BONUS - Metra - Oops, (not) All Music - Ep 4

Later this spring, MythMakers Media will release Metra - The Cast Album!In the meantime, you can be the first to hear the newly remixed and remastered songs, from the comfort of your podcast feed. We're sharing them as they're finished--here's batch 4!

This batch features some extra bonus content—consider it the DVD commentary track (designed to appease the Sp*tify overlords…)

Support the creation of the album, and get access to upcoming bonus materials, at ko-fi.com/metrathemusical 

Songs: 
"Ceres' Curse reprise"
"Cori in the Limo"
"Bechtel Man"
"Cori Rides a Train"
"Cori Starts to Dream"
"Cori Underwater"
"Cori Sheds Her Skin"
"Cori Comes Home"Music and Lyrics by Ned Hartford

Produced by MythMakers Media
Featuring: Jeannette Bayardelle, Cherrye J. Davis, Fred Inkley, Corinna Schulenburg, Alia Munsch, Cristina Obando Sanchez, Sierra Rein

Sound Editing and Design; Instrumentation Arranged and Performed; Vocals Arranged; and all Audio Produced, Engineered, and Mixed by Ned Hartford

Check out our website for ways to join the climate movement: metrathemusical.com/do-something

Look out this spring for info on the Bandcamp release, including special bonus features.

Happy Listening!

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:02

Mythmakers media present Metro with Tom A serial scripted audio podcast produced and mixed by Tom Bulletby. Hi Ned Hartford here. We had hoped to drop a series of episodes that were just music. Uh Emily titled them Oops Just Music, Episode 1, Oops Just Music, Episode 2, Oops Just Music. But Spotify wouldn't post the episode 2 of Oops Just Music. We found out afterwards because it didn't have any talking in it. And they said it's not a podcast if you don't have talking in it. So I gotta talk a little bit. Uh this first number in this episode today is a reprise of the last part of the song series Curse. And it's uh sung by the tree nymphs as a way to introduce the next episode. Featuring the Dulcet Tones of Oleah Monch, Christino Obando Sanchez, and Sierra Ryan. Here we go.

SPEAKER_11 1:15

Now say goodbye to all you love.

SPEAKER_03 1:22

Say goodbye to all you love. Say goodbye. This next track, Corey Osidavos, as uh Schulenberg and Sheree J. Davis in our nymph trio once again. One of the things to note on this is I had a I come up with different ways to expand sounds, make it sound more fuller than just one guitar, and I used a couple of petals to do that. You'll hear on this song. These are essentially micro loopers. They grab a tiny bit of whatever sound you play, and then they repeat it over and over and over and over very quickly. So it sounds like a pad, like a synth pad or something, or a long held out chord. EHX Freeze was one pedal, and then at the end of the song, over the sort of pink Floydy sounding part at the end, I use this uh game changer uh sustain pedal. It looks like a piano sustained pedal, and you play it just like that. Here we go.

SPEAKER_01 2:17

Sitting in the back of the limousine, she suddenly finds herself taking stock, reflecting on her life's journey, and it's a moment she finds shockingly unique because Corey never looked back.

SPEAKER_11 2:42

Eyes forward, keep moving forward, yes!

SPEAKER_01 2:50

Till now, sitting in the limo, looking for her lights, all the way back to childhood scholarship, arriving prep school, horizontal white classmates Who claimed her straight days, simply inflated grades, inflated because of her race But I was just smarter and worked ten times harder So wipe that stupid smart off the face Corey go, Corey go into Harvard at 17 Well I'm Mother shocked as Cory talked about getting a business degree Be a free clinic doctor, be a civil rights lawyer, be the change that you want to see But real change comes from money, ma money is what bites history go we go Just go The limo slept as it approached a crowd of angry protesters Police and riot gear confronted the crowds Corey could see the faces of the protesters, Corey could hear them shout, read their signs, condemning the conference, condemning the greed of the wealthy, condemning the elitist capitalist system that Corey had vowed to use, to usurp, to somehow, some way, someday bend to the greater good. Damn! No! Stop it! Hey, they're just they're just protesting. As the police attacked the protesters, the limo rolled on. Corey looked down at her clenched hands and realized she had unknowingly scratched them raw. Drops of blood dotted her knuckles. Before she could find a tissue, the limo stopped. The driver turned and announced, Mom, you have arrived. Oh yeah. They took her back. She checked in to the conference. Davos The 2015 Economic Forum. Hori had arrived.

SPEAKER_03 5:54

As we've said, um there's just one guitarist on stage, and the music in Metra is diegetic to the show. It happens within the action of the show. And, you know, that would that's great. So that if you want to put up the show yourself, it doesn't cost an arm and a leg for you to do it at your school or your theater. But it was a big challenge for me trying to find different ways to make each song sound unique and keep things interesting as it went along, and my approach with Becto Man was just to keep it really simple. Big umphy guitar sound, and just simple kind of as a palette cleanser, because it was coming uh right after a pretty sonically complex song, and then it was coming right before a very sonically complex song. So I just wanted something simple.

SPEAKER_09 6:35

This isn't about how we got here today. We all know how we got here today. We got driven all the way in a big black limousine.

SPEAKER_10 7:07

Big black limousine, got bulletproof glass, make me safe in the state. My morning might be dirty, but my ride is green that got off big black limousine. I'm just driving on the road that's littered with bones from the walls. I start by picking up the phone. The world beats bad while I see green my big black battle. I'm a bad to man, I'm the battery. I'm only I be changed, beat stick, but that ain't gonna change the way we live. Gotta be the plan, gotta have a plan.

SPEAKER_09 8:44

Who does not? Any questions?

SPEAKER_03 9:01

Okay, this next song is the first part of uh a sort of medley of songs that make up Corey's fabulous dream. This first part of the song is uh Corey rides a train. And it's a train song. So I needed that chugging rhythm. I had to EQ it as a way that it wouldn't get in the way of the other guitar parts. You have to approach it with EQing to take out certain frequencies so that they all sit and play well together. The song's got Sheree J. Davis cut loose with that amazing rock alto of hers. And uh here we go.

SPEAKER_05 9:41

Heading southeast anyway, no way.

SPEAKER_06 9:48

Hard to get somewhere when your whole life's been a waste of time. Playing and being one of the boys, laughing at the jokes, telling a few of my Playing it sexy, not too sexy, cursing just as much as they did. That was easy because I did my smiles and chokes. My soul was one of screen.

SPEAKER_11 10:36

Those dreams would not interest the deep process where the witch always plays I become a part of a part of a system Drinks rolling on, drinking fullin' on, drinking's rolling on and on and on and the lawyer calls me because the Saudi Minister of Oil has suddenly necessary, I couldn't be inside!

SPEAKER_03 12:08

And I use a ping-pong delay here to kind of move the sound around the sound field and create a sort of disorienting state as she's falling asleep. You get uh Shri J Davis' wonderful beautiful low end on her voice coming in, and then you get Jeanette Byrdell with this incredibly comforting motherly vocal. Sort of very seductive, like fall asleep, fall asleep, fall asleep. Here we go!

SPEAKER_08 12:48

I lay down, staring at the ceiling, wide awake dreaming I was crowd floating in the home, wrapped in a cocoa, and I was feeling the pool of blood red.

SPEAKER_03 13:51

Okay, the next part of Corey's video is Cory underwater. The idea of like Cory. I could just give her. I could just die. She's underwater! How do I make her sound underwater? Live on stage, just using one guitar. Well, this is where my striman pedals came in very, very handy. Strymen are just amazing pedals. Uh I do a lot of modulation with the Mobius pedal. A lot of my delay comes from the timeline pedal, and a lot of the reverb I use comes from the big sky pedal, and then also from a more niche pedal of theirs called the night sky pedal. I'll explain that in just a minute. But you're gonna hear all sorts of underwater sounds. Those were created live on stage by my using a very uh very extreme settings on, I believe it was the Stryman Timeline Delay filter mode that allows you to filter the sounds really heavily, and then a very extreme setting on the night sky pedal of strium. Night sky is interesting because it it takes the reverb and does all sorts of filtering and pitch effects to the reverb, which I used a lot in this show. It was a tremendous pedal for sound design. So that's how I achieved that the crazy sound you're about to hear with Corey underwater. Here we go.

