Chapter Thirty-Five: In Which Brianna Misses The Bus

The thing about making radio pieces from home is, there’s no sound-proof studio in which to record the voicing of the story — the part where I talk. I don’t have a ton of options:

The living room is a no-go because you can hear the waves (which is distracting unless the story is set in the sea…).

The bathroom has too much of an echo.

And the bedroom faces onto the highway, where there are constant incredibly loud novelty-horn-honks from the Z-buses. One of them honks to the tune of “Dixie,” if you can believe it. I’ve long tried to capture that one on tape, but haven’t managed it yet.

Anyhow, it’s a pretty big pain to try to record the voicing for my stories because I have to time my reading of the script between honking and street sounds. I do my best to soundproof the room. Hang up shirts against the windows, sit under a quilt on the bed… but still it remains a constant… uhm… challenge.

While recording the voicing for the story I submitted this week (Catch it on the CBC news tomorrow night at 6!), I was having a particularly persistent bus frustration experience, and without realizing it, kind of hummed a little song to myself and absent mindedly added situation-specific lyrics.

This is super embarrassing, and part of me can’t believe I’m doing this, but I’m going to post it for you anyway because it’s a really hilarious peek inside my subconscious while trying to work under these not ideal conditions.

The song itself is quite something. I think I strike a tone somewhere between mindlessness and a channelling of Mariah Carey… and while the first part is under my breath, when the bus starts to drive away you can really hear my recovering enthusiasm. It’s all about the little things in life, don’t ya know.

I’ve been working on a multimedia project for a while that shows exactly how to produce a piece of radio when living on the beach, including photos of me and my soundproofing methods. For that experience, you’ll have to wait a while.

But for now, a few bus frustrations and one really mortifying but really amusing improv tune about same about 30 seconds in. You’ll really have to use  your ears to hear the bus interruptions… but they’re there, I tell you. It’s the Where’s Waldo of audio editing. Et voila: