Vive la Résistance: Powering Up Protest Audio

Turning Chants into Change Through Impactful Sound Design

Hello again, audio friends!

I was initially planning to talk about sound design for mental wellness and meditation this week. That probably would have been fine for a post-election Sound Byte, but I think many people are ready to start planning episodes or even entire series for the movements that tend to gain momentum following elections of this magnitude.

Protest audio comes with energy baked in—it’s kind of the point of these chants, right? But there are audio techniques you can incorporate to make it sparkle a bit brighter in your audio story, adding extra energy to your episode.

The main takeaway? Strategic layering of chants and carefully structuring dialogue and music edits to build momentum can leave listeners feeling empowered and ready to take on the world.

I'll be discussing two sound bytes today. In the video, I also discuss a third build (15 minutes in) that I haven’t specifically made myself (yet!) but think would make the most compelling protest audio.

TL;DR

Build the chants dynamically, starting with thinner crowds that snowball into larger ones. For swells, find multiple clips of the same protest chants and loosely edit them for timing. Strategically cut music for dramatic drops around the host’s dialogue to enhance the design's impact at the right moments.

Video Breakdown

Sound Byte #1

This first Sound Byte has four separate sections that build dynamically in the edit, either ramping up the excitement or pulling it back. Each section has one full measure of the song/chant and serves a specific purpose in this build.

This build is made up of several clips pulled together to create one cohesive song. I don’t think there was any audio of this song that went longer than a few measures, but that’s OK—making Frankensteins is what we do every day.

The first measure introduces the lyrics and melody. The second part ducks below Katie’s VO to give a pullback before the swell. This section, although lowering in volume, is also increasing in intensity with the inclusion of the live band. The third section is the swell section with the drum fill, horns, and beefier lyrics, and it’s the crescendo of the design. Finally, the outro section thins out so that the song fades out more easily.

I’ll discuss each section in a bit more detail.

Section 1 - The Introduction (0:19 - 0:36)

This section introduces the melody. I used a particular part of the chant to fade in under Katie's dialogue, intentionally keeping the lyrics “Hey Holloway” hidden. That way, the song is introduced without being clearly understood—and for a reason. These recordings are of college students protesting for teachers' pay, and in this section, they’re naming the president of their school, Holloway, which doesn’t specifically tie into the episode.

This episode wasn’t about this school protest, and I only wanted the “raise my wage” lines and the rockin band. I could see other common chants with generic lines also being ducked like the Holloway line. For instance, many chants start with something like “I don’t know but I been told,” which you can lower under the narration without losing much momentum. That’s usually followed by a more specific line you might want to highlight—like “the wage gap is stupid!” Clearly, I don’t write chants. But you get my point.

The line here that we do want to stand out is "I want to know if you'll raise my wage." This is the line we’re using to give Katie's union talk some extra oomph. By introducing it here, my intention was to make those lyrics more understood later on in the swell, where I wanted maximum impact. In other words, we’re introducing the audience to the line they should care about before the drop section, so that when it comes in later, we’re all singing along.

Section 2 - The Calm Before the Storm (0:36 - 0:50)

Moving to section two, you’ll notice the song dips down here under Katie's monologue. This pulls back the song to give the swell more impact. And I also dipped it on the “Holloway” line again.

I generally don’t use music with lyrics under narration; I find it’s distracting for the listener. It’s like, who are we supposed to be listening to? There are two people making words out of their sound holes and I, the listener, am confused! But with a chant, it’s so repetitive that I think it’s okay to dip it under the narration—just don’t let it stick out too much. We want the focus on the script.

A live band also comes in here, so although you’re dipping this section in volume, the song is still building dynamically, priming it for section three.

These recordings sound decent for phone recordings, but they did need some beefiness, so I added an extra audio layer of protest vocals. The two recordings in this section are from different sources of the protest. The band was in a courtyard, and the second recording is students protesting and marching around without the band.

Much to my chagrin, the protesting students didn’t bring metronomes to their protests or decide on BPMs for their chants—total amateur hour. I’ll be in my trailer. But you can very loosely sync up chants without much effort and it sounds fine. The one thing you need to make it sound seamless is at least one track with the tail ends of the chants; the voices ringing out. Without those tails, loose editing becomes much more difficult.

Just make sure the unedited version is the main one you hear most prominently. If the edited clip is the one standing out, you’re more likely to notice that the timing is actually off.

