Promo Video: A Robot In Every Home

I'm currently completing the extant promo videos for the Radioatomic album. Here's A Robot In Every Home. This time I tried my hand at mixing stock footage with footage from the studio. Up until now the two styles have been kept separate. I sourced scenes from three public domain films: Leave It To Roll-Oh, The Middleton Family At The New York World's Fair, and The Last Word In Dishwashing. Studio footage includes my trusty tin robot Mini Radiocon, the Parker Brothers' Merlin game, the Roland HS-60, and Novation K-Station.

To give you an idea how much effort goes into these promo videos, I devoted one to two hours to the editing each evening over the course of a week. The studio footage was accomplished in a couple of afternoon sessions, and sourcing and converting digital film stock about the same again. Rendering the finished film took roughly six hours. It would go quicker, but my system isn't optimal for the task.

So, without further ado, let's see what kind of future we might've had if atomic power was all it was cracked up to be ...

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Digital Single: A Robot In Every Home

The final free single from the Radioatomic project looks at the bright future promised by the advent of atomic energy that didn't quite live up to expectations. Sure, there were advances in many industries, but where are our personal jet packs, flying cars, and robot butlers? This was my inspiration for A Robot In Every Home.

Bandcamp player:

A Robot In Every Home [single edit] is drastically pruned down from the eight minute album version to serve up the essence of the track. It retains most of the intro, consisting of French horns, found sound, and a snippet of processed audio from a fun little film called 'Leave It To Roll-oh.' I was thinking of old RKO Radio Pictures black & white b-films, complete with a menacing mechanical man. Next come some synthesizer parts, the bulk of which were created with the Novation K-Station this time around. HS-60 is also present, and Gmedia M-Tron choir. The Korg Monotribe was used on the bridge, but that particular part was cut from this version.

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Audio:

Like Radium Smile before it, this song started with the lyrics. Then came the melody as heard on the intro: something to set the tone for the Radioatomic album's 'big finale'. I spent some time last year sampling an electronic game called Parker Brothers' Merlin (see this post) and this seemed a perfect place to use the sounds. As well as the usual DR-550 tom-toms and synthesized percussion, there's the odd found sound in the mix, including a hand-clap with tight reverb recorded in the corner of a concrete foundation, and a pebble being dropped (into a drain pipe, if memory serves).

A Robot In Every Home [electro edit] rather than include the album version on the single I created this alternate mix, which omits the French horns and some of the samples. It has the same shortened bridge as the single edit.

There's currently no video for this track, but it's forthcoming. (updated 12/11/14). This release is twinned with the full Radioatomic album. Stay tuned to the next post for details!

Sample Pack: Merlin Electronic Game

Photo courtesy: the internets.

While searching the local re-use centre for electronic goodies a couple of weeks ago I spotted a cool retro-looking box with a hand-held game on the cover. In wonderful space-age chrome lettering on the side was the word 'Merlin.' "6 electronic games," the box proclaimed,  "vocabulary of space age sounds," "powerful computer brain." The game itself still resided inside, and though a little battered, it looked to be in working order. So for the princely sum of 25 cents it was mine.


I knew of this game, but had never played it. It was made by Parker Bros. in 1978 (a year before I was born). It's actually quite fun, but more importantly it makes some wonderfully retro bleep sounds. I've created a sample pack containing all these sounds, recorded direct from the speaker using my CAD GXL1200 through an ART USB preamp. The pack is hosted on freesound.org and is 100% royalty free.

One further note: although I made sure to use fresh batteries when making the recording, I realised afterward that Merlin is out-of-tune by approximately three semitones. Thus the tone 'do,' which should be a C, is closer to an A. This being the digital age, it can easily be corrected if you plan on using the sounds musically.