Beyond Confusion: Creating an Extravagant Holiday Episode with No Major Financial Capital
- confusedstate51
- Jan 3
- 14 min read
In the fall, once I decided to release our first season every other week and saw that the Wednesday schedule would result in having one of the major episodes premiere on Christmas Eve, As a result, production staff, decided to produce a bonus holiday episode that would not be a typical state of confusion episode so that we would not risk using our regular material during a time when people may not be listening due to being pre-occupied with friends and family. As a result, we produced in a very fast turnaround time a very complex holiday episode.
I wanted to do a show that was not privvy to the standard format but also had a cheesy element that bowed to the variety holiday specials of yesteryear. The type where your friends would show up and discuss holiday traditions, have a nice chat with music beds encapsulated underneath, have a silly comedy skit, and finally come together to sing some holiday festive songs of yore.
The result was our first annual "Thoughts from the 51st State of Confusion All-Inclusive Holiday Special." Now, if we had to be all-inclusive we had to acknowledge other holidays besides Christmas, which meant we probably should not debut this on Christmas eve. As a result, we reviewed the calendar for Hanukkah and put the premiere for December 22nd, which was the very last day of the festival of light.
Challenges with Songs Rights Effects and Music
When you produce a show, you can't just play music and get away with it. You have to have rights clearances. So I cannot just pick a mainstream song and get away with doing a duet with Annette for instance. At the same time, if we are talking holiday traditions and want Christmas / Hanukkah type music, I can't just grab Mariah Carey and play it at no cost. You have to have the rights and that costs money. So, the options are paying rights holders like the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) or Broadcast Music International (BMI) or finding music in the public domain with a creative commons license.
For this show, we had music we were able to use and work with that would not result in us getting fined. The music and sound options found were from zapsplat.com, mixkit.co, the Free Music Archive, and freesound.org. Additionally, I own Corel VideoStudio Pro which had some holiday tracks that had Caribbean Holiday as well as Hanukkah overtones that were in the clear due to outright owning that production software program. The most important element when utilizing sounds from Zapsplat, Mixkit, and the Free Music Archive, were attributing credit to those sources during the show which was referenced in the beginning and end credits where applicable.
Carol Singing
You may next ask, how were you certain that you could play "Hanukkah in Santa Monica" and "A Christmas Carol" by Tom Lehrer. Doing research, and reading up on his life, it was verified that all his writings, music, and works were put into the public domain and could be recreated and modified without any repercussions.
Some legal scholars said that is unheard of from artists whose estates could still hold back the rights for many more years and profit from it. This not having to guess, coupled with him being a favorite satirist of mine made it a no brainer especially when he did a song about Hanukkah and another one on the commercialization of Christmas that could be modified and readapted however we could see fit without any legal problems.
As a result, I felt the show had to open with a corny music number before Spruce even did his opening. As a result, we opened with Tom Leher singing "Hanukkah in Santa Monica." The tune just felt like it something you would hear in a corny old-time variety Christmas or holiday special from yesteryear and it was the perfect song to take us into that Jewish dreidel announcer introduction music.
The 12 days of Christmas cost and PSA Bit
The main show elements consisting of me and Annette were taped in Late November/Early December which resulted in not having the 2025 cost of the 12 days of Christmas available to us. As this show was very post-production heavy with numerous bits done outside of the main recording, As a result our AI announcer Spruce hosted the last 1/5 of the holiday special.
This show was very much off format, but I still wanted to do a skit. We did not have an "Official commercial break" (Quotes used because if you know one thing about our commercials their satirical bits surrounded by show promos). One thing was certain, I wanted to do a skit around Christmas and something silly. I eventually decided to go with a bit where we are doing the show, and it gets interrupted by a breaking news bulletin from the North Pole.
The idea is we have no idea this is going on sort of like the emergency alert system breaking into local radio. The breaking news music breaks in as we are talking about the cost of the song "The 12 days of Christmas." We have no clue our show is interrupted. All of a sudden, the show gets interrupted with breaking news music, and we have an announcer who says we interrupt this program with a breaking news PSA Public Santa Announcement from Jerry Jingle at the North Pole.
Background
The inspiration for the bit that this results in will be talked about further in a post after our January 7 episode debuts but basically we go the North Pole where Santa's Chief Elf Jerry Jingle informs us that Millennial parents who grew up on the Internet are not giving their children the proper information as to what cookies to give with their milk when Santa visits their homes on Christmas. This results in instances where Santa is tossing his cookies and even having Montezooma's revenge. It got so bad last year he did not make it Tasmania Island to deliver Christmas presents.
The bit played audio of Santa indulging with Microsoft and Amazon (what he thought was a British spelling for Amazin' cookies) cookies from last year with dire consequences. We then cut back to Jerry who informs the kids of the proper cookies to leave out for Santa that will make sure they won't end up on the naughty list so he won't have Montezooma's revenge or tossed cookies.
Obviously this bit required voice acting and I can't afford voice actors. So to get around that there were several tools used. One of which is eleven labs. Eleven labs is an AI program that allows you to create voices. It also has a database of voices. One of which is a Santa Claus voice. However, to use Santa, you have to be a paid member. Eleven Labs does have a free component, that allows you to create voices for a small period of time every month. To do this, you put in a description of the type of character, voice, and tone. It then will generate voice samples and you pick from those which one you like. On the free end, it will only allow you to save three distinct voices at any one time.
So obviously if I had made a character that I wanted to keep, and still keep a free membership, that would mean I could never delete that voice and would only be able to create two other voices. Those two voices I can remove and create new ones for a specific project. However, if I wanted to create ongoing characters and find that I am up against a wall I would be limited over time and may need to consider a potential paid membership. Most of my eleven labs creations have been just for commercial characters so it has not been an issue.
As Eleven Labs has a Santa Voice in its database that I cannot utilize, I had to be creative. So I went to the voice creation and removed a voice or two I no longer needed and in describing a new voice made a persona of someone who mirrored Santa Claus' voice and demeanor. As a result, I got a voice that sounded very close to a Santa voice that I was able to use for this bit. Additionally, I wrote a description for Jerry Jingle who is a jovial elf leader with a happy voice, who leads elves, with other characteristics and the voice I chose very much matched up with what I put into the voice description text of Eleven Labs.
The sound effects of winter, sleigh bells, the elves working, and other sounds came from zapsplat.com, pixabay which has a library of resources you can freely use, freesound.org, and mixkit.co. Always check the website to see the rules associated with usage in the event there are certain rules you have to abide by when using specific sounds or music.
I wrote the script, mixed the sounds, alongside the intro and outro and the rest is history. It cuts in when I am talking about singing the "12 Days of Christmas" and cuts in during another subtopic with us being totally clueless. Fun fact: There is one live actor in the bit. When you hear Santa yawn, that is me. I could not get Santa's character voice to yawn using Eleven Labs.
Stay tuned as the cookies Jerry Jingle references in this skit are not the last time you will hear about them in our state of confusion. More to come!
Holiday Duets
Growing up as a child some of the cheesiest moments of old holiday specials were the duets performed of Christmas tunes. One such example is Bing Crosby and David Bowie doing "Little Drummer Boy" seen here:
This one isn't too bad, but some of them can be really bad and corny to watch. Since I do not want our podcast to be too reverent and serious, I wanted to do a little homage to those past pieces in a silly way as only we can.
Channeling Tom Lehrer
As discussed earlier, there's a lot of issues when it comes to music rights. When you do podcasts, lots do not utilize music and if they do its very bland, sterile boilerplate music of just a few seconds that would not result in them being fined for not paying for the rights to the song.
We went with a satirist who made everything public for our show named Tom Lehrer. We decided to have the last 20% of the show hosted by Spruce Openai our announcer who would introduce the songs and end the holiday special on a grand note. The post production on this part was not complete until two days prior to the premiere. It was one of the most complex post-production segments (the singing and the final story/credits) edited in the history of this podcast.
How it was done was the result of Tom's openness to allowing everything being allowed in the public domain and the awesome artificial intelligence programs available in the marketplace.
Tom had two specific holiday songs he wrote and vocally recorded. There was a Thanksgiving parody that I did on our episode which launched just before Thanksgiving during the break, but he did not. do a vocal recording of himself performing it so it would not be as well-known.
The tunes we performed were "A Christmas Carol" and "Hanukkah in Santa Monica." In order to do these songs, we needed to have a clear musical track to sing over and I do not play instruments. However, I do have the power of AI and have tools where I can take Tom Lehrer's recording that allowed me to strip out his vocal track.
