March 2007 RAP
March 2007 Highlights
2007 RAP Awards: Finalists Chosen!
The finalists of the 17th Annual Radio And Production Awards have been
chosen, and this month, RAP Members vote for the winners! Click here to see
who made the final cut. And good luck everyone!
Feature: More Than Words
by Craig Jackman
Okay, I’ll ‘fess up. It has taken a long time, but I am a firm believer
in the fact that words matter, and words matter most in the radio production
world. Cool music beds, fancy production techniques and sound effects, all
blended together by the latest and greatest software in a big hairy state of
the art computer are all great fun to play with, but the words move the
target customer into action. The most effective way to move someone with
advertising or station imaging always involves the right script, performed
by the right voice, delivering the right emotional connection.
Interview: Jay Rose, Digital Playroom, Boston,
Massachusetts
By Jerry Vigil
If there’s a mad scientist of audio and production out there, it may well
be Jay Rose. Jay’s specialty is audio production techniques for broadcast
and multimedia. He created and programmed the Broadcast Production software
for Eventide’s DSP-4000 Ultra-Harmonizer. He is a long-standing member of
the design team for Orban’s DSE-7000 and Audicy workstations, was the lead
developer for Audicy’s audio-for-video and broadcast effects subsystems, and
was its spokesperson at industry conventions for ten years. He has consulted
on broadcast product design for Lexicon, and he has run broadcast production
seminars for CBS Radio, the US Air Force, and Universal Studios Florida. As
a sound designer, his clients include PBS, Buena Vista Television, Turner,
CBS, Group W, A&E Network, Discovery Networks, and dozens of radio and TV
stations in large and small markets. Corporate audio clients include IBM,
Hewlett Packard, Harvard University, and John Hancock. Feature film projects
include sound design and editing for “Two Weeks” (Sally Field, Ben Chaplin,
Tom Cavanaugh; MGM, December 2006), plus festival-winning local independent
films. His “Digital Playroom” includes multiple high-speed DAWs,
professional video support, with a generous assortment of high-end effects
and an immense music and stock sound library. Jay has won over 150 major
broadcast awards as writer, producer, or director, including 13 Clios, and
New England Broadcast “Best of Show.” Jay also teaches sound design and
editorial techniques at venues such as the DV Expo, Toronto NewMedia Expo,
and MacWorld. He is a featured columnist for Digital Video Magazine, and has
a couple of books of his own. His most recent one, Audio Postproduction for
the DV Filmmaker, while marketed to the DV filmmaker, is packed with a ton
of information pertinent to what we do in our studios for radio broadcast.
This month’s RAP interview makes a return visit to Jay’s Playroom where we
find out what Jay’s been up to since our last visit, and we get a sneak peek
at his latest book.
Test Drive: WaveLab 6 from Steinberg
By Steve Cunningham
I’ve been using WaveLab once a week for years to edit half-hour radio
shows and to master CDs, and lately it has been pressed into service to edit
assorted podcasts. Since its introduction in 1996, Steinberg has continued
to update WaveLab, popping out a major revision every couple of years. Each
new version seems to bring new tools and features to the program, without
ever sacrificing stability or performance.
Production 212: Sex and Production
By Dave Foxx
I'll bet that got your attention. Well, read on. It’s in there. Since we
last chatted, I had a terrific experience addressing a large room full of
Program Directors and Operations Managers from all over the world at the Dan
O’Day PD Grad School in Los Angeles. I don’t know if you’ve ever attended
one of Dan’s sessions (he does several every year), but I have to say, it is
certainly worth the price of admission, depending on why you’re going, of
course. My task at this conference was two-fold; to help programmers get
more from their creative people and to make the lives of their creative
people better. That might seem like two ideas that don’t play well together,
but actually the opposite is true, and that, dear reader, is what this issue
of Production 212 is about.
Radio Hed: The 8 Criteria of Persuasion
By Jeffrey Hedquist
It arrived in the mail and sat buried in a stack of "I’ll read it later"
solicitations. After all it was just a brochure for another awards
competition – one more out of the 40 or so a year that we wouldn’t enter.
When I finally read it, the deadline had passed, but there was something in
this solicitation from the Zephyr Advertising Awards for all of us who
create broadcast communication. Here’s a quote: "…judging is based on the
overall persuasive power of the work… advertising that rises above the
competition and the clutter, and makes a clear, powerful case for its
product."
Q It Up: The RAP Network Speaks! - If you could talk to
the programmers of Pro Tools, Adobe Audition, Sony Vegas and the others,
what program modifications would you ask for? -- Part 1
Q It Up: When the digital world took over our radio
production rooms, only Orban’s Audicy was created for "us", and it had a
good run (and continues to survive in many studios), but it is quickly
becoming extinct. With the discontinuation of that DAW, we have all been
left to work our craft on software programs designed primarily for music and
video post production. What are your major complaints about these
workstations? What would you like to see in the way of improvements to make
them more "radio" friendly? If you could talk to the programmers of Pro
Tools, Adobe Audition, Sony Vegas and the others, and could have anything
you wanted, what modifications would you ask for?
...And Make It Real Creative:
By Trent Rentsch
Last month we began a journey into the world of creating sounds by
looking at how Mother Nature does it, how changes in air pressure cause
vibrations, big and small, faster and slower, which our ears perceive as
sound. There are a couple more points about sound in the real world we need
to cover this month before we look at how to synthesize our own audio world.
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