As we continue sequestration for the public good, Dana and I are trying to get the hang of putting together new episodes of This Is Rock ‘n’ Roll Radio from our separate secure locations (aka “home”). When we made the late decision to do a show last week--late as in Saturday night, for a Sunday night show--we used a preexisting playlist to assemble the tracks, and Dana had just enough time to pull it all together by 7 pm Sunday for our 9 pm broadcast. He has remote access from home to the WSPJ server, so once the show itself was completed he was able to pop it into the schedule for playback in our usual time slot. But it was cutting it close, so we knew any future shows would require more planning and prep time.
"Planning." "Prep time." See, that does not sound like This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl. A large part of the charm of TIRnRR has been our spontaneity, our on-the-fly approach to slappin' together a working playlist in real time, as our audience finds out the next song we're gonna play immediately after we find out the next song we're gonna play. Alchemy. Survival of the fittest. Rock 'n' roll radio.
But: desperate times, desperate measures. We take to the airwaves with the show we can do, not the show we wish we could do. Our job is to adapt to these odd circumstances of self-quarantine, and to still do a show that sounds like TIRnRR, no matter how much the process of its creation differs from how we did the first 1017 episodes. Planning. Prep time. Awrighty. That's what we'll do.
On Wednesday afternoon, Dana and I talked on the phone to select the tracks and sequence for this Sunday, April 12th. It was weird, but I think we managed to retain the essence of whatever the hell it is that we do. I had a spotlight feature I wanted to thread into the playlist, so I suggested an artist to open the show, and Dana suggested a specific track by that artist. Good. Dana wanted to follow that with a single I played on the show several weeks back, and we went back and forth, song by song, until we had a tentative playlist. Phase One completed.
Dana sent me the supplemental files that he would normally mix into the show on Sunday nights in the studio, things like our opening theme, legal IDs, and bumpers, and he sent me the songs I needed but didn't have. Armed with all of this, on Wednesday night I programmed our playlist in iTunes, and discovered it was too long. We dropped one track apiece, did a final tweak of the playlist, and we were on target. Phase Two completed.
On Thursday, I recorded all of the show's back-announcements as voice memos on my phone, a process which (as we discovered last week) works a lot better than we would have expected. That was Phase Three. I then imported those voice memos into iTunes, completed sequencing, verified that we were within our allotted time, and sent it all back to Dana. Phase Four? Check!
Dana's now in the long process of Phase Five, turning this big ol' mess into a radio-ready form. It's pretty good, and it is indeed This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl. I think you'll like it, even if it wasn't constructed the way we've always done it in the past. It's how we have to do things now; that curve isn't gonna flatten itself, y'know.
So fall in! Nose to the grindstone, shoulder to the wheel, phasers on stun, volume pointing somewhere way, way UP. Come on--we want YOU. The audience we have is the audience we wish to have. Sunday nights, 9 to Midnight Eastern. We have a radio show to do.
TIP THE BLOGGER: CC's Tip Jar!
This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, and on the web at http://sparksyracuse.org/ You can read about our history here.
The many fine This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio compilation albums are still available, each full of that rockin' pop sound you crave. A portion of all sales benefit our perpetually cash-strapped community radio project:
Volume 1: download
Volume 3: download
No comments:
Post a Comment