Tuning Your Work:
Creating Great Radio

As you read through this guide, we encourage you to follow links to sample scripts, sample audio and other examples. In order to listen to the audio, you'll need a Real Audio player. This is a work in progress, so please send all comments and suggestions to comments@bside-radio.org.

Index:
Recording
Writing
Voicing
Editing

Recording Sound in the Public Radio Style
By Tamara Keith

Radio is all about sound. We don't have pictures or printed words to help us tell the story, just the sounds of people's voices and their surroundings. Sound brings listeners into our stories, takes them to a place, helps them feel the events we describe. It's a powerful thing if gathered well and used correctly.

Equipment:

Recorder: This can either be a mini disc recorder or a professional tape deck (not something you can buy at Radio Shack). Either way, you want to be able to adjust your record levels. From our experience, Sharp brand mini disc recorders seem to have the most useful features for creating radio. They cost about $200 and can be purchased at most electronics stores and online at minidisco.com

Omni-directional Microphone: The most common example of this is the Electrovoice RE-50. This type of microphone tends to record sound with a very warm quality, picking up not just what you're pointing at, but some of the other sound around it. This is good for recording interviews in quiet places and for gathering the general ambient sound of a place.

Unidirectional Microphone (A.K.A. Shotgun Mic): These microphones tend to be long and thin. They are very sensitive and pick up mostly the sound of what you're pointing at. They're great for recording interviews in noisy places and for gathering sound of quiet or distant things. They're also rather expensive.

Headphones: The bigger, the better. Wear headphones at all times while recording so you know what you're getting on tape. It's best to use headphones that fully cover your ears. A good pair costs about $100 but they last a long time.

Types of Sound:

Actualities/ACTS: These are your sound bites, the tape gathered during interviews or press conferences. Example of an ACT

Ambience/AMBI: You can think of this as natural sound effects (as in gathered out in the world not created in a studio). If you were at a dairy, this would be the close-up sound of a cow mooing. At a construction site, it would be the sound of a saw or a hammer. It could be the sound of a bus going by on a busy street for a story about traffic. If you're doing a story at a daycare center, you'd key in on a particular event, the sound of a couple of kids playing ball. You use this sound to help set a scene. Get your microphone right up next to the source of the sound you're trying to capture. You should try to record a minute of this, though often only 5-10 seconds of it will be heard in the clear in your final story.
Examples:
AMB of a cow mooing
AMB of water bubbling
AMB of up-close construction

Background sound: (just to be confusing, this is also generally called ambience) This is the sound of a place. It's what you'd hear standing in the middle of the locale where your story takes place. You don't want a singular easily discernable sound but rather the full spectrum of sounds. For this, you don't want to point your microphone at anything in particular. You should record at least a minute of this in every place.
Examples:
Background sound at a dairy
General construction sound
People Milling

Room Tone: Close your eyes and listen for a moment. What do you hear? The hum of your computer, the buzz of the fluorescent lights overhead, the quiet sounds of cars passing outside. Each room has a distinct and often hardly detectable sound. When you record an interview in a room, the sound of the room is always there behind the voice of your interviewee. As you put your story together, you will pull ACTS from this interview, a few 20-second clips from various points in the conversation. You'll likely introduce those clips with your own voice, recorded in a pristine studio that has no room tone. Moving between your voice and the voice of the interviewee can sometimes be jarring depending on how present the room tone is. You can smooth this transition by mixing in a little room tone behind your voice. (See the editing section for a more detailed explanation of how this works). This may not make a whole lot of sense now, but just know that it's important. You need to gather at least 45 seconds to a minute of room tone in each room where you do an interview, more if there are distinct sounds happening, like cars going by.
Example: room tone

How to Record Sound:

As a radio reporter/producer, you should always be thinking about sound. You want to make sure to get top quality sound, and gather your tape in a way that makes the story exciting and engaging. For instance, if you're setting up an interview with a developer, don't to meet him at a coffee shop. Arrange to meet him at the construction site for his latest project. There are many reasons for this.

1. Interviewees often want to meet at the neighborhood Starbucks or café. I always tell them, "that's fine, we can meet there, but we'll have to go somewhere else to record the interview." Coffee shops tend to be noisy places, so they're pretty awful for doing interviews. In fact, the only time you want to record an interview in a coffee shop is if you're doing a story about coffee. You want to interview people in a place that makes sense for the story. You don't want to have to explain the constant sound of frothing milk.

