This bumper is for AudioAssignments2616, part of our radio show that we’re putting together. I don’t want to give any more away so suffice it to say, I found two pieces of sound: background music and birds chirping. Then I recorded a message to keep listening to Radio7 for the continuation of the broadcast story. This is generic enough that this bumper can be used in a few places during the show. We need to produce some of the bumpers and commercials now, while the script is being written so the material must be more generic. After the script is finalized, either these can be modified by laying down new vocal tracks with modified scripts, or adding more bumpers and transitions where they are needed in the storyline.

For this one, I found the background sounds on freesound.org and added them, then recorded the voice on a separate track on Audacity. I adjusted the location of all three tracks, cutting the background music and fading it at the end for a total of 15 seconds. This can easily be cut to 10 seconds if needed but for now, I left it long to give the production group more to work with.

“Now that we have a #ds106 radio up and running creating a 15 to 30 second bumper for the station. What is a bumper? It is a short recording that identifies the radio station with signature music or an expression that makes sure the listeners know what they are tuned into (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bumper_(broadcasting)). So for ds106 it should certainly include “DS106 Radio” and some sort of message about the station with voice over music.”

Create A Ds106 Radio Bumper

So for this bumper I had our group project idea in mind. I thought through what circumstances a person would be able to hear this recording, maybe stored by an archival company? I’m not sure of the details, but this bumper is basically a release form for the autopsy recording. I did have a lot of fun with the random code in the beginning and hiding the DS 106 radio mention in it.

For the voice, I wanted a machine. It took some time to find a text to speech that wasn’t rotted as hell, but this one did the trick. I used US English James. (I edited out the part that said it was a demo : )

Although there is no music, I did layer a lot of different types of static/computer noises to get it to sound just right. I wanted it to sound old and very static and also have a lot of interference. ( the beeping is morse code, though I don’t know what it is saying) I love all how all the layers mix, it was definitely worth it. I got all of the sounds on free sound and they actually have a lot of really awesome statics.

I didn’t know there were this many types of static until this very night.

The prompt

This is a fairly straightforward assignment, done out of necessity, so it has a fairly straightforward finished product. We need bumpers for our radio show, so I made one for when we come back from a commercial break. It’s pretty simple. I took some stock music I already had (I have a stash just for this kind of thing, ok?) that was about 15 seconds long. My voice recording wasn’t that long, but luckily there was a bit of a break in the music, so I cut it there and had it fade in quickly so it sounded more natural. I used Audacity. There’s really not much for me to say about this.

This may have been one of the most fun and creative assignments I have ever done for a class. Considering I’ve been in school practically my entire life, or at least all of my life that I can remember, that’s a big claim. I’ve always been extremely interested in radio and podcasting, finding at a certain age that my voice seemed to fit those categories. People have told me over the years that I should be a radio DJ or that I should host a podcast, so this assignment was an opportunity to give it some sort of a try.

For this, I wanted to really try to make things sound realistic. I know that on the weekly assignment page it said that this could be used by the actual ds106 radio, but I wanted to make mine a little more focused and seem a bit more natural. To do this, I put in the end of one song and the beginning of another, making sure the two songs related in some way. I’m always a fan of the little bit of pop culture news that radio DJs often provide, so I wanted to throw in some fun facts to tie the two songs together. A big thing that has always impressed me is when a radio host speaks over the music, not interrupting any important vocals but using a song or two as a bit of backing for whatever they’re saying, before inevitably leading directly into the first words of the song. I wanted to do exactly that, and I think the songs I found were perfect. Not only am I a fan of The Kid LAROI and Charlie Puth, but specifically Charlie Puth’s song at the end has the exact set up I was looking for. Although this could not easily be used on the actual ds106 radio, I felt that stretching the bounds creatively ultimately provided a much better outcome.