Ep42 Radio Accention - Stevie Cripps

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Luke 00:00:06  Welcome to another episode of the Impro Pod podcast. This is the first episode being recorded above the Canteen in Stokes Croft in Bristol. So you'll hear a bit of city noise in the background. My guest today is Stevie Cripps. So you are a voiceover artist, right? Yes. Tell us a bit about that.

Stevie  00:00:26  There's been a voiceover for the last 22 years. And I do commercials, radio imaging, some radio jingles in store. So you might hear me talking to you about singing Kleenex or whatever. On, on, in Tescos. I do IVR, so you might hear me telling you to hold on the phone and corporate videos. Loads of different bits and bobs. It was one day. I do remember a very good friend of mine, also called Luke, rang me up, is complaining because he was sick of hearing me. because he went into a supermarket and he heard me. He phoned up a local company and he got put on hold and I was the voice on hold. And then he went to the cinema, and then he heard me selling him popcorn and hot dogs in the cinema.

Stevie  00:01:16  So he was like, I've had enough of this. This is too much. Too much, Stevie Cripps.

Luke 00:01:22  Do you ever go to the cinema just for that experience? I mean, it must be quite an interesting experience to hear yourself talking on surround sound, you know, in big speakers.

Stevie  00:01:32  Truth be told, I actually don't like the sound of my voice. Not a big fan. I nip into the voice booth and I do these things. And then I move on. But saying that, I marvel at what producers are capable of doing. And it's quite interesting. I quite like listening to that kind of element of things because of the amount of effects and stuff they use and all that jiggery pokery. I used to do radio imaging as my job back in the day. I used to create some of the iconic jingles on radio one, for instance, for a lot of the dance folk and for people like Pete Tong and Judge Jules and Serpentine and all those guys that used to be on radio one back in the day.

Luke 00:02:15  So if I was to ask you to give me a radio image for this podcast just on the fly, what would you do?

Stevie  00:02:21  The thing is, because the show is just based upon the interviews and naked piano music, you wouldn't have much in the way of imaging you would literally have. This is the Impro Pod podcast. That's it. You just a minimal voice. That's all you'd need. You wouldn't really want any big effects to kind of highlight things, because it's all about the person and it's all about the music.

Luke 00:02:54  So I'm going to play you a piece of music and it's completely improvised. I haven't prepared for it at all. And I want you to tell me what that makes you think of. So that's any sort of thing that comes into your mind and it kind of thoughts, ideas, but don't analyze it too much. What are your thoughts on that?

Stevie  00:04:26  Yeah, an interesting short piece. yeah. Began very commanding, didn't it? Gets your attention and says yes. Need to get across an important story here.

Stevie  00:04:39  Something that you need to be aware of. It's sort of like dark and slightly alarming. And then it kind of like, wanders off and everything is sort of like an a happy vibe, but it's kind of all right, it's okay. We can calm down now. Everything's a little bit more chilled. Everything's going to be a right. I think there were some miners in there, gave a little bit of a little bit of unease. But yeah, very interesting short piece.

Luke 00:05:06  And so you had that attention grabbing moment. It's interesting how by playing less often you can gain more attention if you like.

Stevie  00:05:18  Exactly. And obviously the manner in which you're hitting the keys, you're bringing that depth. Something's going on here and it's important. A little bit of pomp in there, but yeah. Interesting piece.

Luke 00:05:36  I'd like you to tell me a story of some kind, and what I'm going to do is break the story down into sections and then improvise a soundtrack to the story.

Stevie  00:05:48  It's not really a straightforward story, but it's one that I hope will encourage people to go for their dreams and listen to their gut.

