First Day of internship at 4EB Radio Station / Induction (Day 1)

8th of March 2021

Initially attended for an induction session and ended up starting my internship straight away. Today’s station audio engineer Niyi, was recording a podcast with a group of ladies which was part of an ongoing series.

• Immediately thrown in the deep end learning where the patch bays and headphone box are situated in the live room.

• Hooking up microphones and microphone cables to microphone stands and getting out of the room quickly so we could start recording.

• For podcast recording session, the host ladies sat at two sides of a kitchen table opposite each and the guest for the day was seated at the top end of the table. I hooked up 2 Shure 58 dynamic microphones so each side of the hosts could just hand it to each other on their side of the table, rather than passing one microphone across the table to speak into.

Niyi likes using dynamic microphones because there is less spillage of sound being recorded. However, Niyi still used a Shure shotgun condenser microphone, because he didn't want the microphone to be too close to the guest face, as she was answering questions from the hosts. So, it was interesting to watch and learn how Niyi approached this podcast recording session.

We did have some technical glitches at the start of the recording session, and I had to replace a microphone and a microphone cable, but there still was a connection problem, (which we were struggling to locate, a crackly sound and needed to sort it out quickly.) We ended up using one dynamic microphone for all the hosts to use, (which we wanted to avoid).

Niyi thought he had solved the problem after he observed the ladies handing the Shure 58 microphone to each other. He noticed that a couple of the ladies had the habit of fiddling with the lead connection to the microphone and that's when the crackling would begin, (So, I will call this podcast anxiety). A nervous reaction from the ladies before they would speak into the Shure 58 mic.

Confidentiality

Sometime confidentiality and privacy can be part of a podcast recording session. Niyi has a digital recorder which he can use by placing the mobile recorder in the live room on a table. This gives privacy to the client and they have the knowledge that the people in the console room can’t hear them. If we were recording in the live room session, clients can request the monitor speakers in the console room to be put on mute for privacy purposes, while they still record their podcast session. Protecting the client’s confidentiality is taken very seriously with the up most respect. Any data from the mobile recorder for the session can be uploaded and transferred at a later date.

All podcast recording sessions are mostly edited by a professional audio editing company.

So today was great, and I enjoyed work with Niyi. I also like the small studio, it's different from the SAE studios and I can get more experience with different equipment.