On the Internet I found a great recommendation for a program called Mixpad Multitrack Recording Software. While this program does cost money, you do get to try it initially for free. This program will allow you to take recording artist albums and strip away the singer and other non-instrument components leaving just the original music that the artist sang over. The program allows you to fine tune your selection and does a very good job at it. Once modified the instrument track was then saved as an mp3 or wav file, which could be edited in Audacity or CorelVideo Studio Pro. Having all media in these file formats allowed for the option to use either Audacity or Corel for post-production synchronization. On "A Christmas Carol" we removed Tom's singing but kept his spoken introduction, and left the audience laughter and applause that was heard throughout the main music portion.
For purposes of editing, we kept an original Tom Lehrer mp3 and wav file of each song so we would know when to start singing the song and also align our vocals up to the music tracks in post-production.
The Rehearsal
The website Tomlehrersongs.com has the full library of Tom Lehrer songs, sheet music, and written compositions for you to download, extract, and use however you deem necessary as well as the written-up documentation stating that you can use the work however you see fit.
This site was useful for getting the lyrics to his songs for rehearsing. The first tune we decided to do for the show was "A Christmas Carol." Initially I thought we would sing the song in unison, but decided to alternate back and forth since the song is a medley mix of traditional Christmas carols being parodied midway through the song.
The best part about Tom Lehrer putting his works entirely in the public domain, is it also allowed us to add creative flourishes to our cover of his holiday songs.
For instance, during the tune "A Christmas Carol" when the lyrics of sleigh bells jingle for our friend Kris Kringle are recited, we mixed in sleigh bell sound effects into the tune, which are not heard in the original version. Finally, at the end of the song when the lyrics "don't stand underneath when they fly by" is sung we hear a sound effect of deer excrement mixed into the tune.
In ":Hanukkah in Santa Monica" at the very beginning we added seaside pier sound effects to the beginning of the tune to have it set the scene just before that ditty begins. For "Hanukkah in Santa Monica" we do sing simultaneously.
I provided the lyrics to both tunes and in the Hanukkah tune I did change the lyrics somewhat to We're celebrating Hanukkah in Santa Monica, though Annette sometimes fell back to the original composition.
Post Production
At the end of the main show, we pulled up Audacity and just recorded the various tracks into that software. There will be a youtube video of our raw audio recording at the end of this so you can hear the actual behind the scenes recording of our session.
We took time listening to Tom Lehrer's version and just the music version of each tune while reviewing the lyrics. We then started our session with "A Christmas Carol", which consisted of us playing the AI generated track without vocals and recorded us singing our lines into Audacity. .
Next we proceeded to "Hanukkah in Santa Monica." For this song, when we recorded it, we used the AI generated track without vocals and hit record to capture our singing in Audacity. Even though on the show our singing would be synchronized, we each did our takes over the AI generated track individually. I went first and sang it two times. I then took a few moments to play the actual Tom Lehrer recording for Annette and then she recorded her performance. Once complete, we wrapped it up, and I went home to work my magic at a later time.
Track Overlay
When it was time to work on this part of the show the first thing I did was split up the recordings. I separated our session for "A Christmas Carol" from "Hanukkah in Santa Monica" and made two audio files while also keeping the original master file for show archive purposes (e.g., this blog). Once those were separated out, I took the newly made file of "A Christmas Carol" opened it in Audacity, and kept the portion I wanted to use for the show. I then saved that as an Mp3/Wav file.
Once that was done, I took that specific file and uploaded it into Auphonic. Auphonic is the program we use to make the podcast audio sound good overall. In this instance it was needed for the selected "A Christmas Carol" file, it was used eliminate the background music from our recording of "A Christmas Carol" that will be used in the final show. Once complete, the vocals only version was saved with a different mwp3/av "A Christmas Carol" file name to indicate it is audio of just our singing. The audio of our singing with music and vocals is still retained but has its own mp3/wav file name.
When working on this, in either Audacity or CorelVideoStudio Pro I started working on "A Christmas Carol." First, I put in the original Tom Lehrer recorded version of "A Christmas Carol" into the production software. I then imported the audio and vocal recording I chose to go with for the actual podcast. This then would allow me to review the waveforms in each track and match them up. Once in sync, I then imported the instrumental AI generated track and laid it on top of our recorded music and vocal track.
