Author: Rand al'Thor

Rand al'Thor
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RFC Christmas Commentaries 1: Doctor Who: The Feast of Steven

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Rand al’Thor is doing something insane for this year’s Christmas, here at the end of 2018. Rand is doing solo commentaries on all of the Doctor Who Christmas episodes (either those that are Christmas-themed or aired on Christmas Day). Will Rand make it through all of these episodes okay? Even the Moffat episodes, including some Rand’s never before watched (*cough*Last Christmas *cough*)

Episode 1: The Feast of Steven. Join Rand while watching the only Christmas episode from the original series, the forever-lost, never-to-be-recovered Feast of Steven, episode seven of The Daleks’ Master Plan!

Whatever Happened to Marble Operator?

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It’s been a long, long, long time since I ended the Marble Operator podcast. Part of that was due to our core subject series, Marble Hornets, ending, another part was due to my life going completely insane and me no longer having any way of doing conference calls and recording new episodes. Part of that was depression and me just assuming no one ever wants to associate with me. Part of that is me assuming everyone else has just moved on, and me being too terrified of making any effort of reestablishing contact, reopening communication channels. Part of that is too much time passing in silence, life moving on, people moving apart.

I recorded this as a way of maybe starting that communication process. I’d like to get back in contact with former Marble Operator co-hosts: Rion (I’m still in some sort of contact with), Logan, John, Erica, Katie, Abby, Kaitlyn. I’d like to speak with you all again. Catch up on our lives. Maybe do a reunion show.

We’ll see. I’m sorry for being silent for so long.

How I Make Sound Collages

Here’s a brief pulling back of the curtains, looking behind the scenes, of how I make my sound collages.

First of all, I make them all in Adobe Audition. I tried to use Audacity, but it just cannot handle the processing of these collages, and it lacks a playlist feature like Audition has.

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First step is to open a music track to use as a source for loops. For this example, I’m using Joy Division’s “Atmosphere”. I really like the drums at the start, so I’ve zoomed in on that. Just need to highlight to copy/paste to a new sound file.

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There, now I’ve got a loop segment. Next step is to open a new multitrack session, so I can have a canvas on which to make this new collage.

Once done, I can start dropping stuff into the multitrack session. Here, I’ve put a few instances of that Atmosphere loop. I’ve crossfaded to make it sound a bit better looped and also to try and hide the cut.

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Next step is to find a voice sample. This isn’t always the next step, but for this example it is. I’ve got a clip from Hal Hartley’s movie “Surviving Desire”.

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Let’s drop that into its own audio track on the multitrack session. It’s longer than the loops I’ve put in, so I’ve added some more loops to cover the sample. We’ve got the start of a sound collage now.

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Next step could be anything. More Atmosphere samples, loops from something else, add stuff, subtract stuff. Go in any direction. That’s the fun of these, the journey. I never know how these will turn out, and it’s never how I intend from the start.

By the way, here’s what I made in this brief example.