Stevie  00:05:57  It's also something that invokes emotion in me because of part of the story is my dad, who is no longer with us as a kid, absolutely loved radio, to the point that I would often spend hours under the bottom of my bunk bed pretending to be a DJ with an old microphone that I'd found when I got to sixth form. I had to do work experience as part of the coursework, and I had to do something which I wanted to do later on in life, and I wanted to get into radio. So I contacted the local radio station and waited and waited and waited and didn't hear anything back. And I was quite lazy in my approach to trying to find other work. And in the end, I spoke to my aunties other half who was like, well, look, I've got a locksmith shop, Do you want to come in and spend a couple of weeks learning about locks and bits and bobs? And you do that? And I was like, wow, sounds quite good. So my first day he presented me with a lock barrel and put it in a vise and gave me the pick and the tension tool and said, right, there we go.

Stevie  00:07:11  You've got the whole day. See if you can open that for us. And I was like, right, fine. Okay. Seven seconds, seven seconds. It took me to open this lock. And he was a complete disbelief. He was like, right, okay, well, look, here we go. Try it again. Opened it again in less time. And that took me onto the trajectory of doing locksmith thing. A year later I'd left school and I was in the shop. It was placed in this town, which is in the middle of nowhere, lots of old people, and I'm a 17 year old lad, and I was just bored out of my brain. However, radio was my saviour. I listened to every day religiously. It was my thing, and it got me through the days when there wasn't very much going on. But I was always listening to, various different DJs. It was at that point I was getting into a lot of dance music, and I would be over the weekends, be going out clubbing and listening to the radio.

Stevie  00:08:19  One day my dad, who knew that I was getting really frustrated with work and was looking for more work, came in and said, there's a job going at the local radio station and my head just exploded. Oh my God, what a great opportunity. So he said, you should go for it. And I was like, hell yeah, I am going to go for it. So I took myself down to the library. I got every single book I could on studios. I read about everything from compression to synth modules and various other bits, and I could just see myself in a studio. I had that vision, all the knobs and the buttons and and the reel to reels. I was completely taken by it. So I got myself a job application form. I got my girlfriend, who is now my wife, to fill it in, and I sent it in and I got an interview. I was in utter shock, I prepared myself, I went in with all the knowledge I had.

Stevie  00:09:22  And they showed me around the studios, and I met all these guys, and it was everything that I dreamt of and and more. It was an incredible experience. So fast forward a couple of days, I get a letter through my door and I'd got the job and I was just absolutely beside myself. It was an amazing time in my life. It was straight into a job which wasn't making tea. it was genuinely working with loads of different technologies to get audio across what was then a small global network. I had lots of opportunities to work in the studio so I could put music together and do mix edits and make commercials, and I was on standby for making commercials in an incredible environment with people that I long term friends that even I'm friends with now. And they were the best days. So a couple of years later, I got promoted to a commercial producer, and then a couple of years later, I found myself working in London with all my dance heroes Pete Tong, Judge Jules, Seb Fontaine, people that were very influential in my life growing up as a listener of radio, and especially specifically to dance music, literally went from being in my own bedroom, listening to the essential selection on a Friday night, to actually being part of the team, making the show, putting the mixes together.

Stevie  00:10:47  And I also had the honor of putting together one of the essential selections. most iconic, intros, doing interviews with people like Moby, Fatboy Slim, some old school sort of hip hop guys, including iced tea. It was an incredible environment to be in, and I'm very grateful. I think the message that I'm giving here is that if there's something that you really want to do, can't get it out of your head, you really need to pursue that. And it could be in anything. It's that that enthusiasm, visualization, to make something happen.

Luke 00:11:25  So I'm going to go for this idea of ascension. You're listening to the radio and you're underneath your bed. You said fascination by this thing. And then somehow I'll, I'll bring the locksmith into the music. I don't know how.

Stevie  00:11:37  Maybe you can have a mechanical element, sort of like clicking of locks and things like that, some sort of more rhythmical part.

Luke 00:11:46  So we've got intrigue with the radio, lock smithing, boredom, ascension. What are your thoughts on that?

Stevie  00:15:31  It was a wandering piece, wasn't it? It was giving that whimsical kind of young lad.