Now that I had our vocals aligned with the original Tom Lehrer recording and aligned the music track with the two tracks in Audacity, I could now safely remove the original Album Tom Lehrer track from Audacity. I deleted that track and that left us with the AI generated instrumental tune and our vocal recording with the low music we used to record for the special. The final element now was to import the file of our vocal recording with the music stripped out that was generated by Auphonic and line it up with the original vocal and music recording we selected for broadcast of "A Christmas Carol."
Finally, now with all three tracks lined up, we now just will keep the track that has our vocals only and the instrument only track without vocals but has applause and laughter. The track with our vocals and music is now removed and we have a perfectly aligned music only track mixed now with our vocals on another track coupled with the applause and laughter that stayed on the music recording. We adjusted the audio, kept Tom Lehrer's introduction, mixed in sleigh bells, and poop sound effects, and the rest is history.
For "Hanukkah in Santa Monica," it was very much the same. The difference here is we sang the song separately and I had to do this piecemeal. It was the same process. We used that software to take Tom Lehrer's recording to where there would be a music only version. We then recorded each of us individually.
i recorded myself singing the song twice. Annette sang it once. We then made files after I chose what I wanted to go with in an mp3/wav format with the music and vocal I recorded. We put them up in Auphonic and then saved those recordings as an mp3/wav with a different name but this time no music and only our singing. We would line them up in Audacity and eventually mix everything by waveform into place.
This version was not as pretty but this is meant to be a comedy show and it is on the cheap.
Spruce Goes Cray Cray
In order to properly do the duets properly, we had to do an introduction somehow. It was decided that I would have Spruce due the hosting of the last part of the show. As a result, I wrote host intro and outro segments for each musical piece and had him provide updated information on the true cost of the "12 Days of Christmas" which was updated just days after we recorded our episode.
When selecting the audio, I happened to love how Annette laughed and said it was funny at the end of her take. It gave me an opening to advance Spruce's backstory little bit more. It is really early in our podcast, but he seemed to become a little bit unhinged there. There are times that Spruce wanted the authorities called but they came really close to snapping. One can only hope that my control over the non-binary spruce will continue to hold true and nothing changes where things go bad as our show moves on in the years ahead.
The Final Thought
Finally, our final thought was Spruce introducing the Gospel of Luke Chapter 2 as referenced in the Catholic Bible. The narrator, angel, and heavenly hosts voices to tell the story were created using Eleven Labs AI. The music piece Silent Night was found using the Free Music Archive, and the sound effects were sourced for the angel and other little nuances to make this story come alive from freesound.org.
Old specials like Charlie Brown and some others have told the story of the birth of Jesus in the past and I also felt it was important to end the show with the significance of the season as I see it. I created the voices for the angels, heavenly host and narrator using Eleven Labs with descriptors, picked the voice I liked that generated and then mixed everything together into the final show.
It is my hope and joy that you all enjoyed this show and that you will come back on January 7th when we resume our normal format once again.
Show resources
Sound effects and credits:
Cash Register Purchase by Zott820 -- https://freesound.org/s/209578/ -- License: Creative Commons 0
Sleigh bells 90 bpm loop.wav by soundstack -- https://freesound.org/s/255104/ -- License: Creative Commons 0
xmas bellis2_120BPM.WAV by phantastonia -- https://freesound.org/s/337126/ -- License: Creative Commons 0
arctic winds northpole (.wav) by enricoviets -- https://freesound.org/s/402646/ -- License: Creative Commons 0
Ascending Harp by ivanmilic -- https://freesound.org/s/513855/ -- License: Creative Commons 0
fire_cracking_03.mp3 by bokal -- https://freesound.org/s/559578/ -- License: Creative Commons 0
human_vomit_puke_barf.wav by Lewis.B.M -- https://freesound.org/s/587160/ -- License: Creative Commons 0
taco bell diarrhea by nexter00 -- https://freesound.org/s/696753/ -- License: Creative Commons 0
Opening a Box of Cookies by directorspence -- https://freesound.org/s/713350/ -- License: Creative Commons 0
Additional sounds courtesy of mixkit.co and zapsplat.com
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