Blitch Bango

Podcast Music Song Notes

Podcast Music represents a departure from previous Blitch Bango releases in several ways.

First, there are no song notes for individual titles in the Podcast Music releases, as has been the custom up until Podcast Music.

Second, the Podcast Music collection represents six separate music releases: the Original eleven tracks (released Dec., 2008), a second set of eleven New tracks (Dec., 2009), a third eleven Jumbo tracks (Jul, 2010), a fourth set 33 1/3% More tracks (Nov., 2011), a fifth set of Quint-Essential tracks, (Dec., 2012). and the last release of eleven CLEARANCE tracks (Dec., 2013).

The Original 11 songs released as Podcast Music were selected from many podcast backing tracks written and recorded over the course of 2008. Generally speaking, each of the podcast backing tracks was recorded one to two weeks before the subsequent weekly Matt Brauer Podcast where the song was used. This was the biggest departure for Blitch Bango, since previous music recorded for distribution was generally recoded in a two to three month stretch, with a particular focus on music that fits a similar theme or feeling. Mixing on previous releases was performed after song recordings were complete, so that all the songs in the group would have the same production and mix feel.

When Matt began podcasting in April of 2008, he wanted backing music that was acoustic in nature, light and cheerful, and desired uniformity from one podcast to the next. The decision was made to keep the production values simple and direct, so that music written over the course of several months would remain consistent. To aid in that consistency, the music was also kept simple. For the first several weeks, the backing music was limited to a solo acoustic guitar. However, Matt and Blitch Bango wanted to expand on what was being written and recorded to add interesting elements to the backing music, without being obtrusive to the podcast narrative. While the basic acoustic guitar backing was kept to remain harmonious with previous podcasts, percussion and melody were gradually introduced, still with a goal of maintaining light and cheerful music, and uniformity of production. While there were originally no intentions of releasing this music outside of the confines of the Matt Brauer Podcasts, the early decisions to keep the music uniform in feel and production has aided the ability to release such a collection.

The music presented in the Original Podcast Music collection represented the latter developments of the podcast backing music, incorporating percussion, rhythm and melody; nearly all the tracks featured a single rhythm guitar, a melody/lead guitar, and hand percussion. Bass guitar and drum kits were absent by design.

After releasing the Original 11, Blitch worked on many more pieces for the Matt Brauer Podcasts following the same recipe - light and cheerful, acoustic guitars & hand percussion - with an eye on a future release of these backing tracks on the Blitch Bango website. However, as new songs were written, there was more desire to add bass guitar to the songs to result in something more harmonically complete. When new backing tracks began to feature bass in the mix, Matt & Blitch decided to revisit the older backing tracks and add bass and some extra percussion to them. Hence, the second release became New & Improved! - the "New" being tracks 12 through 22, and the "Improved" being the Original 11 tracks remixed with bass.

Matt and Blitch continued to record new tracks on through to 2013, and decided to keep releasing tracks on a yearly basis, up until the current and final planned release: CLEARANCE. The third release augments the 22 New & Improved tracks with 11 more (tracks 23 through 33), resulting in the Jumbo Sized!! collection. An additional 11 (tracks 34 through 44) were released as the 33 1/3% More!! set, another 11 as the Quint-Essential! tracks (45-55), and finally, the last scheduled set of songs, the 11 CLEARANCE tracks (56-66).

This music is released as musical shareware, and with a "Some Rights Reserved" copyright tag.

I hope you enjoy the music as much as Blitch Bango has enjoyed creating it.

B.


Liner Notes:

All songs written by B. Mathis, M. A. Tailor
Recorded and mastered at The Spare Room
Produced by Blitch Bango