My name is Jamie Lidell and I'm gonna delve into the heady magic of creating music in a modern studio, probe the depths of production, get tech crazy with mixing tricks, studio skills and equipment. I'll be joined by fellow musicians, engineers and all-round audiophiles who kindly share their tips, stories and ingenious insight from the bizarre world of music production. I shall answer questions and seek knowledge from other music makers on a quest to discover how to make things sound RIGHT. I will also share some studio trickery on each episode as I explore some of my favourite innovations in music tech and my creations... outpourings from the weirdo brain! Welcome to a place for musicians, producers and listeners alike as we "cheers" our love of everything audio.
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Congrats to my Emmy winning guests Kyle Dixon & Michael Stein for their epic work as the band Survive and notable of late for making the many hours of music that score the rather popular show Stranger Things which just wrapped for the last time with its season finale.
Great to peek behind the curtain as it were as we get into the pure substance of their process. Unlock the clues in this episode and you too will certainly be up for an Emmy if you're as tireless and talented as them !
Thanks to Ableton for sponsoring this episode
I get into the MOVE in a rare nitty.
I took the box the climbing gym to do a little against the clock action
here's a link to the move. I can really recommend it
https://www.ableton.com/en/move/
Oh and
HAPPY new Year !!
Let's get on with the show :)
!!!!!!!!!
MOVE DISCOUNT CODE ALERT !HOWAMOVE20
You lot can use this code at checkout for 20% off Ableton Move, valid until January 31, 2026.
HOWA EP 146 - LUKE SCHNEIDER
Tuesday, November 11, 2025 • Duration 01:50:32
Really happy to share this chat with Luke as a celebration of the NEW RELEASE of our LP
This music was made crafted here in my studio in Nashville, it's a guide for those liminal spaces you may find yourself in so to speak and it's been a real treat to put together
Luke is a special one and it was lovely to get a focused time to sit and chaat.
We had a nice jam too and generated loads more amazing sound.
Feels like such an easy thing for us to get on the same page.
We get into how Luke found his path and along the way he mentions a lot of amazing pedal steel players
I thought I'd best compile them for reference as they are pretty special !
It was a very long time coming and I was "prepared" but of course death has a power that yields a unique power and the grief has hit in waves. The first week was a kind of exhaustion, then I got to feel the sadness and the reality hit me in a new and more profound way. I talk about it here in the pod so I'll not linger too long in text form. Needless to say, it's been an intensely emotional time.
Shortly after this news I was thrown into full preparation for the first live show for the LP that is going to be announced (finally!) next month.
I was grateful to have my passions engaged in deep musical focus. Thanks to my wife and the amazing players that can to support me, the show was a truly beautiful event. Not one I'll forget.
So with all that going on, the pod has taken the back burner.
I had been meaning to air this Bibio episode for a long time.
A whole other perspective on the man compared to the first encounter.
I hope you enjoy the west country rambles!
Thanks to all of you that shared your kind words with me about my Dad
love you guys
x
HOWA EP50 - Adrian Quesada
Episode 50
Monday, July 22, 2019 • Duration 50:58
I'm happy to welcome grammy award winning musician/producer Adrian Quesada to the 50th Episode of the show!
Let's just jump into the big list of collaborators he's rocked with to get a quick taste of the caliber of this gent!
How about Shawn Lee?! Yeah! as well as Ocote Soul Sounds, Martin Perna of Antibalas… so so many more
He's performed on the Late Show with David Letterman as well as twice on PBS' historic Austin City Limits TV Show.
He has also worked with Prince, GZA (Wu-Tang Clan), Bernie Worrell, Daniel Johnston, Israel Nash, Alex Maas (The Black Angels), Larry Harlow, Quantic and many more.
As a producer Quesada has worked on albums by Daniel Johnston, The Sword, Natalia Clavier, Karl Denson, Toy Selectah, Wild Child, Graham Reynolds and Ian Moore, among others.
I mean that's not the HALF of it!
We catch up as he's deep in the mix at his superb Austin based studio, Electric Deluxe Recorders.
He's coming out for an air break so we literally hear a rare sonic glimpse of the local wildlife outside the cave where he is working feverishly at all times…
That smell? Yeah he's likely cooking up amazing musical morsels like the NEW! HOT! release from the Black Pumas which is the focus of our chat!
So yes, we've a Super humble badass in the hotchair
He was Born in Brazil, but as you can hear from this interview he's got a distinctively English twang having spent yonks in the UK.
I don't want to give away the details of the chap's timeline just yet as we get into all of that in this FaceTime chin wag.
Might I say at this point though that I feel mightily chuffed to have Amon on the show.
He's truly one of the outstanding living talents in Electronic music and that's really not an overstatement.
He's made a stack of cracking albums for London label 9Bar Records and of course the marvelous Ninja Tune. A relationship that kicked off way back in 1996.
The boy doesn't stop!
Now he's busy as ever with his own label Nomark.
He's got hard drives and aliases up the wazoo and he's making crazy shit every day and by the sounds of things a lot of new music is coming soon.
The man has a masterful grasp of sound collage, from the wildest found sound and manipulated field recordings to the risky dark lands of additive synthesis and into modular madness.
He's always managed to present his sound to the world on the stage without falling into the usual cliched confines of the club.
He's performed at many a prestigious venue, such as the birthplace of musique concrete, the GRM in Paris.
