Ho-hum.

Well, if you’re a grocery chain and you’re smart, you’re in touch with this experience and do what you can to acknowledge it and elevate it all with a playful, knowing wink.

Enter, absurdity.

Preston Kelly, the Ad Agency who handles Roundy’s, has done exactly that with the latest batch of brand radio they’ve been recording with us here at Babble-On. Called, fittingly enough, “Great Moments In Food-dom”, the spots regale the radio listener to peek into the lives of some everyday heroes and their day-saving moments of brilliance.

With much fanfare (literally) we are told the incredible tales of…

• Young Sammy, whose mother, having remembered to pack something sugary in his lunchbox, insured that he would be “the king of the lunchroom. And he wore a crown… made of cookie.”

• The Tressell family, who were stunned by the size of the Easter ham Grandma Tressell brought to the table. Imagining the leftovers, the family dreamed aloud. ”Ma said ‘I will make split pea and ham soup.’ And Junior said ‘I will make sandwiches.’ And Baby Tressell said ‘globba she bin plooo’… because she was a baby.”

• Brendan, who while shaping and forming burger patties “with wild abandon,” found he could combine two undersized patties to create “Megaburger” (insert Michael Bay brand reverb here).

As you can hear, the spots playfully poke fun at life’s moments while still getting in the necessary meat of price points, specials and a distinct brand image – not so easy to wedge all that into a standard sized cart of 60 seconds.  These radio ads require some real editing chops in both writing and production.

Charlie Tournat who wrote these spots (with a feathered quill we assume) said, “We tried to glorify the small things we do or think every day with food. Because most of us eat every day. It’s a different way to pay off ‘living up to your life’. And I’d add that these spots would be nothing without the audio wizardry of Greg Geitzenauer, the Danny Elfmanesque music, and the golden pipes of Bill Vogel — who I think would be a fabulous narrator in the next Dr. Seuss adaptation movie. I’ll bet you 5 bucks it will be “The Sneetches” starring William H Macy. Because he’d make a great sneetch. I do not know why.”

Now that sounds, …absurd.

All three of the engineers here at Babble-On can attest to a few sessions over the years where, for whatever reason, a writer/producer could not stay in sync with a voice-over talent regarding direction, timing, phrasing, etc.  The resulting frustration and  fallout was palpable. Unintended miscommunication got in the way of everyone’s ultimate goal – creating a really great radio or TV spot.

“Y’know, what gives? I thought I was being clear” is what is usually said to any one of us once the talent has departed and we’re ready to start editing and shaping the sound-design. Maybe you were. Maybe you weren’t. Hard to know. We’re not Voice-Talent. It may just be that the glass between us and the booth isn’t as transparent as we’d like to believe – more Blood-Brain Barrier than Open Window.

So, ok, what’s it like to be a VO talent inside that terrarium of gauze, glass, cords and gear which, at first blush, seems like an illicit construct: A Padded Cell cum Spanish Inquisition Chamber covered in soothing earth tones? What happens in there?

In order to know, the question had to be asked – “What would you like directors and writers to know about what you do that would be helpful in getting the best performance?”  For awhile now, we’ve been culling the responses and the following info is an aggregated snapshot that may shed some light -

For 90 minutes a talent’s headphones are mostly filled with just the sound of their own voices – interrupted by scattered flits and bits of talkback banter, direction, shots of indecipherable noise, criticism and encouragement.  There is an element of trying to connect with outer-space to it – the long pauses, bursts of communication, the uncertainty; it can even feel a little cold at times.  As you might imagine, this isn’t completely ideal.

Well, it would appear that the best way to keep things from falling into a culvert is to maintain a rhythm – have the session move along – keep them involved and in the loop.  From the start, as a director, be as clear and succinct as you can as to what you’d like to hear. An example might be, “I need a bright and positive tone, a quick pace, and the sense that you’re very familiar with this product – and I need it to come in at :18 seconds”.  It’s a starting point, and the talent know that this may well get altered. Allow several takes to come together before offering up too much insight – they are learning the steps to this dance, the steps of which (at first blush) are familiar only to you and the client.

While it seems logical to use celebrities as a reference, this can be more problematic than helpful. Better to say, “I need a smokier tone” than offer “sound like Carol Channing”. Celebrities can be generational (witness the deliberate example given), and a lack of familiarity with a particularly popular character can cause a talent to “go to that weird place in their head” as one put it.

