We have also sound-houses...

We have also sound-houses...

Episode 19's opening pseudo-Gladys Pugh narration needed, of course, the appropriate three-note xylophone jingle. Now, we have never claimed to be musical (you've heard my attempt at 'singing'!) but thankfully the episode 'Carnival Time' opens with a whacking great close-up that reveals the notes. (C, G, E in case you wanted to play along at home!)

But this silly detail is typical of the sort of audio experimentation we've indulged in from time to time.

Early on, we just did strange noises either into or over part of the opening title music. Lisa stirred her tea for far too long, the toilet flushed or the sink tap ran loud and long. Warren's adlibbed comment of "He's not very well, is he?" still makes me smile... Episode Ten even has the sound of a celebratory bottle of champagne being opened and poured out. Well, in truth it wasn't champagne, but something considerably cheaper!

We've also used short sections of odd noises related to the shows or people covered in the Episode itself. Twelve (which features the tribute to Brian Cant) is one of the less obvious ones, being the opening to an episode of 'Bric A Brac' about the letter 'G' ("Gangway!!!" shouts Brian).

As time went on, we became more adventurous with the editing, with my tribute to Gerald Flood from 'The King's Demons' being the biggest technical challenge so far. That was a multi-tracked affair with me humming into the left and right speakers of my digital recorded and going "Ding, dingy, dingy, ding, ding, ding, ding!", with Lisa trying not to laugh in the background.

If an unexpected noise happens and it's not too distracting, we're more likely to draw attention to it than pretend it never happened. So if the telephone rings from an Unknown Caller, or our neighbour gets his strimmer out, or someone posts something through the door, you'll know about it. We did struggle with the letter box banging in Episode 15 thanks to the efforts of Storm Brian. That's why there are a few momentary dips in levels during the article on 'The Adventures Of Sir Lancelot', you know!

We do have two regular Special Sound contributors in the form of our lovely cats Rose and Martha. They sometimes crunch their food or play with a toy mouse with a bell in it or scratch their scratching post (or sometimes the corner of the sofa)... But most of the time they just purr happily at an almost subliminal level.

We like to think that they add to the friendly atmosphere of our podcast, so if you listen to one and go away feeling happy, that's as much down to our feline contributors as our human ones!

(By Andrew Trowbridge)