ABSTRACT THURSDAY - RHYTHM

Rhythm - a strong, regular repeated pattern of movement or sound.

I wasn’t quite sure what to do for this challenge, until I went over to the Radio Station this morning for another training session.  My first job was to make the coffee - which I did willingly and then it was down to work to finish editing the interview I did last week.  Actually, there wasn’t much to edit out, both Michael and I were both surprisingly free of “ums and ahs”, called non-lexical vocables in linguistics - and they are apparently speech disfluencies, but can be considered as sort of interjections - so now you know!

When I looked at the sound waves on the screen, the thought of a Blip “pinged”  into my head - so I took a shot of the edited version, which is shown at the top of the collage.  Shirley, the Station Manager, helped me with quite a lot of the first edit, but teaches very much as I would.  She told me how to do it, but then left me to do it myself, unlike the IT guys where I used to work, who would come down when anything went wrong with our computers, punch a few keys and then say “There you go” and walk off - whereas if I had done it myself, I would have remembered if/when it went wrong the next time!

Adrian, one of the Freelance Presenters at the Radio Station, was very kind and helped me a great deal today and his method was the same as Shirley’s - so I learned a lot this morning.  He explained what he called “a little trick” which means that listeners don’t have to keep turning the volume up and down when the sound varies.  After listening to his advice, I then dynamically processed the sound waves at the bottom of the collage, which means that there won’t be as many loud and then soft patches of conversation. 

I probably haven’t got all the terminology right, but it’s all new to me and there is a lot to learn - although Adrian did say that he could tell I knew my way round computers by the way I did things.  Much like riding a bike, I guess, once you have done it, you don’t forget!

I now have a Project to co-ordinate before next week - and I think I may have given myself rather a big one to start with.  Some of you may remember that from July to December 2016, I did a self-imposed Street Challenge, finding a street in Swindon starting with every letter of the alphabet - here is the one I did for Upham Road.

I thought it might be a good idea for a programme to introduce the particular street, find someone who lives in the street, interview them and then ask them to choose a piece of music.  When I had this idea very early one morning and wrote it down, it didn’t look too onerous, but now Shirley has said she thinks it is a good idea, it looks HUGE!  

Of course, I don’t know someone who lives in every street I blipped, but I guess it will show how ingenious I am in finding a person to interview - and there are only twenty six to find!!  Mike, the man standing next to Mr. HCB, in the top right of the collage of Upham Road has lived there for well over fifty years, and we do know him, so I will be going back with my Zoom portable hand-held recorder to speak to him.  Exciting times, but also rather daunting and I may have to do some door-knocking.  Watch this space!

“Expect the best,
     plan for the worst,
          and prepare to be surprised.”
Denis Waitley