Tag: radio

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The Charm of Audio Drama

While almost every radio station can be accessed online these days, one of my favourite purchases from the last five years is a pocket DAB+ radio. I find it freeing to use a standalone device with few distractions that doesn’t use much battery.

That first radio was made by Pure, but it stopped charging some time ago. A local repair shop was physically unable to remove the cover, while the manufacturer declined to make an out-of-warranty repair. As such, I bought a refurbished one made by Majority. I hadn’t heard of this brand before, but it’s just as good as any other I’ve used.

I typically listen to BBC stations, particularly Radio 1, even though I’m more than a decade older than their target demographic. The attraction is that most contemporary music is upbeat, and I’ve found it increasingly difficult to listen to slow music over the last few years.

But I don’t want to focus on music output in this entry. I’m here to talk about speech. The corporation is a leading producer and broadcaster of scripted audio drama. Most of its output can be found on BBC Radio 4 Extra, sandwiched between comedy and occasionally poetry.

One drama I caught recently was Credit Risk by R D Wingfield, a name that might be familiar to fans of A Touch of Frost. I didn’t specifically tune in for this, but I was intrigued by how a gang infiltrated the offices of a credit card company to siphon off payments. I also didn’t specifically tune in for Double Income No Kids Yet, featuring David Tennant as half of the only childless couple in a friend group, but I’ve so far listened to two episodes.

Such audio drama tends to have a high repeatability potential. The Tennant drama has aged reasonably well since its original run from 2001 to 2003. Credit Risk, by contrast, is somewhat fossilised in 1977, but it’s a fascinating historical snapshot of when many card payments were done manually, and by characters called ‘Mr Shadbolt’ and ‘Sales Lady’.

I haven’t even mentioned long-running soap The Archers, although I don’t listen to that.

For those who have only watched TV dramas, there are some immediate differences in how the dialogue sounds. On the screen, writers aim for a more naturalistic style, since the setting can be made obvious through vision. In audio drama, the scene needs to be set with words, tone and/or sound effects.

On account of this restriction, the dialogue can sound somewhat clunky, even though the production team will aim to reduce the word count as much as possible.

Although there are plenty of podcasts featuring audio drama, there isn’t a commercial UK station with comparable output. Any speech stations tend to focus on news, current affairs, debate and/or sport.

I wonder whether there’s a gap in the market to add regularly scheduled audio drama. Such programmes are typically made on a shoestring budget, and I don’t foresee much trouble finding a sponsor to offset at least part of the cost.

In the meantime, however, it looks like the BBC has a practical monopoly on broadcast scripted drama.

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Unaware What’s on the Air

This past weekend, I tuned into part of a 48-hour broadcast by Dundee Radio Club. The stream began at 2pm on Friday via their website, with audience interaction on Instagram, ending shortly before 4pm on Sunday.

I was having difficulty listening to the stream at first. The radio player simply wasn’t showing on my browser, yet it didn’t seem to be blocked by my VPN or the ad-blocker. Once I did manage to receive the feed early on Sunday morning, I kept listening until the very end in case it disappeared as suddenly as it arrived.

It isn’t often I have difficulty describing an event, but this one is proving to be a challenge. Each of the programmes – to use the term loosely – was an audio contribution from people around Dundee, but following no specific theme. The organisers wanted, and I quote from the Open Call: sonic artworks, interviews, conversations, music sessions, storytelling, audio lectures, dj-mixes, radio plays and more!

As such, you might be listening to a history of ambient music for 20 minutes, followed by an artist sharing thoughts about cows while standing in a field, and then a DJ set featuring techno music, and the 40-plus hours I missed must have been equally as surreal. While not explicitly stated, there was a real sense that the event was intended to be an ephemeral affair, with no recording made available afterwards.

I’m part of the Amps network, which is a community of people who make and cultivate creativity in Dundee, and I voted for the Club to receive funding for this project. I was influenced by my previous volunteering at three different community radio stations. I’d given up the last of these by 2013 because I was becoming much more interested in writing by that point.

While I still wouldn’t go back to having a regular presenting slot, I’m still frustrated about missing my opportunity to take part in this project.

The Open Call somehow passed me by, despite following their Instagram page since August 2024. I even think I know what topic I would have presented. Still, I’ll keep that under wraps just now, as it isn’t time-sensitive and can be used some other time, perhaps if Dundee Radio Club returns one day.

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Hearing Yourself Back

Over approximately a ten-year period, I volunteered at three different radio stations. The first was a student station at the University of the West of Scotland, which overlapped with my second, a community station in Govan. These gigs were then followed by an eight-year stint on hospital radio in Dundee.

