|
Miami Radio School |
| from RadioWeb and Lovell Consulting |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Aircheck Demo Tape
Getting hired at a radio station for an on-air position usually comes down to one thing, your demo tape. This is referred to most often as an "aircheck". It's a tape of you speaking on the air. For news talent, it's your newscast. For musical air-talent, it's what you say between songs or at the end of a music set before going to commercial break. There are two philosophies on airchecks. The first says that an aircheck should be live, from the radio station at which you worked. The other says you should create an aircheck specifically for the format of the station to which you are applying for a job. Both of these outlooks have their benefits and drawbacks. The live aircheck shows how you actually sound on the air, but isn't necessarily in the format of the station to which you are applying. The prepared aircheck shows what you can do in a specific format, but you simply aren't actually on the air. In most cases, such an aircheck is prepared in a production studio. It isn't "real" and that fact will be in the back of the listener's mind. For the person trying to break into radio, quite often the ability to provide a prospective employer with a live aircheck simply isn't there. It's hard to have a live aircheck if you haven't ever been on air. The major drawback to a prepared, or produced, aircheck is that if you've never had on-air experience and if you do get the job, you now must be able to perform up to the standard set on your demo tape. Many people are unable, their first time behind a live microphone connected to a transmitter and being listened to by thousands of people, to be as good as they were in a production studio where they could rewind the tape if they made a mistake. Here are some hints on creating a good musical demo tape for the person new to radio. Keep it short, two or three minutes at most. Put your best breaks first. Attempt to show that you can do different things and sound vocally different as needed. That is, come out of a ballad softly and "ramp" your voice to the upbeat song coming up next. More often than not, if the person listening to your tape isn't interested in you in the first thirty seconds, they won't keep listening to your tape. Keep the music sections short. The person listening has heard the music before and doesn't want to hear a lot of it again. They want to hear you. Leave just enough music to demonstrate you're into the song's fade. If you're talking over a song's intro, cut the music shortly after you've finished speaking. Take time and use some effort and care in preparing your demo tape. Edit out any extraneous music. If it's a live aircheck, don't edit out errors you made on the air. Just don't use those breaks. Make your edits clean and have them flow. Cut the tape on a beat and try to join it to a beat at the beginning of the next section. Attention to detail is important. News demo tapes should be fresh. Don't send out a demo tape with news that's three months old. The news should be no more than two weeks old if at all possible. If it's a live aircheck of a newscast you've done at your current station, you can include a very short section of the lead-in to your newscast that might include the news entry jingle or sounder before you begin to speak. Keep such items short. Again, the person listening wants to hear you give your newscast, they don't want to hear a lot of other, extraneous information. Production demo tapes need to showcase both your best work and the range of your work. Demonstrate your ability to meld multiple sound elements into a seamless whole. Music, voice and sound effects should all work together. If you don't speak well, don't send spots you've voiced. Part of the job of production director, or assistant, is to select the voice talent best able to do the job. If you aren't the best person to voice a commercial, don't send spots with your voice on them. At the same time, if you have the voice to be part of your spots, use them, and show your vocal range. It's best to include several commercials, or parts of commercials that show what you can do. You might begin with a station promo followed by a hard sell, then a soft sell followed by a concert spot. You need to decide whether to include the full spot or just enough of the spot to sufficiently demonstrate your talent. If you're new to radio, the main objective is simply to get hired at a radio station, regardless of the position you'll have. If you're sending a tape for an on-air music job, send everything you've got. Send an aircheck followed by a two minute newscast. Put your production demo tape on the flip side. Cue the tape to the point you want the listener to hear. Don't make them wait for leader tape to pass or make them try to find your demo. Have it ready to go. Many people have the ability to burn their own CDs, and you can definitely send one instead of a cassette. Put your aircheck on track one, your news demo on track two and so on. If you do send a tape, a cassette is preferred, the tape itself is very important. Use a standard cassette, not the super high-quality metal or high-bias type. Such tape usually requires a special setting or a switch to be flipped on older cassette decks. If the switch isn't set, the sound quality of your tape could suffer. Don't use C-30, C-60 or C-90 cassettes when a C-10 will do. Use a cassette long enough to hold all your material, but as short as possible. No one is going to fast forward through a 90-minute cassette to hear your production demo on the flip side. We recommend you don't use any type of noise reduction, either Dolby, DBX or anything else. The person who listens to your tape may not have a cassette deck that handles DBX or they may need to set the cassette deck for Dolby noise reduction. In that case, your tape will potentially sound muddy. Above all, listen to the entire tape or CD before sending it. Make sure the recording levels are perfect. Low levels will make the listener adjust their volume and allow tape hiss to be heard in the background. Levels that are too high may make the tape sound distorted. If you send a CD, listen to it on a regular CD player, not your computer. Make sure it plays on their machine since they may not play it on their computer. Most importantly of all, label your cassette or CD with your name and your phone number. Cassettes often become separated from their cases, J-cards and resumés. If the listener likes your tape, but can't figure out who you are because the tape isn't labeled, you won't get the job they might have hired you for. Use a nice label. Look professional. Don't scotch tape a handwritten piece of paper to the cassette. If you're reading this, you have a computer. Use it to create a nice, high-quality, professional looking label. Don't use a cassette that has been used before. Putting your own label on top of three or four, or even one, previous label doesn't benefit your desire to look professional. When your tape is ready to go, send it! Don't hesitate. You'll always be able to make your tape better, so you have to make the decision at some point that it's ready to go. Listen to it critically and be sure it's ready, but don't be too critical. Get you tape in the mail along with your resumé and cover letter. Good luck. |