2. It is best to talk to people in their natural environments, so that the sound under the interview advances the story (or at least doesn't distract from it). (Except, of course, when that environment is really noisy - interview them in a quiet spot then go to the noisy place for ambiance and to get them to show you around.)

3. Now that you've got the developer out at the construction site, you can get him to describe the project. This may seem unnecessary in radio, but it helps to have people look at and point to the things they're describing. It makes for more active, "visual" tape. Example

4. Because you're at a construction site, with lots of hammering and other sounds, you have a ready-made scene. You can record AMBI and background sound and really take your listeners to the place. Obviously this example doesn't just apply to developers and construction sites. I am constantly working to get people out of their offices, from zookeepers and farmers to politicians.
Examples:
Mixed excerpt of story using AMBI, background sound and an ACT gathered in the field
Farmer at his farm
Zookeeper at the zoo

Often, especially with breaking news, you can't control your recording environment. You have to work with what you have and do your best to get good sound, even in bad situations. Here are some tips:

1. In a noisy place, if you have a shotgun microphone, use it.

2. In a noisy place, if possible ask the interviewee to move away from the noise, go to the quietest part of the room. If that doesn't work…

3. Determine the source of the most distracting sound. Put your back to the source of the noise and have the interviewee face towards it. Your body will block some of the noise, and basically you won't have the distraction right behind your interviewee's head.

4. In noisy places, record lots of background sound. You're really going to need it to smooth out transitions. It is best to record sound both before and after the interview, because the sound often shifts in the process of the interview. If there's music being blasted over a loud speaker, record a ton of it.
Example:
ACTS gathered in a noisy place with a shotgun mic, followed by background sound recorded to mask the noise

5. Press conferences are often bad places to get sound. The sound systems are almost always bad in one way or another. People tend to get off mic, or bump the mic or any number of other things that you can't control. Record the whole press conference. Then, if possible, grab your mic and chase after the most articulate speaker. Explain to them that you have a couple more questions and that the press conference sound wouldn't work for your purposes. Pull them over to a quiet corner and ask them a few questions. Hopefully they'll repeat the good stuff they said during the press conference, and it will sound like you got a 1 on 1 interview.

6. Wind. Wind is evil. When it's really blowing, it can totally destroy your recording (you'll be able to hear it in your headphones). Put your back to the wind and try to block it with your body. Stand beside a wall or behind a large vehicle. If none of these things work, I've found the best way to keep the "outdoor feeling" without the wind noise is to sit in a vehicle with the windows rolled down. It still sounds like you're outside, but you're sheltered from the breeze. Make sure the engine isn't running, though.

7. In offices, people sometime have music playing. Please ask them to turn it off before starting your interview. If you can avoid having music in the background, do it, because it's very hard to edit ACTS with music running behind them.

Levels:

Set your recording levels on your mini disc recorder (make sure your MD is set for manual levels adjustment rather than automatic) or tape deck as high as you can without it peaking. If it's too hot, the sound can distort. Alternatively, if it's too quiet, you'll get a lot of tape hiss. This is something that you constantly have to think about. Some people speak more loudly than others. Some people are really soft and then all of a sudden get animated and blast you out. I usually ask people to give me their name and title, so that I can make sure the levels are properly adjusted. Sometimes, if I need a little more time to get the level right, I ask them to describe what they had for breakfast. This also helps warm them up a bit.
Example:
Overmodulation - levels too hot

Getting Technical:

Mic Position: You should hold your mic pretty close to the person's mouth. It may seem awkward at first, but the best place to hold you mic is 3-5 inches away from their mouth. You might want to explain to the interviewee that it may seem a bit close, but it helps you get the best possible sound. Often when people say words that start with the letter P, a burst of air blasts out of their mouth and makes a funky popping sound in the mic. This is what we call "P-popping." In order to avoid it, hold your mic off to the side, just a bit, so it's out of their airstream.
Examples:
Mic too far from mouth
P-Popping

Your Arm: Rest it on a table or against your torso. You don't want to be holding your arm out a long way in front of you (unless you have to), because within a few minutes you're going to feel like your arm is about to fall off.

