Alex : Dude, so like, it's gotta at least be like - I was thinking about it the other day - it's gotta be like 15, 17 years at this point.

Andrew: Probably Yeah.

Alex: Holy shit.

John: That's Alex Aldea speaking to Andrew Joslyn. They're part of the Paragon Collective, the network responsible for audio dramas like Darkest Night and The No Sleep Podcast.

Alex: Andrew and I do compose a lot of podcast music together but Andrew is also a music luminary. He's done string arrangements for Ke$ha to compositions from Macklemore to literally everything.

Andrew: Yeah, even film stuff with like Corbin Bernsen and Denise Richards There you go!Alex: Andrew plays every single string instrument. So even like in Darkest Night, a lot of the strings that you hear are real strings.

John: The audio quality in this episode is a Zoom rip. Sorry about that. But I got some great conversation with these guys. My name is John Bartmann. I'm the creator of How I Make Music. I'll let these two audio drama stars. take it from here.

Andrew: The piece of music we're listening to in the background is called The Opening of the Oyster. It's a dystopian soundtrack from the psychedelic audio drama The Oyster. Today, we'll break it down and get into why and how it was made. You're listening to How I make music, where audio drama composers get to tell their own stories. Every Wednesday, we break apart a song or soundtrack or composition and take a trip - a wild trip - into how it was made. My name is Andrew Joslyn.

Alex: And I'm Alex Aldea.

Andrew: I'm a composer from Seattle, Washington. And this is How I Make Music.

1:58 INTRO 

Alex: The Oyster takes place 30 years in the future, where humans basically don't have as many resources and they have to figure out whether they want to plug in and just feel eternal bliss in the machine or face the harsh reality. The basic premise of the show is a philosophical argument on utilitarianism. This show came about really quickly. I kept thinking about this idea of "do we plug in?" Or do we not know what happens if you invent something like this and how it kind of goes in society for months and months and months? Definitely psychedelic. I knew we had something with the show. You never really know if you have anything, let's be quite honest! The point where you can work on a project and you're like, "oh, this isn't terrible. I don't feel so delusional about it." I don't know if you've heard about the philosopher John Stuart Mill. If something feels good, then it's good. There's the great argument against that has always been like well, what if you were an oyster and you felt nothing except for bliss, but you never could have really any experiences? Is that not the ultimate life? That monologue "choirs of crickets fill the sky with a cascading cacophony"... we actually had her record that monologue on top of Love On A Real Train by Tangerine Dream. 

4:34 SUBTLETY

Andrew: These episodes are so musical because it's an audio drama. The music has to ... not foreshadow and give away too much, but it has to help guide the audience. Emotionally. On the journey that, you know, we're taking them on. I usually like to think of it as like breathing. You know, if the VO allows room to take a breath, let the music take a breath with the VO as well. So sometimes what that means to me is just add a longer reverb. So you can't hit them over the head and be like super aggressive, but you also got to give them enough guidance. So I would, I would choose something really subtle. You know, just drones, some other stuff. Make sure the chord progression isn't anything too aggressive. Make sure that none of the harmonies go a little too far up in the spectrum. You know. Never Never, never, never never step on the vocal no matter what you do. I come from the pop realm so I always think of

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