In 2011 he seriously raised the bar on audio visual combos with the dazzling ISAM show.
When that footage started circulating I remember spitting out my coffee.
It's STILL one of the most incredible things to witness on the interwebs as a realization of potent audio visual immersions. A true SHOW.
He also produced several original scores, ranging from the cult film Taxidermia to the video game blockbuster Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
HOWA EP47 - ARIEL RECHTSHAID
Episode 47
Monday, June 10, 2019 • Duration 02:01:41
47 brings the bonkers talent that is Ariel Rechtshaid!
He's had an incredible run of success with artists like Adele, Usher and of course Vampire Weekend (to name but three from a list of hundreds!)
This interview was conduced slightly before Vampire Weekend put out "Father of the Bride" to much critical and chart joy. We got to chatting about that process and how
they've become very solid friends over the years. The music they make comes from a deep trust and adventurous spirit which is something of a common thread in the stories you'll hear on this pod.
Ariel's got a strong point of view but a humble demeanor. He's a true lover of many genres of music and can wear many hats: Playing, tracking, mixing and producing at a top level.
A seriously hard working chap, he's the real deal and I'm really chuffed to have him on the show.
He gave up a couple of hours to me to have me ramble with him at his spot in silver lake and it was a trip to hear it all from the horse's mouth!
Cheers Ariel!
______________________________________
Nitty this time sees me dipping a toe into the poly rhythmic bath thanks to the max4live handiwork of
benniy c bascom and his excellent POLYRHYTHMUS patch!
So I was introduced to Emily at an Ableton event here in Nashville and we were chatting about some pretty specific protools stuff.
Something insane about how she needed to have a flightcase for an old Mac Pro to do her job. It was all very unusual. I had no idea who I was talking to tbh. But I could tell she had a WAY of doing things.
Turns out she's one of the biggest vocal producers working!
In 2010, Emily began work on Katy Perry's Teenage Dream as an engineer.
She also engineered eight songs and co-wrote one song ("Gasoline") on Britney Spears' Femme Fatale (not to mention her work on Circus, Pretty Girls and Britney Jean)
So it turns out she's seen and heard a LOT of craziness at a very high level. We are talking about top tier pop recording. I've never chatted with someone who's been in this particular line of work so it was ace just trying to work out how it really happens. How are those Britney and Katy Perry vocals really tracked?
A modern master with the Digi scissors who has literally cut together the stories of a big slice of modern pop.
HOWA EP45 - LEE FIELDS AND LEON MICHELS
Episode 45
Monday, May 13, 2019 • Duration 01:32:15
Whether or not you know the full, hard history of Lee Fields, I think 50 years into his music career, 10 years since he found the Expressions, and nearly 7 decades of a life that began in Civil Rights-era North Carolina make 2019 a prime time to celebrate "the coolest motherf***er to sing words into a microphone" (Vice). Across dozens of record labels, countless periods of defeat, and stretches of near-retirement, Lee jumpstarted the legacy of Charles Bradley and Sharon Jones, laid the groove for songs by Travis Scott and J Cole, and - with April 5th album It Rains Love (Big Crown) - will affirm his position as the new, benevolent standard of soul.
On Episode 45 of HOWA, I feel very lucky to had a (rather scratchy sounding) phone chat with both Lee and producer Leon Michels (Lana Del Rey, Adele, Beyoncé & Jay Z) on how they've spent the past 20 years or so together, crossing analog and digital mediums, multiple generations of tape saturation, and six consecutive hours of vocal takes at a time to get this music to our ears. 20 years?!?!?
In this show I take a hint from the Episode number hitting 45 and start cutting into some wax.
New life to old 45s in the nitty. Just rerun that runout groove!
Grab a knife, sandpaper and a record or 2:) cut to reveal hidden funk.
_____________________________________
Music for 45 comes from Lee Beaumont :)
I got these tracks ages ago. Sorry it took me so long to feature them. In fact since then he's been getting busy and there's plenty of new stuff to be found. Check this here link:
I met Tim Shaw aka Tim Exile in Berlin in the mid 2000s
We were 2 brits roasting in the furnace of creativity that was cooking in the East
It was a heady time. There were so many amazing performers around
Everyone from Peaches to Kevin Blechdom, Errorsmith to Neubauten
You could inhale the punk as a gas and it fueled a lot of invention at that time
Tech was on that more steady and tangible bubble up and we were all trying to see how to combine our strengths with that digital promise.
Around 2000 I had decided to drop out of music making to be a builder of machines.
I got completely taken by the promise of Max/Msp and indeed it allowed me a great freedom to combine my voice and my obsession with the machine in a new way
I was making a living looping and Tim caught wind of those early shows and it set him off on a journey to build an absolute BEAST of a looper
I had travelled the Max way, Tim took the Reaktor to the loop limit.
His flow machine was a joy to behold even in its infancy.
I remember hearing it and being completely blown away
Seem-less transitions and audio with no clicks!
All things my machine struggled with. Loops with various lengths all playing off against one another, FX that would cut and carve the shit into shreds only to have new layers swoop in to fill the void and uncover new counterpoints.
The Tempo could change. The Machine would time stretch and warp so beautifully. It was a marvel.
I use snips of the original demo vocal in the nitty gritty to show off the wobbly world of dual Melodyne
Why not!
More wobbles in 2019!!!
Cheers
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