Your Hand: Hold it steady. The mic will pick up the sound of your fingers rubbing against your mic and that will mess up your audio. This is something you have to think about at first, but it will become second nature. Example: Mic Handling

Don't say uh ha: When you're having a conversation, it's natural to respond with an occasional "yes" or "uh huh." But when you're recording an interview, that's a big no no. No one want to hear you saying "uh huh" in the middle of a sound bite. Resist your inclination to vocalize and instead tell the interviewee you're listening with facial expressions. Smile, nod, scrunch your nose, just don't vocalize. Also, when doing an interview don't be in a rush to ask your next question. Often interviewees will fill a pregnant pause by saying something wonderful and unexpected. Give them time to sit with their thoughts and you might be surprised at what you end up with. Example: Uh Huh

Now Get out there and start recording!

Writing a Radio Script
By Dave Gilson

Writing for radio is different than writing for print. You're writing for the ear, not the eye. Listeners have to get it the first time around- they can't go back and hear it again (unlike re-reading a sentence in a magazine). And while a reader may get up and come back to an article, a radio listener who gets up may not come back. So you want to grab their attention and hold onto it for as long as possible. Writing feature stories like the ones aired on B-Side is also different than writing news copy. You can loosen up a little. You can be more literary, more creative, more personal. This handout is a quick guide to writing a script for a feature radio story.

Getting Started: Logging Tape
After you've finished your reporting, it's time to log your tape. This means listening to everything you've recorded and writing it up. You should transcribe quotes, note who's saying what, time how long the tracks are, and (if you're using a minidisc) note the track numbers. Highlight or mark tracks you know you want to come back to. You don't have to log the tracks you know you won't use. Example

Choosing Your Acts
After you've logged your tape, you should select the tracks you want to use (tracks are also called cuts, soundbites, or actualities). Cuts generally shouldn't be longer than 30 seconds- you only have a few minutes and besides, most radio listeners have short attention spans. (If you have a great long cut, you can break it up with your narration or edit it down). Don't just choose cuts purely based on what's said- also consider how it's said. Think about how your cuts will fit into your story structure- do they describe something, tell a story, make you laugh, make you scratch your head? Your actualities should advance the story and make it interesting.

Starting to Write
As you start writing your script, you probably already have a good idea what your story's going to sound like. You've listened to all the clips and ambiance, maybe selected some music. You may have talked about the story with a friend or editor. Basically, you already have all the elements floating around in your head. Start writing your script by laying out all your cuts in the order you think you're going to use them. Then start writing your narration around them.

Anchor Intros
The place to start is usually the "anchor intro"- this is what the announcer/host will say to introduce your story. An anchor intro quickly sets up your story and puts it in context, without giving away too much. It should also introduce you, the reporter/producer.

Telling a Story
As you write your narration, try to tell a story with a beginning, middle, and end. Draw listeners into the story by setting a scene, raising a question, playing a weird noise, or introducing a character. Use narrative elements like foreshadowing, suspense, and scene changes to move the story along.

Mix Things Up
Use tracks of varying length. A series of 20-second acts interspersed with 10-second tracks will get pretty monotonous. And when you wrap up your story, don't end with an actuality or just a sign off. You should get the last word, even if it's just a short sentence.

A few aesthetic considerations to keep in mind as you write your script:

Be conversational. Your narration should sound as natural as possible, like you're telling a story to a friend. This is not the same as trying to imitate spontaneous speech. Instead, this means writing in a style that sounds as relaxed as possible. Use phrases and words you normally use. When you read your narration aloud, do you sound like yourself?

Be visual. Give your listeners a chance to imagine the people, places and things in your story. Create a sense of scene; describe people; include interesting sounds. Avoid a story that's just a series of talking heads or facts.

Be concise. Long sentences loaded with ten-cent words and relative clauses usually don't work too well in radio (but there are exceptions). Mix up your sentence structure. It's surprisingly easy to fill 3 or 4 minutes of airtime- so don't overwrite.

Be energetic. Use the active voice. Use punchy verbs and contractions. Mind your tenses - don't switch back and forth between past and present. Most radio stories are done in present tense. Some exceptions include commentaries, and news stories about past events.

Be experimental. For variety, stick in a tape-to-tape cut (one actuality leading straight into another without narration in between). Mix acts and tracks. For example, if someone is droning on and on, you can play them under your narration- this will convey a sense of them rambling. Even the most straightforward story can have an unusual or memorable element in it.

Be thoughtful. Try to go beyond just presenting the facts. Let your listeners know why your story matters. Is there a lesson to be learned, something to be taken away? You don't have to get too heavy or cerebral- just take it a step or two beyond pure description.