Allow for “happy accidents” if at all possible – giving the talent some leeway to steer phrases one way or another within the context of your direction.  The steam can completely fall out of a performance when a talent is simply trying to mimic a line read. It becomes aiming rather than pitching and the believability can sag quickly.  Sometimes, a line-reading is the only way, but  a simple “go up at the end of that phrase” seems to be a quicker way to achieve the same result.

“Sound natural” can actually be a confusing and difficult direction to pursue. As one talent said, “It isn’t natural to speak casually with scripted words about shoe inserts” .  Better to say, “do what you can to make this seem as one-to-one as possible”. This direction gives a more workable space to an actor and will get you where you want to go more quickly.

If you loved the audition, try and have it on hand.  Many things have happened since that initial record and it can be difficult to remember what was originally done.

Give playbacks – it can help talent see where they can pick things up, slow things down, where they can improve, etc. Feeling involved in the process can “get me there much more quickly” quote, unquote.

Offering to do “three-in-a-row” of a particularly problematic phrase is more helpful than you can know.

If the performance requires a lot of strain – offer up breaks for water and understand that, like any muscle, a voice can fatigue more quickly than imagined.

“Ok, let’s just do that one more time”, “Ok, great. Let’s just do that one more time”, “Perfect. Let’s just do that one more time”.  Great things to say, but it would be helpful to know if this “one more time” were for safety, or if there was actually something missing. As actors, they want to be certain they are communicating your ideas well, not just reading aloud and, yet – “still missing it”.

It might seem obvious, but maintaining a sense of humor and being positive works wonders at keeping a talent involved and on track. Talent were quick to point out that this doesn’t mean “don’t criticize”,  - their livelihood is filled with rejection.  But to any extent possible let them know what’s working along with what needs to change. This combination seems to be best at keeping them “on script” with what you’re looking to achieve.

To close this off, thanks to all the talent (local, national and international) who offered their wisdom and insight for this Babble-Blog entry. It will certainly help us to do our job at the studio with greater insight. In the coming weeks, we’ll see if we can’t get the Writer/Producer perspective on such things as well.

If you’d like to offer a comment, we’d love to hear from you. We currently have our Comments button disabled here due to spam issues, but you’re more than welcome to use the Contact Us button above and send us an e-mail through the link there. We’ll try and post a few of them as we get time.

Imagine you’re a small, independent, Midwestern publisher. In the past decade you’ve seen the writing on the wall; the final chapters of the neighborhood bookseller are furiously getting inked, while the New Giants – Amazon and Barnes and Noble, seemingly have no end to the reach of their tendrils.

Oh yes, and add to that mix a few little innovations like The Kindle and the iPad.  One gets a rumpled dust jacket just thinking about it.

Yet, somehow, miraculously – sales ain’t so bad, Earl. How so?

Well, the folks at Graywolf Press, with whom we’ve worked for years, have been very savvy about getting their tomes of distinction into all kinds of hands.  It hasn’t been easy. No disrespect to Steven King, Dean Koontz, Sarah Palin and other, um, …authors, (all of whom are buttressed by big dough), but Graywolf’s offerings fall well outside the castle walls of mainstream consumption and easy money. They’ve had to fight for shelf space, and have successfully done so using… audio.

Every few months, Fiona McCrae; director and publisher, and senior editor Jeff Shotts (pictured above at his office in the Warehouse District) come into Studio B at Babble-On to record some audio communiques with our engineer, John Lukas. These are, essentially, book specific podcasts that they use to keep their salespeople abreast of Graywolf’s latest releases.  It’s just smart business. On those long drives traveling amongst multiple retailers, why not maximize the chance of getting a successful sale by having your salesperson hear, fist hand, what a particular book is all about?  A book review voiced by those who are, quite literally, closer to the product than anyone.

The current podcasts showcase titles such as “The Adderall Diaries” by Steven Elliot, “The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards” by Robert Boswell and “Crave Radiance” by Elizabeth Alexander (whom at Obama’s inauguration, read her poem “Praise Song for the Day”). We’ve also got a copy of the new collection of poems by author Tony Hoagland entitled “Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty” floating around the studio; definitely worth a look  - along with his wildly popular (amongst the ad folks we see, in particular), “What Narcissism Means To Me”.

All we can say is that by combining these highly original and interesting works with their astute use of podcasting, Graywolf  seems quite honest in referring to themselves as “a rare breed of publisher”.

