Erratic engineeress

A personal blog fuelled by caffeine and curiosity.

My podcast has intro music now

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Matt Hsu’s Obscure Orchestra x Erratic hat

You know how I started with my Australia throwback posts about Brisbane recently? Well, there’s a good reason for it. 🙂 When I was couchsurfing there 3 years ago, I met Matt and his now wife Freya, two of my absolute favourite couchsurfing hosts (a post about my stay with them is coming soon).

Matt is a composer and multitalented musician, who creates music with all sorts of weird and normal instruments and is essentially a one man orchestra. He plays over 20 instruments and even does that live with the help of loop pedal, so his music acts are truly unique and amazing to watch. For him pretty much anything can become an instrument and since I love his innovative approach to music, I asked him if I could use one of his compositions for my Erratic hat podcast intro. His music is always soul-inspired, beautiful and unpredictable, so I thought it would be a good fit. Luckily, he kindly agreed and now my podcast has an intro song!

Matt Hsu’s Obscure Orchestra webpage
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We made a short video interview to catch up after 3 years and you can hear the song I’ll be using as an intro in it. It was midnight for me in Slovenia and 9am for him in Australia, so come watch tired me say “awesome” a 100 times and listen to Matt deconstruct the instruments he used for this song below:

P.S.: The video freezes for the first 3 seconds for some reason, which didn’t happen before I uploaded it to YouTube. I only realised way after I already went public with it, so I guess mistakes happen, ha? Sorry!

Another thing I love about Matt’s music is that he released his albums on a shirt instead of on a CD, so when you buy his work you’re actually getting a T-shirt with a download link sticker and I think that’s awesome. As you can see, I have two Matt shirts now and I’m wearing both in the video. He also did some great songs with social commentary topics in collaboration with other artists, like Welcome to the Neighbourhood song that we talked about in the video, In Colour about experiences of diverse Australians and women-inspired Birdnest hair, and I feel like his music always addresses the right questions.

So, what do you think about my new intro music? Is it erratic enough?

Thanks again for the music Matt! <3

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7 responses to “My podcast has intro music now”

  1. AJMcGregor

    This was a really interesting post. Matt radiates such warmth and intelligence. I thought he was impressive, to say the least. The music is a great choice for your podcast.

    Reply
    1. Erratic Engineeress

      Thanks for watching! He’s such a warm and amazing person, I’m really glad to have met him. One of his friends apparently said he’s the perfect unicorn bait and I’m inclined to agree.

      Reply
      1. AJMcGregor

        I’m an English teacher, and I have to ask, how did you learn such perfect English? Your writing skills are exceptional. It’s hard to believe it isn’t your first language.

      2. Erratic Engineeress

        I learned from English teachers haha. We have English as second language in schools up until the end of high school and when I was young I had extra lessons with a teacher from Welsh, because my parents figured it was important to learn well. Then I lived in England for 6 months, 1 year in Sweden and spent 2 years living and learning in English during my engineering Masters. To be fair and not to tut my own horn, I am quite good with languages in general and the way I speak tends to change a bit if I’m in the presence of people with accents, so I guess I pick it up a bit by ear as well.

      3. AJMcGregor

        You would have to have a facility with languages to write like you do in English when it isn’t your first language. What a terrific strength to have! My sister taught engineers English in university, and I remember that she said that most engineers weren’t strong writers, so you’re an exception in that respect as well.

  2. Matt Hsu

    Thanks for such a lovely chat, Petra! This was a really fun interview and a great hit of nostalgia. I appreciate you taking the time cutting this together!

    Reply
    1. Erratic Engineeress

      Thanks for joining me!

      Reply

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