Radio Ga Ga

I have to admit that if you had told me at any point in my life before this year of university that I was going to help run an online radio station for the better part of a year, I would have never believed you. As it turns out, that is exactly what I have done, and I feel that it has went pretty successfully, with many a learning curve along the way. The most pressing one was learning and using the software that plays the radio out over the internet, and making adjustments, changes and creating new shows. I will use Gibbs’ Reflective Model (The University Of Edinburgh, 2020) to breakdown my thoughts, feelings and processes throughout this experience.

Description

For my placement I was in charge of making sure the software used for playing out SARC Radio was working correctly, and to adjust the different shows and make new ones, as well as designing some pictures for use on the SARC Radio website and later in this academic year creating some sweepers, the small soundbites played between songs that announce that you are listening to SARC Radio and what show your listening to. However, I had never done any of these things before, and so I know the learning curve would be a challenge.

Feelings

As I said above, none of these things I had any experience in, but isn’t that what placement all about? I was feeling fairly apprehensive, especially with learning the software as I am not particularly technologically savvy, and I assumed that the software that plays out the radio show must be fairly confusing and possibly difficult. As for the pictures, I was slightly nervous but overall I was looking forward to doing these as I knew they would not be particularly complicated, and the sweepers I was confident I could make them work due to my background in music production, but was unsure how to go about actually making one that sounded professional, so I felt some pressure with that.

Analysis

The first hurdle to jump was the actual software itself, PlayIt Live. I was shown the ropes by John, the person in charge of SARC Radio, but it was a lot of information to take in all in one go, and unfortunately my note taking was not ideal in this occasion as I was more focused on doing the actions on the computer rather than taking notes. However, I did some research online about how the software worked and found a website that laid everything out for me in a way I was able to understand (Dean, 2022), and so when I was left to my own devices with the software, I was able to get to grips with it fairly easily and found it wasn’t as confusing as I initially thought it would be.

The pictures, I found, were fairly simple. They did not take long to do and with some helpful tips and back and forth exchanges of ideas and improvements I could make, I was happy with the overall outcome and thought it went well, if a little tedious. I also found the sweeper fairly easy to, as I did some research which helped me a lot. One piece of advice that helped, which was surprising as it seems fairly obvious, is before you do anything is decide what your sweeper should sound like so that it fits the vibe of the show/station that it is playing on (Top Radio Jingles, 2023). This helped me to picture the vibe that the jingle would have, which then influenced my choices of instruments etc. and made it much easier to make the decisions at the start of the process.

Conclusion

I felt that overall this was a positive experience, as I was met with these challenges but I was able to face them and overcome them, even though I did not know what I was actually getting into. I also found that this is actually something I really enjoy doing, as before I would have not considered this a potential career path on its own, but now I think it is something I should consider doing in the future. I also learned that I should have more confidence in myself, as a lot of these challenges I was faced with I actually found fairly easy to get through, and really the challenge was more of an internal one about my own anxiety about my abilities.

Action Plan

In the future, if I am faced with a similar situation, I will go into it with more confidence in myself. I will also do a bit more research before the it all kicks off about what I am actually getting myself into so that I have more of a reason to have confidence in myself. I will also make time in the future to have a go with the software outside of me actually doing work with it, as the first time I had to use it on my own I had work to complete, and so it took me a bit longer to complete the work than it should have as I was learning as I went along.

Bibliography

Dean, P., 2022. radio.co. [Online] 
Available at: https://help.radio.co/en/articles/5955032-playit-live
[Accessed 17 april 2023].

The University Of Edinburgh, 2020. The University Of Edinburgh. [Online] 
Available at: The University Of Edinburgh
[Accessed 17 April 2023].

Top Radio Jingles, 2023. Top Radio Jingles. [Online] 
Available at: https://topradiojingles.com/how-to-make-a-radio-jingle-sweeper-for-your-radio-station/
[Accessed 17 april 2023].