SPEAKER_05 15:25

I'm sinking to the bottom of eternity. Such a peaceful place to cease to be. I could lose myself so easily. But above, I see the surface.

SPEAKER_00 15:42

Are those clear skies?

unknown 15:45

Yes!

SPEAKER_00 15:45

I still have a purpose, so I kick and rise, I swim and survive to reach a land uncharted. I'm still alive. So let's get this party started.

SPEAKER_03 15:59

Okay, so Corey decides to live, so she swims to shore in the dream. And what's happening also is that she's bringing Tyler into her dream. Seeing the things she saw, the feelings she had in the same dream, so that Tyler, the billionaire from the bubble, can go through the same transformation and become a decent human being. I had this problem before me on one guitar. How do I make it sound like it's a progressively bigger and bigger and bigger sounding song? It's kind of a disco party. I started off with kind of like a synthesizer sound. I use this pedal called a pog. I think it stands for polyphonic octave generator, and it uh allows me also to sort of take away the attack at the top of each note so it sounds like a synthesizer. And so I I loop that little synthesizer part uh loop that underneath and I build off that, and then I bring in a drum sound, so I can put a heavy distortion on the guitar and then EQ'd out everything except the low end and the high end, so I could hit the low end strings and it would sound sort of like a bass drum, and then hit it uh with an upstroke at the high end strings, and it would sound kind of like a snare. So I looped that in on top and then loop it in other guitar parts. So hopefully it it sounds like a big party. That's it. So this is Corey's fabulous dream of Corey's Fabulous Dream. Here we go.

SPEAKER_11 17:31

Ty, return. It's time to join the story tonight. You learn to dream like Corey. You're naked, reckless, super soaking wet. You're shaking in the darkness all alone, and yet you feel a rhythm, feel a beat, and it's starting to display. This dream's becoming fast.

SPEAKER_07 19:16

Time for you to wake up now, girl. Time for you to wake and shake up though that was some dream.

SPEAKER_05 19:37

Right time. Amazing. So yeah.

SPEAKER_11 19:46

Came. Got off that train. Got on a boat. A boat had a name. Metra. Wow. Well, how be? That name seems so familiar to me. Took that boat to an island off the coast of Greece. All along I hear the song. Yeah, that singing wouldn't cease. That night at the inn, I threw on a robe and I followed that singing to a dark wooded grove. A sacred grove. A singing tree. My past, my future, calling out to me. Her. True, and after all that I had been through, this tree nymph said I've been waiting for you.

SPEAKER_03 20:44

Okay, another good example of using that uh game changer sustain pedal. Um, on that verse where it goes, I took the boat to an island off the coast of Greece. I needed to have some builders, so I used that sustain pedal once again by game changer. So just on that verse, you get this pad underneath everything that's playing, and then it disappears, the pad, and so then it really opens up for the last verse. So that was another example of me using that sustained pedal to help build energy with just one instrument. Okay, and every epic number, like Corey's Fabulous Dream, is an epic number, uh at least in minutes and seconds. So it needs a button, and we needed something fast and peppy to finish it all up with, and this is it. So here we go.

SPEAKER_11 21:30

And that's how the youngest black female hedge fund owner in history.

SPEAKER_03 21:51

Okay, in a few weeks you'll be hearing the cast album, be able to get it on Bandcamp, just pay what you can, and that's it. Uh so you won't have me interrupting, it'll just be the Music then, just like we wanted with these episodes, but Spotify wouldn't let us. So, uh, like I said, a few weeks from now, releasing the cast album, and we hope you'll uh download it. And I gotta get going because I gotta finish this up pretty quickly because we might have flooding here in New York, thanks to uh all the crazy weather we're having. Uh, that is directly attributable to the climate apocalypse barreling down upon us, brought to you by Coke Industries and all their affiliated billionaire asshole friends. Crazy summer and fall ahead. We'll see what happens.