Writing for the Ear
The way you listen to speech is different than the way you read. A few tricks to make sure your listeners stay tuned in:

Keep ideas intact. Don't break up subjects and verbs. Compare these three sentences:
- Nancy Smith, who is the founder and CEO of the Acme Corporation, says the widget market is booming.
- Acme Corporation founder and CEO Nancy Smith says the widget market is booming.
- Nancy Smith is the founder and CEO of the Acme Corporation. She says the widget market is booming.

Nancy Smith gets lost in the first one. The next two sentences express the same idea without losing track of who's being talked about or who she is.

Write transitions in and out of your actualities. You don't have to be obvious, but acts shouldn't seem abrupt or forced. If you give someone's name three sentences before you play their clip, you should mention their name again before they start talking. This will remind listeners who's about to talk.

Likewise, don't follow an actuality from one person by naming another person. This can make it sound like Person #2 just said Person #1's actuality. o You don't have to write in complete sentences. You can also break up sentences for emphasis.

Acts and Tracks

Radio scripts generally follow a common format. Here are a few guidelines:

Label each actuality "ACT". Note who's talking and how long it is. Actualities are usually distinguished from narration with boldface, italics, capitalization, indentation, or some combination of these.

Label each track of your narration "TRX" or "TRK". Note how long it takes for you to read it. o Use parentheses or brackets to note when ambience (labeled "AMB" or "AMBI") or music is playing. The more specifics about how this sound will be used, the better. This will help your editor and will remind you what to do when you're mixing the final version.

Give the phonetic spelling of hard-to-pronounce words and names in parentheses after the name. Write out numbers and abbreviations - it will slow your read down if you have to figure out how to say 1,459 when you could read "one thousand, four hundred and fifty nine" Not that you should use such a specific number in your story-use approximate numbers.

Note the estimated length of the entire story (without the anchor intro) at the top of the script. A rough rule of thumb to use: one page of single-spaced script usually corresponds to a minute and a half to two minutes of produced tape.

Click here to see a sample script.

Voicing a Radio Story
By Mia Lobel

Examples: 4 professional radio voices
Morning Edition
Terry Gross, Fresh Air
Tavis Smiley, The Tavis Smiley Show
Ira Glass, This American Life

Be Yourself
Unless your are one of the few producers out there who can make a career out of non-narrated pieces, chances are you are going to have to VOICE your piece from time to time. This is one of the most challenging aspects of radio production and can make or break a story. But voicing can also be a lot of fun and it gives you the opportunity to put yourself into your work - to give your piece the emotion or levity the piece deserves. Most importantly, have fun with voicing and let your personality shine through. The following are a few tips that can help you properly voice your work.

Writing: The key to good voicing is good writing. Always make sure you read over your copy and change anything that doesn't sound natural to you. Often, especially when reading news, your copy is going to be written by someone else. Make sure you have time to review the copy and adapt it to your speech patterns.

Read your copy OUT LOUD before you track. ALWAYS!! Unless you have the benefit of voicing in your closet, you're probably going to have folks staring at you while you track: an engineer, the show producer, and possibly your editor as well - all listening to your read. If you have to keep stopping and starting, they're going to get really irritated. Also, you might find that there is a certain word or combination of words that are hard for you to say. Know this in advance so you can slow down there or change the wording.

If it helps you - UNDERLINE the words in your copy that you want to emphasize. Sometimes in a live report, you can lose your sense of context and this will help.

Breath. Don't forget to BREATHE! It's OK if your listeners hear you breathe. This is a completely natural occurrence and although your breathing may sound very loud in your headphones, I guarantee that your listeners will find it much more strange if they DON'T hear you breathe. Mark your breaths with an apostrophe or slash. There's nothing worse than running out of breath mid-sentence.

Projection. This goes hand in hand with breathing. Obviously on the radio, you don't have to shout to be heard. But you do have to have ENERGY behind your voice. If you're not breathing, you can't possibly project and your voicing is going to sound weak. Many people don't know this, but talking quietly actually takes as much or more breath than speaking normally. Try this exercise: place your hand just below your rib cage, above your belly. Breath into this space, making sure not to lift your shoulders as you inhale. You should be able to feel your belly expand. Breath out slowly and see how long you can make the breath last. Use this technique when you're tracking to keep your voice strong.

Pausing and Pacing. The key is variation. Vary your pacing. You may be reading news, but it's still a performance. You are responsible for bringing the images you've written into people's minds. You can do this by speeding up and slowing down your read at appropriate moments. It's hard for people to tune out when you keep changing things up on them! Allow yourself to pause and don't be afraid of silence. Sometimes people need a moment for your words to sink in.

Diction. Don't over do it, but make sure you can be understood. Your listeners need to be able to hear every 'T' and every 'P' in your copy. You don't necessarily have to read slowly or over-annunciate to achieve this, but you do need to be sure that each word is understood. Radio listeners only have one shot to get what you're saying and if you're words are unclear, slurred together, etc., they're going to miss your story. -

Context/Tone. Don't sound like a Muppet or a corpse - BALANCE! Match the tone of what you're talking about. Your job is to give context to your best cuts. If your piece is funny, let yourself laugh. If it's sad, let yourself express some emotion - speak more slowly, lower your tone, etc. Make people FEEL what you're talking about.

Personality - Let it shine through. Don't be afraid to let your personality come through in your voicing. Part of this will be done with your writing, but you need to be able to translate your personality through your voice. Remember that this is a performance. Keep your audience entertained.

Other Important Tips:
- Make sure you sound like you know what you're talking about. For example - don't mispronounce names! Bad, bad, bad. Make sure you have PRONOUNCERS for all names, places, scientific terms, etc. - anything that might throw you during your read.

- One of the worst things you can do is to sound like you're reading. Make it sound natural. Do NOT think about the millions of people worldwide who may be hearing your story. Think about that ONE person driving home from work and tell your story to him or her. If it helps, have someone sit in the studio (or closet) with you while you're tracking.

- In a live report, if you need to cough, clear your throat, or make any other audible bodily function, be sure to use the COUGH BUTTON located in most studios. No one wants to hear this.

- Avoid tracking if you have a cold. If you don't have a choice, try drinking some tea with lemon or standing in a steamy bathroom for a while. This should clear things up long enough to get you through your report.

- Listen and learn. Listen to the radio, to spoken word, to theater. What kind of voices move you? What is it about the way certain people talk that makes you listen and want to hear more.

-Practice, and figure out what kind of voicing works best for you. EVERYONE can improve his or her voicing. It's a constant process and the more you do it, the better you'll get. Try out different methods and find what works best for you!

Click here for a few sample scripts to practice with.

Editing Sound
By Lyssa Mudd

Most radio listeners don't realize how intensively the stories they hear have been edited. That's because with good editing, stories flow well and sound smooth.

Editing Ethics
The fact that listeners generally don't think about how what they hear was edited, combined with how easy it is to change sound bites, means we all have the obligation to think about the ethics of editing. Here's what the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's ethics guide for public radio, Independence and Integrity II has to say about it:

"Audio editing must be faithful to the news event in question while advancing our understanding of the story. Consider, for example, whether eliminating a pause within a soundbite, or making an internal edit, would alter the listener's perception. Ask yourself whether sources would recognize themselves in their soundbites. Be consistent in your editing."

Some General Hints and Tips
- Listen as you edit! Headphones are great for picking up details, but remember that most people listen to the radio while they're driving or cooking dinner. So listen through speakers too. Also, if you're editing digitally, remember that it doesn't matter what the sound waves look like, it matters what they sound like.

- Breaths: Breathing is good. If you edit out all the breaths, or don't maintain a natural rhythm to the breathing, it won't sound right. Most people breathe between sentences or ideas. Keep in mind that you can switch breaths around - substituting a shorter breath for a longer one, for example, to keep the pace of the actuality. Or a quieter one in place of a really noisy, distracting breath.
Examples:

Button 1 - Whole cut. Notice background noises: cars, fluorescent lights. I was using a shotgun mic, with my back to the street.
Button 2 - No breaths. Sounds awful. Once listened to a book on tape and I almost had to turn it off because they had inserted pauses for breaths. It made me feel like I couldn't breathe either.
Button 3 - Next I took out the phrase "and I'm still doing it" from the middle of the cut. I left the breaths on either side of that phrase - and we're left with a weird and unnatural double breath.
Button 4 - I took out the same phrase, but this time I only left half a breath. It only sounds natural if you leave the entire breath in because that's what people generally do between sentences. They take whole breaths.
Button 5 - This is an example of a good edit - I left in a single, whole breath. And it makes the edit unnoticeable.