Stevie  00:15:39  At the beginning, I mentioned about that kid lost in his own imagination with being in the radio. And then you had that transition. To me, being in the locksmith shop and initially having the success of finding out I've got a talent in something, but then it gets darker and a bit moodier before then lifting up. Interestingly, actually, on the on the lifting part, there was that kind of slightly nervous feel that going into the unknown, so to speak, because for me, there was that element which you've reminded me of, actually, I was throwing myself into the net. I was doing something different, and it was taking me outside of my comfort zone. There was that slight unease about it as well, which was captured in that final part two.

Luke 00:16:25  Was there anything that could be improved? Was there anything that you didn't quite pick up on?

Stevie  00:16:30  I think probably the transition into the darker bit of being the locksmith and feeling quite unhappy probably could have come across a bit more, but you had that kind of undertow of me feeling like that.

Stevie  00:16:44  But having that radio which was keeping me lifted, I was.

Luke 00:16:48  Also going for this sense of loneliness by the kind of sparse stuff I was doing, like not playing too much, getting the sense of isolation. I kind of just imagine you're in a shop, in a place where there's really not much going on and you're just cutting keys and yeah, doing whatever with the locksmith stuff. I was struggling a bit to musically portray that kind of mechanical element, if you like. I ended up visualizing that like 30 film Metropolis. They have a lot of colleagues.

Stevie  00:17:22  Yeah, I've seen people.

Luke 00:17:23  In the machine. Yes.

Stevie  00:17:25  Yeah. So in in locksmith thing, there isn't so much in the way of cogs. More sort of like levers and discs.

Luke 00:17:32  Sure.

Stevie  00:17:33  Yeah. As opposed to cogs. Certainly there was a mechanical element in there. I definitely picked up on that.

Speaker 3 00:17:40  I mean, I'm.

Luke 00:17:40  Obviously aware that locksmith isn't like Metropolis. You have these massive cogs and things turning around and everyone's walking in straight line.

Luke 00:17:49  But yeah, that is what came to mind. For some reason, I find often an exaggerated form comes to mind, especially if I'm struggling a little bit. Brain tends to go a bit crazy sometimes with the exaggeration of imagery anyway, which is quite interesting process in itself.

Stevie  00:18:06  Absolutely. I can have a similar mind. I can send you all over the place. And because I also work with sound, I create sound libraries. And one of the last things I created was a sound effects library for visual media. I like to just play a sound and then hear it, and then take my inspiration from that sound, and then I can put it through loads of different plugins to make it sound completely different. And then that would lead me on to other things.

Luke 00:18:31  Are you a fan of Van Morrison?

Stevie  00:18:33  I only know one of his songs, and even then I can tell you the title of it.

Luke 00:18:37  He he wrote a song called I Think It's in the Days Before Rock and roll or something like that, and I referenced it in the beginning of the piece, because I didn't quite work out how to portray the sense of radio.

Luke 00:18:52  and that song is about radio and it's about sort of how it can spread around and people can listen to the same thing all over the world.

Stevie  00:19:07  Do you enjoy putting yourself under that much pressure, and are you quite precious about it either or are you? Very much? Okay, well, whatever falls out of my head falls out of my head. Just gotta go.

Luke 00:19:18  I think if I was to be precious about it, it wouldn't work because I would be thinking about, I've got to get this right. I've got to nail it. And that would probably ruin the creative process. Yes, I'm not precious about it. And sometimes I'd like to do another take of things if it's not quite working. I have done a live version of this and it is different. I feel more nervous in that kind of setup.

Stevie  00:19:40  Yeah, I can imagine.

Luke 00:19:47  Do you have another story you could tell?

Stevie  00:19:49  So talking about struggles, life in London wasn't all roses. I have to make the admission that I had quite dark and difficult times as well.

Stevie  00:19:57  After the initial honeymoon of working for the production company, I'd split up with my girlfriend. I was massively missing home. The job and its location meant that there were lots of opportunities to go out after work, socialising, go to a number of different parties and, you know, music showcases where they've got different artists. I think that's when my alcohol addiction started to kick in. Yeah, I was living with a bunch of actors. I remember one particular Christmas, they all went off and I was going to leave as well. I was going to head back down to my hometown of Wimborne, and I remember being given a bottle of Glenmorangie by these guys for my birthday, because my birthday's on Christmas Eve. I sat watching some old videos, and I remember thinking, that bottle of Glenmorangie? I think that was probably one of my low points when I was in London, and I started making lots of mistakes during that period. These are not massive mistakes, but I was making a lot of them.

