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MillimeterThe Sampler
Feb 23, 2005 10:49 AM
SFX History 2: Radio Days
I know what you're thinking: "Gee, gramps, do we really have to hear more about the olden days? I mean, c'mon, I'm hella busy and there are a few songs I just put into shuffle mode on my iPod that would be a lot more entertaining than this." Well that's just too bad. This stuff is important. It's about the roots of our industry! So quit yer complaining, take a tablespoon of codliver oil to make you feel better, and dive in as we continue our whirlwind history of SFX.
These days, about the only place you hear live, old-time radio sound effects is on Garrison Keillor's wonderful weekly slice of Americana, A Prairie Home Companion. Of course they're going for the slightly goofy retro quality that a table of crude FX devices provides. But in the early days of radio, when serious dramas and spooky playlets and absurd comedies were enthralling millions of listeners who sat rapt by their radios every night, SFX were a mighty big deal. According to Ray Brunelle's article "The Art of Sound Effects" from the September 1996 issue of Experimental Musical Instruments, "Ora and Arthur Nichols are regarded as the two people most responsible for bringing FX to radio, bringing several sound effects props from their many years of theatrical and silent film experience. Arthur once spent nine months working 14 hours a day to build one multiple effects device. It had nine 1/8-horsepower motors, one 1-horsepower motor, and tanks of compressed air for operating bird and boat whistles. The machine was 5ft. high and 2ft. deep and could reproduce sounds ranging from a small bird chirping to 500 gunshots a minute.
"Some of the more common early manual effects were different size wooden doors and frames (even metal car doors), and large, single-headed drums containing buck shot, which provided the sound of ocean waves when slowly rolled around. The sound of rain was created by a device that dropped bird seed onto a piece of stretched wax paper. Footsteps in the snow were created by filling a large, shallow box with cornstarch and walking in it. There were splash tanks for creating watery FX, wind machines, 'nail pullers,' barking dog FX, lion roarers, and innumerable other devices adapted and invented."
Orson Welles once filled a studio with sand to produce a drama set in the desert. Unfortunately, the overhead mics that were used to capture both the dialog and the actors tramping though the sand had to be turned up so high they picked up too much extraneous noise. But Welles is also responsible for one of the most effective radio dramas ever: the famous "War of the Worlds" broadcast from 1938, which was so realistic it freaked out thousands of people who fully believed the Martians had landed. Now that's good FX work!
Effects recorded onto 78rpm discs first started turning up on radio programs with some regularity in the early '30s. The first recorders were large and unwieldy, so recordists were limited to effects that could be created in the studio near the machine. But later recorders were smaller and allowed FX mavens to go outdoors to record, opening up a whole new world sonically.
According to Brunelle, "In order to use these new sound FX records, modified phonograph players with two tone arms were made. They had potentiometers in them so that if you needed the sound of wind or waterfalls behind a long scene, you played the sound with one pickup arm, and as the needle was coming to the end of that cut you cross-faded, slowly turning down the sound from one pickup while turning up the sound from the other pickup arm, which was placed on the beginning of the same cut."
By varying the speed of the record player's motor, the FX artist could also create new sounds. A slowed-down river, for example, could sound like a storm, an airplane, or any number of things. FX specialists spent hours figuring out which cuts on the records they had could yield particular sounds. To manage the sophisticated FX required by a typical dramatic program required an amazing level of knowledge and dexterity. After all, finding the right banded track on a 78 could be tricky—what if a car sound came up, instead of the rainstorm the scene required? And what if another cut wasn't slowed just right? Live radio was unforgiving, and there were doubtless many unintended comical mishaps along the way to integrating sound effects discs into programming.
Next time: King Kong's roar, and more.
Time to Join the PMA!
Sometimes in business it feels good just to know that you're not alone. It's comforting to learn that other people are facing the same challenges and hardships you are, and they share similar goals and common interests. Nearly every profession has some sort of group that is dedicated to working on issues unique to that profession, and production music composers are no exception. Over the past few years, the Production Music Association (PMA) has evolved into an important mouthpiece and information source for this vital niche of the music industry. Yet there are still hundreds, perhaps thousands, of companies and composers who are unaware of the organization and the work it does. Here, from the PMA's own website (www.pmamusic.com) is their statement of purpose:
"It is the mission of the Production Music Association (PMA) to bring together individual composers and publishers of production, promotion, advertising and commercial music into a unified organization to better represent and promote common interests and concerns and to assert positions on behalf of it membership.
