Essential Elements of Good Radio
Creating and Building Great Pictures With Sound
Until someone invents a totally new way of doing everything, there are at present only a very few basic building blocks in the radio production process. Get to know what they are, what they can all do, their limitations and their strengths and making great radio is just the next step.
The essential elements at the disposal of all radio writers and radio producers are:
- A good pair of ears and an ability to listen.
- A good range and mix of Voice-overs or Voice talent
- An imaginative ‘box’ of sound effects
- A wide ranging music library
- A vivid imagination and
- Silence.
How they use each is up to each writer or producer.
Start With the script.
The ability to improvise is a very admirable quality but even great jazz musicians know the structure they’re improvising around. It’s essential that any good radio production be scripted properly. After it’s written down, theoretically anyone could produce roughly the same piece of audio, barring a few individual interpretations, from that script.
This will become obvious when more than once person is involved. The sole radio presenter will feel they can adlib better without a scripted format. Whilst this may be true for parts of the self-op procedure, having the safety net of a script as a plan A and a plan B, takes away any necessity of trusting to luck. When a producer and /or a sound engineer is involved anarchy is bound to break out without some form of script.
Listening is a learned Skill.
The often quoted radio industry selling maxim, “you can close your eyes, but you can’t close your ears,” neatly demonstrates the power of radio. It’s very difficult not to listen to something within earshot. Listening effectively however is a skill easily learned with a bit of training, experience and patience. Try the following listening exercises for example:
- Record a normal every day and all the sounds in it, and listen back to it.
- Concentrate on listening and find new sounds in a familiar piece of music.
- Mix different audio in different ways and note all the differences.
- Get up early and listen to the Birds’ Dawn Chorus.
- Try and find total silence. (a bit of a Zen exercise but well worth doing)
The Medium of Radio and the Box of Tricks.
One of the best examples of good audio presentation to demonstrate the effectiveness of the medium is Stan Freberg’s Maraschino Cherry sketch from the 1950’s. Many say it has yet still to be surpassed, and features the Royal Canadian Airforce towing a 10 ton maraschino cherry, a 700 foot mountain of whipped cream, Lake Michigan filled with hot chocolate and 25,000 cheering extras. Try doing that on television he challenges.
The sketch features the essentials elements of good radio in good measure. A good voice over or two, imaginative sound effects, (none of it was real of course !), a little bit of silence before the cherry dropped, a vivid imagination, and they had music in reserve. Listen to it on the UK's Radio Advertising Bureau Site. (Note. This requires registration)
Perhaps imagination is the essential element for good radio, but getting to know the building blocks and their strengths is a sure way to great radio.
Typical Radio Studio
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