Stevie  00:20:56  I wasn't focused. I had a conversation with one of the producers, this lovely lady, and she just asked me the question and she's like, are you okay? And I said I was okay. And then she didn't buy it. She says, what's going on? I explain the situation, the depression, the making, the mistakes, the drinking. She suggested that I bought this book called The Artist's Way, and it's a book by this lady called Julia Cameron. It gives you a number of different exercises. It's like a workbook which enables you to clear your creative pathways, get you over things, and just increase your quality of life and increase the quality of your mental health. So I went straight to Waterstones and I bought the book, and one of the exercises is to get up in the morning first thing and write three pages of A4 of whatever's in your head. It helps get rid of some of that negativity which gets stored away before you start your day. Along with all the other exercises, I went through the book and I started to notice all these really amazing changes in my life.

Stevie  00:22:02  I don't know if you've ever lived in London or spend much time in London, but people don't tend to talk to each other. You're on a tube and you're looking at someone on the tube. You won't talk to them. You wouldn't just talk to them. You wouldn't talk to anybody. and I found that people that I would see on a regular basis, but I wouldn't talk to you would start talking to me and just asking me how I was. And we'd have conversations because I wasn't making so many mistakes. I was renewed and fresh, and I was getting back to where I was when I first started. I found that happiness and joy working in in broadcast, and it was an amazing transformation, and at that time also started thinking about more about doing music. And I bought myself a keyboard from Tottenham Court Road, and it was this Yamaha DJ keyboard because it was like a dance music based keyboard. And it was it was quite simple and it didn't have many presets, but it had enough for me to put together a track, which I played in the studio, and one of the, girls from From the Office came down and went, oh, that sounds pretty good.

Stevie  00:23:10  Oh, can I just riff over that? And I was like, yeah, absolutely, 100%. So she went into the vocal booth and we recorded some takes, and before I knew it, this track was born. It wasn't expecting it, but it all just fell into place. And then because I was working with a famous DJ on radio one one day, I thought I would just like, leave it playing in the studio and see if he'd notice it. And he did. And he was like, what? Stevie, why is this track we're listening to? And I'm like, it's just something I got from Berwick Street Records. And he's like, no, seriously, I haven't heard this track. What is it? And I went, oh, it's mine. It was on that at the time. So he said, okay, well can you give me the Dat and I'll put it on, vinyl for you if you want. I'm like, seriously, is that. Yeah, 100%.

Stevie  00:23:52  And it went from him putting it onto vinyl to him, then playing it out on his show on New Year's Day and then it being played in clubs. I was having phone calls from people like Boy George. He left me a voice voicemail on my phone saying, I'm just playing your track. It's going off and he's going over this other DJ wants it. And then a number of DJs were asking about remixes. It was just this crazy time of my life and all from that one bit of advice that someone gave me. Incredibly. The other message that I want to say is that when you see what I would call a guidepost, when you see that sign, follow that sign, See what the sign says. Don't ignore it.

Luke 00:24:36  On the Artist's Way, the advice was to write a page of just a stream of consciousness.

Stevie  00:24:43  A stream of consciousness, no matter what it is. If you can't think of anything to write, if there's nothing which is springing to mind, you just say, oh, I can't think of anything, and then you'll get a thought and something will come in, and that thought will lead you on to another thought.

Stevie  00:24:55  And that's why when planning and and working in business, I use mind maps, because that is the perfect way for me to brainstorm ideas and work things out.

Luke 00:25:06  What was the name of the track?

Stevie  00:25:08  It's a track called Star by Horrible Boy. Listen back to it now. It's not terribly good. I think it was carried away by the the genre at the time, which was trance music.