Section 3 - The Drop (0:50 - 1:08)

Now, we get to the third section, with the star of the show—the drop. The drummer starts wailing on the snare, the horn section comes in, and I beef up the vocals with one, and then two extra layers of chant recordings. This makes it sound like a richer chorus. Even with phone recordings, adding these new layers brings in new frequencies, which is why it sounds fuller overall, especially on the “wage” line. It sounds like a bigger crowd because the frequency spectrum is fuller, not only because of volume.

I kept the Holloway line in this section because it’s baked into the swell. If I tried to hide that line here, then I’d have to lower the drop too, and that’s not happening on my watch. So this is the only time, out of four plays of the chant, that this line is heard.

I was actually hoping that the audience either a) wouldn’t quite understand what was said or b) would assume they heard something like “Hey, all the way!” All I cared about was that they understood the "raise my wage" line, which again is why I introduced it earlier.

A tip: if you're wondering if a piece of audio is understandable, such as the "raise my wage” lyrics, I suggest not asking the person reviewing your mix if they understood it. Early on in podcasting, my inclination was to ask the producer. But that can put your sound design on the defensive from the start, and then there can be a lot of back-and-forth nitpicking about it. Now, I figure if I can understand it, that’s one person who gets it. For The Money with Katie Show, there are two additional people down the line with sharp ears who’ll review it, so if they get it without being prompted, that’s 3 out of 3—we’re golden.

Section 4 - Outro (1:08 - 1:15)

For the fourth section or outro, we started sneaking the chant out on—you guessed it—the Holloway line. That line has dipped enough that my hope again was to get it low enough to not be understood. So we successfully buried that line three times while getting our main “wage” line twice and a massive emotional swell with that drop. Huge win, I think.

I didn’t beef up the vocals in this section because we’re okay with it thinning out as it fades away.

And we end this build getting into the theme song on a high note—another huge win!

Thought Process

Builds like this don’t always happen in the order they play. I didn’t go in thinking, "I need a beginning here, a middle here, and an end." It evolved from the middle outward, up and down as I thought about how I could add more impact.

At first, the only part of this song that I had was the band swell section. I thought that might be enough to get some energy into the theme.

Then I decided that hearing "raise my wage" might not be understood if it only played once in the swell. And if the listener is busy trying to understand those lyrics, then the swell falls flat. So, I added the intro part with the "raise my wage" line.

After playing it back a few times, I realized the song was thin vocally, so I found more clips and beefed it up. Finally, I noticed the "hoo-has" were also thin, so I beefed those up as well.

So again, this started with an idea with the swell, and everything else filled in around that to make the whole thing sparkle a bit more.

Now, let’s look at another example of protest audio.

Sound Byte #2

This one is also from The Money with Katie Show, starting with a clip of Sean Fain, the head of the UAW, before going back to Katie. Let’s listen…

The transition in the script from Sean to Katie was begging for some energy to be added with Sean saying, “We are not going to wreck our economy; we’re going to wreck their economy.” and then Katie responding to this with, “This makes me want to run through a fricken wall.”

This to me is the easy stuff, the script is wearing a neon outfit with blinking lights all over it, jumping up and down waving its arms while screaming PUT SOME ENERGY RIGHT HERE.

I think the main take away though is the icing on this cake which is the chanting protesters. You could just have the music swell, and it’d be fine, but sound design for podcasts often comes down to that little extra zuzz.

It doesn’t matter what type of production you’re doing. I work on spiritual or meditation content from time to time, and even on those, I’m always adding little touches to elevate the experience just that extra bit. In those productions, it’s usually more subtle—more of a tickle especially for meditation. But for spiritual work, I sometimes aim for touches of euphoria. In every project I take on, I’m looking for these moments. I don’t have a fixed endpoint for everything I do; I’ll often build something, move on, and later think of one or two extra things to enhance it just a bit further.

This chant in the music swell is one of those moments and levels up the energy and makes me want to get out there and make change.

You’ve got Sean's perfect line, the music drop, and the chant all hitting at once, giving the listener every bit of that energy. And then Katie drops in with, “Doesn’t that make you want to run through a wall?” By now, the listener should be going, “UMMMMM YEAH, KATIE!”

Maybe we can call this listener-host symbiosis?

As for the music, I don’t know why, but I always tend to choose songs like this for episodes about labor or unions. What do you even call this music? It’s clearly 1-4-5 blues with a rock edge, but it also has that “pristine grit” quality—your oxymoron of the day. This type of music is only ever needed for labor episodes or pickup truck commercials.

I offer a third option in the video for a build I haven’t specifically done (around 15 min) but think would make compelling audio. It involves structuring interview and protest audio in a verse/chorus manner.

Okay, that's it for today! As always, if you have any questions or comments, you can message me here, on LinkedIn, or by email at podsoundbytes@gmail.com.