Here are a few examples of these particular podcasts.

The Hurt Locker at Babble-On Recording

The Green Zone, that infamous site in Baghdad that was meant to be a safe haven from the perils of uncertainty, is a fitting metaphor for those of us in the Media Creation biz whom must adapt to the ever changing digital sensibilities of our time.

Like The Green Zone, we’ve tried to preserve a seamless “everyday normal life” here at Babble-On; critically picking over the onslaught of new and unproven technologies that might well bomb on us, while embracing those ideas that seem helpful to the writers, producers and ad agencies who zip past our front desk check point  - so astutely monitored by Becky Carlson.

Now, to be completely fair, we know we’re at no risk of getting maimed (and we aren’t implying that) – but, equally so, there are plenty of businesses in the past few years who have paid dearly, lost the battle, and who will fully relate to this particular analogy. They’ve lost more than just their shirt shall we say. We empathize with them. Some good friends and colleagues are now gone.

So, we have a few things we’d like to get off the shelves and into the hands of those who might well be able to use them.  We’re emptying spent ordnance from our version of The Hurt Locker, I guess – DAT Machines (even a timecode version – whee!), an Avid MOJO cable or two, 3/4 inch video decks, a Marantz portable flash recorder, cassette decks, DVD players, VHS decks, the list goes on – there’s probably even a dusty MySpace page kicking around in there somewhere.  We’re posting them on eBay.  So, if you’re looking to outfit a home recording studio, or your school needs some well maintained audio gear – you’ll find a good combination of new, old and not-so-used stuff for short money.  BTW – much has already been donated, and anything that could be recycled has been.

To continue the Green analogy – this is all in keeping with a greater sensibility that we all share at Babble-On; Reducing needless waste. We have, in just the first few months of this year, nearly eliminated our need for CD’s and DVD’s, we are consuming even less paper (we’ve only used recycled paper since our inception), and are looking into the practicalities of converting some rooms from standard bulbs to LED. Much of this has to do with exhaustive work by Carol Bergeron, who has been converting our Session Library System into a completely integrated digital database. Now, any session we do is electronically archived (audio, video, log sheets, scripts, session notes, lunch crumbs) and is easily retrievable to any of our recording studios within just a click or two. It’s all on-line all the time. No more boxes, less plastic, less paper, and even more efficient.

Kermit The Frog once said, “It ain’t easy being Green”. Mmmm, perhaps – but it seems worth the effort.

But, nope, we’re just getting older and we like to talk about it. Proof, one can surmise, that senility happens earlier than one imagines.

This months lame-ass excuse to get a cake falls to André Bergeron, who, (in baseball terms), can now officially be deemed as “rounding second”.  Hardball is a fitting analogy here as André is a devoted follower of America’s Pastime and, as such, the staff was kind enough to send him to the April 14th afternoon Twins game at the newly minted Target Field – against the Red Sox no less.  Mr. B hails from out East and remembers all too well an individual named “Bucky” with a feeling that approaches arch disdain. So, these tix were a sure fire way to guarantee that the boss wouldn’t show up that day. The people who work here are smart.

But, there is cake to discuss. And, it didn’t disappoint. A Raspberry Chocolate Diva Cake from Buttercream. Total Kill Zone. Yes, we’ve loved our recent Cocoa and Fig jag, (and we’ll certainly go back), but this hit the spot – with much more authority than “Bucky” ever did.  The clientele whom were around to nose a fork into this glucose bomb enjoyed it too – we noted that there wasn’t much left after the fat lady sang.  Even so, the remains went in the fridge (a la Ted Williams) to be resurrected when the time is right. It easily hit .406 for us.  You can look that up.

A final note, here.  André has been addicted to Babble-On’s new hand-held Olympus LS-10 recorder and couldn’t help but take it to the game that day.  This audio clip is what Target Field sounded like when Joe Mauer came to the plate during the late innings of this tight game.  He got this from the depths of the seats in right field.  Sometimes, audio alone tells the story most powerfully.

Gotta few pics, too…

Hope to share more of those on our Babble-Blog sometime soon.

So, now that we can pull up a stool and sit for awhile – let’s a have an IPA and catch up.

