Hey Everyone, this is Tim from the podcast, with a wrap up for this past year. 2022 was a year of big milestones for The Tonebenders Sound Design Podcast. We hit our 10 year anniversary in September, released our 200th episode in October, we won our first award in June (a G.A.N.G. award!!) and we passed ONE MILLION plays at some point as well. There was lots to celebrate, and yet we still have not found a time to gather and have a party like we had hoped.
I also got to go on some amazing studio visits this past year. The big one was when I went to Skywalker Ranch for a day and had an absolute blast. I ran into so many people I have talked to on the podcast but never met in person. I got an amazing tour of the facilities from Mac Smith and got to really poke around in one of the foley rooms with Shelley Roden. I was also lucky enough to be a fly on the wall and watch some projects being mixed. What a day?! I have to give a massive, humongous, thanks to Tim Nielsen for helping me make this happen and being an exceptional host as well.
There was even a little gathering of local sound people put on while I was in California. What a trip!
One of the projects being worked on while I was there was The Territory, and I was able to meet and spend a good amount of time with it’s sound designer Peter Albrechtsen. He is one of the best people around. In addition to time at the Ranch, I was able to hike in the giant redwood forests of the area with Peter, Rune Klausen and Kai Paquin and then drive up the pacific coast. It was a day I won’t soon forget!
I was also able to go into the Formosa studios in Toronto on two occasions. Once with my co-host Teresa Morrow to screen a bunch of episodes of the Halo series in the theatre it was mixed in. The second time was for an upcoming episode with the sound team of Women Talking. They were kind enough to allow us to record the episode in the main ADR room and then give me a full tour afterwards.
Studio tours are alway super interesting for me, I love seeing how different people work and solve problems. In the past Tonebenders has gone on field trips to New York City, Montreal and Austin Texas. We even had a trip to Los Angeles planned before Coivd put an end to that. Hopefully in 2023 we can pick that up again and visit some other cities and cover the local studios and sound people. We are open to ideas of places we should go next? Reach out and tell us what makes your sound city special!
This podcast is very much an unpaid/side gig for us. René, Teresa, Mark and myself have become incredibly busy with our actual jobs in audio post and sound design over the last 10 years. At times the show has had to be set aside, because it is a lot of work to put out each episode. We found that a bottle neck was occurring where we could not get the episodes edited and released as fast as we would have wanted. So I put out a call to our listeners to see is they could help us out, and the response was amazing. For the last few months almost every episode was edited by a listener volunteer. It has been so wonderful interacting with everyone who has collaborated with us. Cameron Naylor,Faith Abi Haydar, Keith Morrison, Paul Rowland, Carlos San Jaun, David Weaver, Rod Thomas, Anita Yung, Kyle Webb, Andrew Richards, Kevin Gan, Andrew Milad, and Robyn Edgar have all worked on episodes so far and it has always been a super positive experience. If you think it would be a good fit for you to collaborate with Tonebenders to edit/mix an episode in 2023, please reach out to info at tonebenderspodcast dot com. We can use all the help we can get!
We also want to send a massive thanks to Katrina Amsler, who stepped up right away to offer her fantastic sound library, Sonic Springs, to all our volunteers. If you don’t have that library in your sonic arsenal, you are missing out!
Before we reached out to ask for help, we had 2 separate gaps of two months, when no episodes came out at all. So 2022 was kind of only 8 months long for us, but we still had our best year ever for play counts. It is truly amazing how Tonebenders continued to grow and build through out the year despite our inconsistent schedule. This is something really special to us. Not a lot of other shows can say that they’re still gaining steam into their 11th year of podcasting! Some of the most listened to episodes in our history came out in the past year. So a huge, massive, heartfelt thanks to all of our listeners! Seriously……. thanks.
It’s become a bit of a tradition for us to look back at the end of each year and celebrate the ‘most listened to episodes of the past 12 months. This is of course an unfair metric for episodes that come out late in the calendar year. The episodes on Top Gun Maverick and Nope, which came out recently, are charging up this list fast. I am fairly sure if they were released earlier in the year, they would have made the cut.
First things first: we send out a massive thank-you to all of the 63(!) guests we had on Tonebenders in 2022. We deeply appreciate that they offered their time to talk shop with us and share their knowledge with our listeners.
Here are some quick Honourable Mentions – These episodes fell just, ever so slightly, out side of the top 5 but essentially had equal numbers. So these are all basically tied for 5th. 191 – Mid/Side Microphone Shootout (with Kai Paquin), 195 – The Sound Design of Stranger Things and 192 – The Sound of Halo. Make sure you check them out because they worth you time for sure.
OK, without further delay, here are the Top Five Most Listened To Tonebenders Episodes of 2021!
#5 Episode 190 – Everything Everywhere All At Once
This is the little movie that could! What a fantastic ride this film was, and the sound team played a major role. It was our first time meeting and talking to them and it was a blast!
#4 Episode 193 – The Sound of The Beatles Get Back
How can you not hit a home run with this project and these guests. Possibly my favourite talk of the year. We were given exclusive sound clips of “before and afters” of their amazing clean up job on the footage from decades ago. This will be one I come back to regularly.
#3 Episode 197 – Loop Group Roundtable Table Talk
I have to be honest and admit….. this episode is mostly for me!? I have never done a loop group session and I wanted to get some top notch advice. So I reached out to some of the best in the business and then hit record for the talk. This is a fun discussion about a wildly under covered aspect of audio post production. I learned so much from this one.
#2 Episode 189 – Gary Rydstrom
Well, what can I say about having Gary on Tonebenders, He is a personal hero of mine and was just the nicest guy. He even complimented our show in the interview, saying Tonebenders is a “great podcast”. This episode will always hold a special place for me. Plus Gary will be making a return appearance on our show in early 2023! Get ready people.
#1 Episode 188 – The Sound of The Matrix Resurrections
This episode felt special as we were recording it. Going in I assumed Dane Davis would be the star of the show. Don’t get me wrong, he was wonderful. Yet is was his co-sound supervisor, Steph Flack, who stole the show. She dug in deep into her dialog editing process and some of her workflow really sparked a lot of talk with our listeners. They were just really great. This episode is now our second most listened to episode all time!
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Those were all cool episodes, but we had so many great talks this year, it feels weird not to mention them all. If you are new to our podcast, please take the time to go back through our feed. Most of our episodes are evergreen and will still be worth a listen, even if they are not brand new.
Thanks for listening over the last 12 months. We are having a blast putting these episodes together and it would not be worth doing if you were not out there to hear them.
One thing we ask of you, is to simply pass the word along to help other people find Tonebenders. Feel free to let any of your work colleagues or classmates know about us. If you like an episode, take a moment to shoot it out on your feeds to help more people find us.
Stay tuned for more Tonebenders Sound Design Podcast, we have some genuinely wonderful episodes coming out soon.
Talk to you all in 2023!