The third week of my practicum definitely has been different from the first two weeks. Part of that was the unexpected surprise of a minor health issue on Monday (dealt with and doing good now). I’m having so much fun with everything I’m doing.

I’ve done a bit of everything this week. Putting JUT80s together, cleaning up remote cut ins, and commercial spots. It’s everything that I want to do in radio.

Now that I only have a week left… and not even that because of Good Friday, I don’t want it to end. It’s been so much fun! Now if there were jobs in Alberta I could get I would be very happy indeed. Looking for work will be a process in and of itself but I know I can do it.

Now play us out to the weekend George Harrision

Week 3 Day 11, March 22, 2021

Today started not so great. A quick digital doctor visit and turns out I needed some antibiotics to deal with something and if it doesn’t look better in about 24/48 hours, off to urgent care with myself. Any who… I got the “remotes” ready to go for the FHHL that airs later this week. I didn’t get as many done as I wanted since I wasn’t feeling well, something that Rob reminded was okay. 

I did get so of the cut in done and got shown some tips for dealing with a file that’s about a sec too long. Enter the waveform editing. Something that I tried later and was the nice final touch to the piece. So the tip was using the stretch effect and speed it up only by a second using a bit of math to figure out the percentage needed. Looks like there is more math involved in radio then first thought. (Richard you big fibber!You said there was no Math 😛 ) Rob also showed me using the spline curve (a curve that rounds off audio, something I didn’t know) which was helpful editing in waveform.

Another I didn’t think of was to leave a bit of a tail at the end so a EOM can be place so not make the computer’s marker of the EOF glitch.  Something that I can take forward while loading files into the system at school.

Tomorrow I’ll hopefully feel better and get the rest of the cut ins done. (If not there is going to be a very interesting report about urgent care) Then it’s off onto the JUT80’s for next week.

Week 3 Day 12, March 23, 2021

Today was a finish and start day. I finished up the cut in and started the new round of jut80s.

I did learn a cool sound design technique with having one as normal voice with an echo and under that a delay track. It adds a cool shimmer. Learned this from a promo rob was making for something a bit later. Something else i got to see was the promo for the 20k contest today was really fun cause a clip from the question was about Rob threw in at the end and still bleeped the answer.  I learned how to do a bleep using the tone effect on a piece of audio.

It was a good watch day. Upside I’m feeling a bit better today over yesterday and that means my antibiotics are working (fingers crossed).

Week 3 Day 13, March 24, 2021

I get to be a fly on the wall come Monday for the jack production meeting! Networking and meeting past sait grads here I come!

I got to do another donut spot for Medicine Hat today. Never have I faced a popping s in a piece. Turns out eq can hide them to a degree. All I could hear in the back of my head while listening to the rare audio was Richard saying mic placement. I now know at least how to deal with cellphone(?) recorded audio. My new spot airs this Friday till the end of April.

Tomorrow is a free range day for me to finish JUT80s and then Rob sent me some listeners id’s to voice. They’re something fun the station runs.  Rob says to have fun, do them causal and if I want to make a character with it.

Something I learned about commercial s today while doing the spot today was don’t put any car/ambulance noises in pieces. It makes sense since people listen to the radio while they are in the car. And the last thing you want to do is panic people when they’re listening to your station.

Week 3 Day 14, March 25, 2021

JUT80s work day, hopefully I can get it all done today.

In our morning meeting talked about where I’m applying to, and the reality right now of radio jobs. Rob said I could send him my cover letter to go over for me. And he’s going to send me a few emails for folks he knows in Harvard and Patterson. Networking isn’t my strong suit but I think as long as I’m open and honest it will hopefully work out.

I’ve gotten a commercial I get to work on tomorrow once I finish JUT80s. That will be another thing I can put into my updated demo.

Rob had to freshen up a promo for the long weekend next week and had me sit in to watch it. All the elements and build up of momentum was really fun. There was a beginning middle and end that just kept it going. A cool think he did at the beginning to build it up was dropping the eq on the songs then having it back up to make a point/impact on the listener. Since Rob had to make one saying tomorrow, today, and all weekend he pointed out that it’s important to keep a listener informed even if you as the producer know what’s going on.

Week 3 Day 15, March 26, 2021

The morning marching orders were to finish up JUT80s which took me a bit longer then I would have liked but there were a few things I needed to fight with to get it sounding right.

Now onto that commercial for a rock station. It’s kinda funny that the bed is very rock to seeing as it’s a industry supply store. It’s a new voice so that means some tweaking to the presets 😊 This is gonna be fun.

The afternoon turned into a “Fun Trick Friday” of Audition. I filled three pages in my notebook.  We pretty much went down the list of plugins and Rob told and showed my all the ones he’s used and how they affect audio. I can’t wait to try them out this weekend. A

After that it’s back to working on the commercial. Turns out the vo is from out east so I got to hear my first different take on the works “line up of products”. I can say I haven’t heard it like that before and it was good exposure for me.

March 8th 2021 marked the first day of my practicum at Jack with Imaging Producer Rob. I’ve been keeping a day to day journal which I’ll post at the end.

First a little update.

I’m in my second semester and doing everything from home because as of today it’s been a year since the Covid-19 pandemic was declared in March 2020. It’s been a year of adapting and finding a new rhythm to live life by. So far it seems to be working out for me. I just need to figure out that pesky sleep schedule a bit more and I’m gold.

Now back to my week in review.

