AUDIO

I got my start in sound production when I was 9 or 10 years old. My brothers and I would spend an afternoon using a cassette tape recorder to mix our voices with records we played on our turntable and we’d produce masterpieces of comedy in the style of Dickie Goodman’s “Mr. Jaws.” Then we would enjoy the early evening hours subjecting our parents to these inspired performances. I am amazed that Johnny Carson never called us to grace his stage. Alas.

A year or two later, I got a record entitled “The Story of Star Wars.” The record was just a condensed version of the Star Wars movie soundtrack with narration added as necessary. I remember being amazed at how much I could enjoy the “movie” without the visuals. I would lay on the floor of my room for hours playing that record over and over again, and while I am certain that I never wore that record out, I’m pretty sure that I went through several needles for my player.

That record is at least partially responsible for motivating my friends and I to record several radio dramas complete with Foley (?) sound effects. I remember recording inspired tales of the fantastic like “The First Spaceship to Venus” which chronicled the ill-fated journey of a brave band of astronauts to our neighboring planet. That tale was so popular that it spawned at least one sequel, “Rescue Ship to Venus” (originally entitled, “The Second Spaceship to Venus” — yep, I was that clever). “First Spaceship” was also honored with several reboots, and this was long before Hollywood was rebooting movies every couple of years.

Later we broadened our horizons, no longer limiting ourselves to spaceships and Venus. We produced the thrilling “Friday Nights in the City” a mystery-action-comedy about a detective named “Friday” trying to solve the murder of G.I. Joe. I’m sure there were other productions, but all those details are lost in time and memory; What remains are the convictions that were formed in my heart about sound (which you can read below)

Sweetening is removing hiss or hum, compressing volume peaks and amplifying lower volumes. In short, the goal of sweetening is to make the audio as clear and audible as possible while maintaining realistic volume proportions and leaving the content intact. (Sometimes there is content that needs to be removed, and I do that as well. See Audio Editing below).

My convictions about good sound require me to always sweeten the sound I am given.

We all occasionally mis-speak, or have an unexpected noise occur that gets recorded. These mistakes may be small and liveable, or they may greatly distract and require removal from the audio track. The amount of editing required on a piece is a judgment call, but in general, I will edit anything that would take the audience’s attention away from the message or purpose of the sound track.

There are times when we wish to change the quality of a sound by altering it’s pitch, tempo, reverb or some other quality. Likewise there are times when it is necessary to add sounds that weren’t present during recording. I do this as a client requests or as my own judgment and experience dictates (subject to client approval, of course).

In the following example I did both. I changed the sound quality of the dispatcher’s voice, and I added police radio squawks and beeps where appropriate.

When I played the final clip for the client he didn’t notice the added effects, and I had to point them out to him. He approved of the changes and remarked that they fit so well that he hadn’t even realized that I had made the changes. He thought about that a moment and said, “I guess that’s kind of good, right?” I told him, “That’s what I shoot for. If I do my job right, the audience should just be in the moment enjoying the story, they should never even realize the sound was edited.”

Music can be used for introduction or postlude, for transitions, as logos (Example: the sound that comes into your mind when you think of Seinfeld) or just as background score or sound effects when needed.

Music, voice, sound effects, or a combination that plays before and/or after your production.

Here’s an abbreviated example of an actual sermon from Hempfield COB that has all of the above elements represented: