Targeted Listening

How do you become a better radio writer or audio producer? Become a better listener. Each time you enter a new environment do some "targeted" listening, listen to the sound of the room. How dead or live is it?

What do the voices sound like? What other sounds do you hear ... air-conditioning, dishes, people milling about, machinery or music. What is the audio texture of the environment? Close your eyes and imagine how you would describe the feel and the sound of this room without using words -- just sound effects.

"Targeted" listening rather than passive listening will register the sound cues for each environment more solidly in your memory. Then, when you want to create a commercial, whether the scene takes place in a theatre lobby, inside a car, a gymnasium, a locker room, a stadium, a tunnel, a cave, outdoors by a stream, in an empty house, a factory, an intimate restaurant, a fast-food place, at a farm, an auction, in a traffic jam, a video arcade, or under a tin roof during a rainstorm, you'll be able to draw upon those cues as a way to break writer's block and make the sound design of the commercial much more accurate.

To carry this to an (effective) extreme, carry a small recorder with you and record these environments. You'll become a more effective audio creator, and you might even be able to use your recordings in a future commercial. Your "targeted" listening will produce "targeted" radio commercials.

If you see Jeffrey Hedquist driving past you with his eyes closed, know that he's just practicing "targeted" listening, and stay a couple of car lengths away. He'll soon be safely back at Hedquist Productions, Inc. P.O. Box 1475 Fairfield, IA 52556.

Phone 641-472-6708, Fax 641-472-7400, email jeffrey@hedquist.com. Visit http://www.hedquist.com.

(c) 1997-2010 Hedquist Productions, Inc. All rights reserved.