast.
- 1The class was Udemy’s “Mixing and Mastering in Logic Pro” with Tomas George and Ian Alexander. I learned a tremendous amount from it and recommend it highly.