During this time, I became so accustomed to hearing recordings of my work that I can’t recall the last time it bothered me. As such, I often forget that many people don’t like listening to themselves.

The main reason I gave up the hospital radio was to focus on writing, but the ability to play back your own recordings is definitely a transferable skill. I also have a camcorder, and I used to ask someone to film my live performances so I could learn from them.

During this last year of online gigs, going on camera has become almost the only way to perform to a live audience. Here’s one that’s been submitted to Poets, Prattlers, and Pandemonialists for an event tonight:

https://youtu.be/BbarWpAW2Tg
Submission to Poets, Prattlers, and Pandemonialists for an event tonight.

When I look at that, I can see it’s not very well framed, and there are a few pauses towards the end as the last few lines were improvised. However, the sound is nice and loud, so it’s good enough for the purposes of the event.

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Carving Out the Time to Write – and to Read

On Christmas Eve, we explored the theory that 10,000 hours of quality practice can make someone an expert in a given field.

It’s a concept I’m still thinking about five weeks on, so I’ve been conducting a couple of unscientific experiments about increasing the time available for writing – and indeed reading, which is almost as important for an author.

As many mornings as possible, I go for a half-hour walk around the local park. I’m also a frequent radio listener, so I often take my pocket-sized DAB receiver with me. I use it when I walk other places, and occasionally at work when it’s quiet.

For five weeks, I’ve replaced that radio listening with educational podcasts; the subjects covered have not been writing-related, as I’m already familar with that.

Similary, I also have two 15-minute breaks per day. To increase my reading time, I’ve started setting my watch to beep after ten minutes, during which time I concentrate on my book. When time is up, I then finish at the next convenient break, usually the end of the current paragraph or page.

By doing this consistently, I’ve now clocked up an estimated 100 hours of learning in just over a month: that’s already one percent of the 10,000 aformentioned hours.

If I were a beginner writer, I could replace the walks with audiobooks, and replace the reading with writing, and I’d be on my way to becoming better at what I enjoy. There is usually time to be carved out if you look for it.

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Adapting to Film, Adapting to Change

On Saturday, I went to see a performance of Benidorm at the Edinburgh Playhouse, based upon the ITV2 comedy of the same name. It even featured some of the actors.

The TV series is already rather theatrical in nature, like a Carry On film with a more modern attitude. As such, it transferred very well to the stage.

Sometimes, though, adapting a story from one medium into another is a hit-or-miss affair.

Those I enjoyed include the 2004 film Layer Cake, then I discovered it’s so closely based on the novel by J. J. Connolly that it even contains direct quotes. Similarly, The Thirty-Nine Steps worked as a mock radio adaptation performed on stage, even though the plot was stripped down to the bare essentials.

Yet I was disappointed by the film version of one of my favourite books, Starter For Ten, perhaps because it deviates from the first-person point of view. And the 2016 Dad’s Army movie opened to lacklustre reviews, with The Guardian asking why we needed a film version of a much-loved TV series.

One classic case of an author disowning a film version is Roald Dahl’s reaction to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. He disliked the plot changes and musical numbers so much that no other screenplays of his work were authorised until after his death.

A few years ago, I posed a question to Irvine Welsh at a book signing about his thoughts on adaptation, considering how many of his novels have been on the big screen. He replied that he considered film to be a different medium and he accepted that changes sometimes had to be made.

‘And,’ he concluded, ‘it never hurts book sales.’

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It’s Playback Time

Last week, I talked about how I hadn’t been reading very much. By contrast, I’ve had a lot of time to read over the last seven days, thanks to a six-hour train journey to Stockport and the same coming back.

Photo of a recording studio control room durin...
Photo of a recording studio control room during recording, viewing a trumpet part performance in the studio room, for Witches’ Heart of Stone album – http://www.witchesband.com/ (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today’s entry isn’t just about reading, but reading out loud.

A friend mentioned last week that he didn’t like hearing back recordings of his own voice. I sometimes forget that most people feel the same way. I’ve long been accustomed to hearing mine through volunteering at student, community and hospital radio stations. I’d often listen back to shows and figure out how I could improve them.

I don’t recall exactly when I stopped paying attention to how I sound to myself, but it’s a useful skill to develop. When I play back my work, I can focus on the words, the timing and the structure without distraction.

I sometimes say on this blog that reading your own work out loud to nobody is a key step to refining it. On top of that, the ability to listen back can be just as useful.

A good example is The Purple Spotlights EP, which I released almost exactly two years ago. When I listen to it now, I can hear that I focus too much on the technical quality of the recording and not enough on the performance. When I release my next EP, I’ll aim to correct that balance.