Mike Bennett. Old Blog 2006 -2008

Sirens, Bells and DER DER DER

Saturday in Dublin. I went to the north side of the river and poked around in charity shops before taking a deep breath and plunging into the teeming hell that is Henry Street and Mary Street. There must’ve been a billion people swarming about in dense, chaotic streams that were almost impossible to break out of once you became entangled in them. It was nightmarish; I struggled through the crowd, trying not to get swept past the shops I wanted to visit and flung out at the far end of the street. I managed – somehow – to clamber through the bumbling bodies to reach the Apple shop. Here I stood with my face pressed to the window like a street urchin outside a cake shop. Oh, Garageband, how I long to run my fingers through your wondrous new podcasting functions that I’ve read so much about in ‘You Want It But Can’t Afford It’ magazine. I went home with a newspaper and birthday card for my dad... and a price pamphlet from the Apple store. Who knows, maybe I’ll shake out my piggy bank yet. O

nce home I started thinking about Episode 4 of One Among The Sleepless. Due to the flap around getting Episode 3 up and running earlier in the week, I’m a few days behind in my schedule. I usually try and get the lion’s share of the recording done on Thursday and Friday, then do editing and re-takes on Saturday on Sunday, and any bagging and tagging on Monday and Tuesday. The problem with recording the whole thing on Saturdays is that everyone else in the apartment building is off work. And when people are off work, they like to play their music loud and share it with the rest of the city. Add to that the police / ambulance sirens that go past every two minutes, the church bells (Sunday is impossible – it’s like a herd of Quasimodos having a beer and bells party), people shouting, people chucking trash into the skips outside, people slamming doors; it’s endless. We live in an apartment in the centre of the city. Good for getting to work; bad for peace and quiet. Still, somehow I’ve managed to get most of the recording down despite the cacophony.

I’ve had to call it a day now because the chap next door has decided to share his music with me. It sounds like someone rhythmically pressing a big bass button that goes DER... DER... DER. Now we don’t want that on the podcast do we?

I’ll obviously try and get all the sirens and bells out of the final recording, but there may be a few left in the final edit. Sometimes you say something just perfectly and you can’t improve on it. So, if there’s a bell or something in the background, it’ll just have to stay there. Think of it as ambience. After all, what book about noisy neighbours would be complete without a bit of neighbourhood noise?

Until the next time...