Luke 00:25:22  Okay, so time for some music. Then I'm going to get the sense of the alcoholism, this downward spiral that you kind of engulfed you if you like. And then I'm going to get the sense of this book that you discovered called The Artist Way. And then this one kind of process that really helped to get out of the spiral and then write this tune, and I'll try and get a sense of that sort of trance. See? Music.

Stevie  00:29:52  I think what struck me most about that piece of music was the beginning, and the way you had this kind of feeling of of faltering. I'm trying to find my way out.

Stevie  00:30:04  There are good things that are sprinkled and it's okay and I'm finding my way. But then it just becomes too much. And I really got that sense at the beginning of the first part of that track. Definitely. And then of course, the build up and the euphoria towards the end and the energy.

Luke 00:30:20  Did you get the sense that the dance music I.

Stevie  00:30:23  Did, because of the repetitive nature of the notes, that kind of gave me that sense and the intensity as well.

Luke 00:30:29  It took me a while to get into that zone, actually, of being like a computer on the dance floor, you know. Diggy diggy diggy diggy diggy diggy.

Stevie  00:30:38  Yeah, I'd say that was probably more techno than trance. There's nothing better than when you put together a string of chords that they make you go, just that deep core feeling of euphoria and being uplifted. And I think probably that would have been better represented by just hitting long notes, but done in the progression of an uplifting chord structure rather than lots of notes.

Luke 00:31:09  Yeah, I mean, I was going for the arpeggio thing. It's a piano, isn't it? Doesn't have all the kind of synth bed and the drums and the kind of oomph to it.

Stevie  00:31:17  No, but what you can do is obviously keep your foot on the sustain pedal and make those notes nice and long. Think more about the positive chords going upwards. Not having to be massively heavy when you land them, but to give just that lovely, uplifting, warm feel that you get from the beautiful trance pads.

Speaker 4 00:31:42  All right.

Luke 00:31:43  I'll give it a go. That kind of thing.

Stevie  00:32:35  100%. The thing is also about trance music is, you know, where that is going. And I could hear the chords coming in before you played them, so I knew what to expect. You stopped it before you went back down to finish the phrase, which I thought was quite interesting. You kept it up there, you kept it hanging, getting.

Luke 00:32:52  To your ADHD like.

Speaker 5 00:32:53  Know me off the.

Stevie  00:32:55  Chart.

Stevie  00:32:55  Now, can I just ask you a question? Do you record that in Midi and then tidy it all up afterwards?

Luke 00:33:00  Then I record the piano to Midi. Yeah, but I don't alter it even if there's a mistake or something. I just think if we get into altering the media, it's not as genuine, I don't think. And sometimes I mess something up. Then it creates an interesting conversation because often I'll do it again. I find that quite interesting when something doesn't quite work.

Stevie  00:33:20  That is interesting because now we're talking about it. There's there are bits that you like. There were some like odd minor notes that kind of like appeared, which kind of does change the feel of something. So it's interesting to know that you don't change it, because if it's supposed to be like the improv podcast, right? But yeah, in my world I'd be like going, right, okay, I remember that. I'm going to go and listen to that again. And just like, you know, just up it a little bit.

Luke 00:33:46  I get into that mindset. If I'm producing a track or I'm composing something and I want it to be as best as I can make it. But there's something about this podcast which embraces the process of being imperfect. You see what I mean? So what did you get out of this podcast?

Stevie  00:34:12  Until you're in the situation where you're being asked to tell a story and then listen to some music based upon that story, that's quite unique. So now I know how that feels. That's pretty cool. It's brought to mind some things that I had forgotten about. I haven't mentioned in the in the stories, but I feel grateful to to be taken on that journey, I appreciate it.

Luke 00:34:35  So if people want to check out your your voiceover work or they're interested in hiring a voiceover artist, where can they find you?

Stevie  00:34:42  Okay, you can check out my website, which is what Stevie and that's Stevie Cripps cry.com.

Luke 00:34:53  Well, thank you very much for being on the podcast. It's been, very insightful.

Stevie  00:34:57  Thank you very much for asking me.

Stevie  00:34:58  It's been an absolute pleasure.