It’s only been a week and the information download has begun. Working via remote is how everyone is working right now in industry and we’re making it work. I’m having a blast. I’ve already produced two pieces that have been either set to air or set to a client and found a new system when it comes to producing ids. Which is because of how Rob does his own promo set ups and the template he set me up with on Monday. That has been beyond helpful. Learning new systems and seeing how industry goes about it’s day to day has been very cool.

I can’t wait to see what next week will bring and I can’t wait to see where I grow in my production work. This month is going to be epic.

Now onto the daily journals:

Week 1 Day 1, March 8, 2021

I got my first template and was told have fun and just play around the with ids. Also I got access for shortbus – I can use stuff I make for my demo but not as a release as my own work for profit.  I had fun playing around with ids – it was nice to be able to play around and not have to worry about deadlines. Rob says we’ll have meetings every day in the morning and times will vary a bit because of his meetings.

I got to see pro tools in action and I hope I can replicate a bit with the version I downloaded on my desktop. I’ll probably download it on my laptop too. I had forgotten how much fun it can be just messing around with ids and music editing. I got to do variations of cold ids along with cold, sfx and music ids.

Getting some good feedback on one day from my played around with stuff was awesome. Considering this is the first time I’ve done ids since last semester I think they came out not too bad. Tomorrow I’m going to get a bed dropped to me and put it all together. 30 secs on time and no more here I come. I also got to see the other side of production, the data entry side, and how important it is.

Week 1 Day 2, March 9, 2021

I got to produce a spot today for the medicine hat station. It was definitely a new voice experience. I learned more of how eq works and the order of having effects does have an impact. EQ first then compression.

Getting to have that edit session with Rob to fix it was helpful and I got a good tip too about audio, “Like all great art, radio production is never finished. It’s just abandoned” -Rob Kealy. Having that quick turn around with editing was fun and getting to get feedback quick was nice too.

It’s just day two and I can’t wait to see what happens next. The spot I did might even get to air in medicine hat, which is freaking awesome!

Just having some basic stuff and reminders helped to. Like the built-in fades for going from one audio clip to the next. And not being afraid to use the time compressor to make the bed fit to :30 seconds. And not being afraid to leave in the voice gaps, to make it come across for more natural pauses.
I got to see what wide orbit looks like and learned a trick for getting split background music into one file.

Another trick I learned was the quick art of making a promo sound better using past tags of the same person to make the new one sound better, has that because it’s a commercial contest and is updated every day. I get to see more and more with pro tool’s. Hopefully I can get it working on one of my computer.

Week 1 Day 3, March 10, 2021

After seeing yesterday how Rob does his ids I was told today to play around more the PWWW ids. Also I found out my produced spot will be airing on Medicine Hat radio Jack 102.1 GAHH!!

I did come up on my first creative hurtle with coming up with new sound effects. I realized I’m not sure how to do it well without going overboard. The biggest thing is I’m learning right now and I need to remember that. This is the perfect time to make mistakes and learn. And from today I learned so much on making my “cold” id’s better. The main thing I have to remember is B.M.E Beginning middle and end. And having a sound effect at the beginning and end splits it from the music and makes it stand out. Which is what it’s supposed to do.

Getting a better run down of short bus was helpful. I now know how to make better use of it. It’s like learning the extra points of a program like word and being able to do 5x the number of things you could before. It will also push me more to include sound design in my work.

Week 1 Day 4, March 11, 2021

I realized last night that Rob always asks me what I’m doing after. It hit me that I think he might be making the point that I need to balance my time and take time for myself.

I got to work on a bigger project – social media ids!! It’s just cold voice for now but I’m very excited. It put into perspective why there is a producer just for imaging, commercial and promos(ish). Sure there is crossover to help each other but the amount of work if someone had to do everything would be mind breaking.

The big take away for me from the id project was if I want to do small edits to things I should do them before I copy everything over. It will save me time. If did however make the second listen through by myself a big more interesting. I’m glade I picked Rob’s brain about how to set it up because if I did then my session would have been a nightmare. Having just four roles plus markers is a lot easier to deal with they have 7 rows and trying to keep things all lined up. The template Rob sent me is really making life easy. He did also admit it was because he wanted to have a sound that was the same as the station.

The take away from when Rob heard the ids was making sure I let the ids breath to make it more conversational and to make an impact to let it breath. So that’s a job for tomorrow.

I ended up asking hot long his average days are and he said about 8 hrs. if a big thing is coming up like the flip that happened for Jill day and launching a new station like Medicine hat recently. Taking time for yourself to prevent burn out is important.

Week 1 Day 5, March 12, 2021

The day started with some self editing to add more pausing/space to the cold ids. And it does make them sound better. Like I talked with Rob yesterday, if there is going to be “dead space” it has to have a purpose. Once I get this cold Id’s bounced (exported) I’m going to start on find beds and start some sound design on them. I did poke Rob about his naming scheme because I know from experience having to re-name something multiple times can be a pain.

I got to do a spec spot – and learned what it was. A spec spot is what a station sends out to a company to show them what an ad with the station could look and sound like. Thanks to the other spot did earlier in the week I was able to make something pretty good.

Then I went back to exporting the cold social id’s. 55 ids later and I was done. Thankfully I figured out how to short key it out. Something else that Rob showed me when he showed his keyboard shortcuts. My experiment with producing the ids was a bit miss with the ending sound effects. The beds were good through. It helped me get out of my head when it came to picking beds. Next week we’re going to work on more weaving in of the beds and sound effects with sound design. It was a fun experiment and I learned something from it so that’s what matters.
I have gotten the official approval that anything I produce I can include on a demo. Whoot! I can’t wait for next week. I might be given the go ahead for a even bigger project that will be on air.