- Pauses: Pauses are natural too, and they can also help with pacing. But too many pauses and the listener gets bogged down. Remember to use room tone instead of blank space (or virgin tape, if you're editing analog) when you create pauses. Also, when you mix your story, make sure there's a little room between your actualities and your tracks - but not too much -- otherwise your story will sound too rushed

- Ums/ahs/likes, etc: Filler words and noises are part of everyone's speech. But if they're too abundant, they can become annoying and slow the story down. Unless they convey something important -- say you're editing a politician who's waffling in response to a tough question -- it's usually best to take them out where you can in short news pieces. (The one exception is the President, whose actualities are never internally edited - not that B-Side will ever interview him.) But if you're putting together a portrait of a teenager, for example, you should leave some in so she still sounds like a real teenager. Keep in mind, though, that in radio a normal number of filler words might be distracting. Leaving a few in will sound natural but won't stand out.
Examples:

Teen 1 - This is a cut Tamara recorded. The girl talks like a teenager. She's saying something really important about her life, but it's pretty roundabout and scattered with fillers.

Teen 2 - To make it sound better, she took out some of those fillers, but left a few in. You get the sense of the way the girl really talks, but you don't get bogged down in her speech pattern. And - and this is really important -- she maintains the content of what the girl said.

- Upcuts: Beware of cutting off the first or last bit of a word. It's easy to do if you're relying on the visuals in Protools, especially with sounds like "s" and "f."
Examples:

Garment 1 - I want to cut where he says "garment".

Garment 2- This one's just right.

Garment 3 - The beginning of the next word is still there. It's not a clean cut.

Garment 4 - The end of the last word, "garment" is cut off.

- Digital clicks: Sometimes when editing digitally, there's a click. It usually happens at the edit, when the sound waves on either side don't match up, but it can also happen at the beginning or the end of an edit. Don't leave them there! Transom.org has some good advice on how to get rid of them if you're using Protools.
Examples:

Pet - Digital click at the end

Teen - Digital click at the beginning plus two more.

- Smoothing ambience/using room tone If your actualities are hissy or there's a lot of room tone, your story will sound jumpy, especially if there are studio-recorded (or closet-recorded) tracks in between. It's important to smooth out the beginning and ending of every cut by adding room tone on to either end and fading in and out. Same goes for loud ambience - if there are cars driving by, or a jackhammer in the background, you can either hold the ambience under your tracks or fade into the ambience rather than starting it at full volume.
Examples:

Sorry 1 - I was recording at a big church. My minidisk was plugged into the sound the system - you can hear the electric buzz of the sound system.

Sorry 2 - In order to minimize that sound and make it less jarring I put fades at the beginning and end of the cut.

Pet 1 - This is a much more extreme example. I was recording at a pet cemetery in the Presidio right underneath Doyle Drive. This is the background noise I was contending with - I recorded it at the end of my interview.

Pet 2 - There are a bunch of ways to deal with this. First, I should have been recording with a shotgun mic. Second, I should have interviewed him somewhere quiet to get the background - or even in his car so the sound would have been there but not so overpowering. The other way to deal with this situation is to write into it. So I tried to set a scene - and tell people why the ambiance was so damn loud. Even though I recorded my voice in the closet, where it was quiet, I mixed the ambiance underneath me to bring the listener into the place.

Pet 3 - Here's a bit of the story - just the guy I was interviewing, then me doing my tracks in the closet, then him. It's really jumpy. It sounds awful.

Pet 4 - This is how I dealt with it. It still isn't great - I still think it's distractingly loud, but it works better - it puts me there at the scene and it isn't jumpy. I added another track underneath me with the volume down much lower, and I even lowered the volume on the big bumps - so it's a little more even, and I faded everything in and out.

- Levels: It's important to make sure that your levels match - especially when you're making internal edits. If a person is quiet at the beginning of a sentence and loud or enthusiastic at the end, it will be hard to take the middle phrase out and still make it sound natural. Also: the tracks and acts should be at around the same volume so listeners don't have to constantly adjust their radios.

Resources

Transom.org showcases great independent audio, as well as lots and lots of really good technical advice. The editing how-to has great tips and tricks for Protools users. www.transom.org

Radio Diaries, home of great non-narrated radio documentaries, has some good recording and interviewing tips. www.radiodiaries.org.

Ira Glass and the folks at This American Life are really good at making even heavily edited material sound natural. They sell a comic book that shows how they put their shows together and has advice on how to make your own stories. If you don't want to spring for the whole thing, you can see a preview of the editing page (plus a few others) on their website, www.thislife.org.

Radio College, from the Association of Independents in Radio, has lots of expert advice too. www.radiocollege.org.

-There's more good radio to be heard at Stories 1st. www.stories1st.org