"The PMA will strive to fulfill this mission by various methods, including, but not limited to:
1) Working with performing rights organizations, legislators, legal counsel, and broadcasters in the aim of improving the reporting, monitoring collection, and distribution of performance fees and royalties for PMA members;
2) Providing its members with a forum in which issues of common concern and interest can be discussed and decisions made;
3) Educating its members and the marketplace about music rights and issues affecting the production and commercial music community; and
4) Enhancing the value of PMA members' music through research, education, and public relations."
There are currently more than 20 member companies in the PMA, including 5 Alarm Music, 615 Music Productions, APM, BMG Production Music USA, BrG Music Works, Down Pat Music, Groove Addicts, JRT Music, Litchfield Entertainment, Manhattan Production Music, Mastersource Music Catalog, Megatrax, Metro Music Productions, Music Box, Non-Stop Music Library, OGM Production Music, Promusic, Selectracks, TRF Music Libraries, Tinseltown Music, VideoHelper, and Westar Music.
It only costs $25 to join PMA online—less than you spend on afternoon sugar rush snacks in a week. Take the time to check out the website, which has membership details and also a few interesting articles.
And by the way, the next major meeting of the PMA will take place at NAB, appropriately enough, on April 19. Details are also on the website.
Creating Production Music in the 615
Speaking of PMA, as we were above, the current vice-chairman of that organization is none other than Randy Wachtler, who heads the 615 Music Library, based in Nashville. "Sometimes I scratch my head and think, 'What am I doing? I've gone into the most competitive business in the world,'" Wachtler says with a laugh.
The answer, of course, is that he loves music and recording, and he's managed to make a living from it his entire professional life. After playing in bands during high school, he studied music at the University of South Florida and Hillsboro Community College in Tampa Bay, but then got even more serious when he went through the acclaimed recording and music industry management program at Middle Tennessee State in Murfreesboro. After school he settled in the Nashville area and, in 1984, started 615 Music as a custom music house. "I really like Nashville," Wachtler says. "So much of the music here still seems to center around good melodies and real instruments. Samplers are great and synthesizers are great, and we use them, of course, but there's still magic that happens between musicians in the studio, and that's part of what keeps me going and inspires me the most."
Starting the 615 Music Library in 1997 was a fairly natural outgrowth for the company, (which is still very active in the creation of custom music), "but we learned pretty quickly that we had to move beyond the material we already had on hand to start the library," Wachtler says. "Styles change, technology changes, sound changes so fast in this business and library music has become very, very good quality. Really, the only way to succeed is to stay on top of it and make everything as high quality as you can."
How do you stay on top of it? "Fortunately, it's not something that only I have to do—to know that this month it might be Nelly and Tim McGraw, and a few months from now it'll be something else that people are listening to or want [to emulate]. We all do it at the company. We're always talking about what's going on in music and then, of course, we also hear a lot from our clients and the stations. We've created an environment where we're always talking about what's new and how that should be reflected in the library. We have a constantly changing release list. The sales team looks at it; we're always adding things and changing things trying to stay current. Generally, though, we're trying to work a quarter or two in advance."
At the heart of the 615 library is the "Platinum Series" which consists of about 250 CDs worth of material in every style imaginable. Most of the music is cut at 615's own facility on Music Row. Among the recent releases are Dramatic Drones & Beds, Groove Generation, Hip Hop Drops, and R&B Vocal Groove (with Claude McKnight of Take 6). Additionally, the company has taken on several outside libraries, including the King Size Library of New York City and the Paris-based Music Gallery. "The King Size Library," Wachtler says, "is mostly the work of these three really good musicians who got tired of the sales and marketing end of the business and wanted to just be creative and make music. They've done lots of work for NBC and in promo music in general, which has always been a specialty of ours."
And the French company? "There's just something different about the European approach to music. It has a different feel. It's more techno. It's something we don't really do that much in this country, so those 50-or-so discs are a great addition."
Like most library companies, 615 offers search and download capabilities online, and Wachtler believes this is where the future of library music lies. "Business people are getting more and more attuned to downloading every year," he says. "The popularity of iTunes has certianly affected that. Our Australian subpublisher, Big Bang & Fuzz, is using iTunes almost exclusively and providing hard drives to the networks, and in general it seems the business seems to be moving that way. Honestly, I think the days of CDs are numbered."
Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.
