Radio evolution - ICS - Universidade do Minho

Agnete Suhrwhich can be used as a means to create a certain presence for the listeners. In her study of the ShakespeareanTheatre Hastrup has investigated the roles of the actors and actresses, which can be helpful in understanding thedouble status of the voice. In the stage of play rehearsal Hastrup differs between the character and the actor. Theaim is for the actors to feel at home in the play and be able to lift the character from the text (Hastrup 2004: 122-3). While rehearsing the actors have to ‘meet’ the text and in this meeting the shaping of character takes place(ibid.: 124). This shaping of the character and meeting the text are similar to the situation of the broadcasters.Several of the broadcasters informed me that gradually the broadcasters find their own style and own ‘voice’,which are the starting point of their performance. Also in the radio studio the text plays an important part in theperformance of the broadcasters. A broadcaster told me: “a good text is a text one can read aloud. It goes from theeyes through the mouth and if that is not possible it is a bad text”. In the radio studio the broadcasters often writetheir own text, which fits their own style and fits the programme in a whole.In the studio the broadcasters are equipped with earphones so they are able to deepen themselves in theirown voice and through that modulate their voice and get in character. Getting in character is a crucial moment forthe radio communication. This is where the broadcaster is completely committed to the radio communication andhas control over the means of expression. Hastrup describes this moment as “performance time” (Hastrup 2004:129-130). At Den2Radio the performance is not sent directly to the listeners, so the performance does not need tobe right in the first take. This means the sound technician can direct the performance of the broadcaster duringthe performance. The sound technician explains that she can sense when a broadcaster gets in character, becausethe voice gets deeper and she senses a strong concentration. This concentration is therefore important for anoptimal performance. In the next part I will investigate how the sound technician, after recording, polishes thevoice performance by editing the sound to optimize the performance.The visual soundThe American English literature professor Walter J. Ong states that sound is difficult to fixate; becausewhen sound is paused one can only hear silence. It differs from a visual image, where a still image appears when amotion picture is paused (Ong 1986 [1982]: 32). In a matter of investigating the voice the British literatureprofessor Steven Connor investigates the relation between the body and the voice. He finds the voice as anelement leaving the body as soon as the vocal chord is in motion (Connor 2000: 3-5). Both Ong and Connor canbe used to emphasize the fleetingness of sound as a media. In an attempt to control a fleeting media as sound,the sound editing process at Den2Radio is made visual by a digital sound-editing programme. Following Connorstheory one can visually observe the voice of the broadcasters as it leaves the body in a recording session, and alsoafter it has left the body on the computer screen of the sound technician. The voice is illustrated as red soundwaves during recording, and afterwards illustrated as green sound waves when it is saved on the computer. Whenthe voice is saved, it becomes a part of other sound elements, which the sound technician uses to compose awhole radio programme. It is now the job of the sound technician to edit and modulate the voices. In the nextpart I will introduce the sound-editing programme.The visual toolThe sound-editing programme used by the sound technician is called Dalet. This programme facilitates thesound editing process, by facilitating a structural approach to combine the different sound elements. On thecomputer screen the sound technician has several tracks, which give a structural overview of the sound elements.One track is for speak, one for interview, one for music, and one for ‘cleansound’ 1 . In the process of editing, the1 Cleansound is an empirical term, which is a sound element recorded in the field often before an interview. This can be used as a means to createan atmosphere of the location.460 | ECREA: Radio Evolution: technology, content, audiences – conference 2011