First off, Whitey’s Saloon in Northeast Minneapolis was a nice venue to meet and mingle; a place rightly known for its food and friendly confines.  In short, a great recording environment. Now, that might seem like a given – (“Dude, c’mon, it’s a pub, – who’s not having a good time”), but we’ve been in bars, taps and other watering holes where people can be in a rush and less likely to want to connect.  Of course, this is the great thing about Man on The Street radio or, more aptly – Guy At The Table Over There radio is that you never know what you’re going to get.  But, it helps to have a nice vibe from the first pour.

Chris Carlson, our interviewer, has true savoir faire when it comes to drawing out the fun in people – deftly playing along or gently tweaking them depending on where the conversation is headed – or, in some cases, crashing.  At a later date, we’ll need to share out-takes here. Hilarious.

For this go ’round of spots, the questions and conversations meandered around baseball:

“Does having a Summit while watching a ball game count as multi-tasking?”

“Shouldn’t all professions have a reliever?”

And, life at large…

“How do bubble wrap factory workers get anything done?”

“If you could have a Summit with anyone in History – who would it be?”

These were only a scant few, and as you might guess many of these end up on the cutting room floor – or, (to update a metaphor) in the Mac trash bin. There’s simply no way to use all the wonderful bits that arise in a four hour recording session and place them succinctly into 60 or 30 seconds. However, Jeff Schuller, the writer on this campaign, is a patient listener and always extracts the sweet stuff from the seed corn. He and André Bergeron, the editor on these radio ads, have developed their own shorthand lingo in order to keep things moving efficiently.  After all, while it may be beer and a lot of fun, there is a client involved and this series of spots requires precision in its approach – even though the recording itself is very freewheeling.

To date, we’ve gotten two of several radio spots done, “Bat Boy” and “History”, with more to come in the next few weeks.

Pop a cold one and enjoy…

A few photos of things before it all got rolling. A lot of mental prep work…

And once we were recording,… laughs and commentary.

For those of you who put your eyes here often, you’ll note that over the past few months you’ve seen more about Staff Birthdays, Interns, our Philanthropy as well as Views of Downtown Minneapolis from our perch atop the Plymouth Building.

We like this newer twist. In essence, it’s our flavor.

But, we also like to share the work we do – the “meat”, if we may continue the analogy.

So, in an effort to combine these two ideals, we thought we’d give a plate appearance (inadvertent and regrettable pun – sorry. ed.) to someone who could offer a flavor we can’t – those of a writer from an advertising agency.

Darren Tibbits, Associate Creative Director at Carmichael Lynch, recently recorded some Trane radio here and was kind enough to offer up how this particular campaign came together.

Here is his take -

“The advertising strategy for Trane heating and air conditioning has shifted to feel poignant. Each piece lives as if a stand-alone ad, addressing the target audience in colloquial tone and referencing the surrounding environment—publication, location, etc.—and then showing how Trane systems work harder in comparison.

Then a new wave of media buy comes. Radio. During sportscasts. In multiple regions. Starting with baseball. Hmm. So the challenge becomes making Trane relevant to what’s happening pre-game, in-game and post-game and showcase its benefit. Hard-working. Reliability. Energy efficient. In audio form.

Rather than go for the easy connections to players working hard on the field or at the plate, we decided to play off the more colorful aspects to sportcasts. To break through the clutter of typical sports radio advertising, we ran a list of thoughts that tend to percolate in our brains as we enjoy the game. Hope they don’t bring in whats-his-face. Does the stats guy use Wikipedia? And who’s the lucky sap that gets to come up with the nicknames for sports teams? Aha. Amusing pontifications while you’re washing the car, mowing the lawn or kicking back on the deck. And there is where Trane has to make sense, even if we have to shoehorn it in. I mean, these could air several times a game for 162 games, so the shelf life needs to be strong. Too often, the funny spot with heavy media weight can become the annoyance. We need these to stay consistent.

Now, this can’t be yuck-yuck humor. It’s dry and witty. A bit irreverent but not condescending. And the talent’s voice and delivery needs to match that tone. Otherwise, we’re not putting the beef into the stroganoff, if you know what I mean. It’s just an audio plate of noodles. We got that with our voice talent, Leland Orser. Great name, btw. It took a little time to get the perfect balance between wit off the top and trustworthiness during the sell, but the end result was something we chuckled at the hundred or so times we heard it during final mixing. Sprinkle in some wonderful subtle sound design from John Lukas at Babble-On Recording and the spots really felt solid. And funny. And the client couldn’t agree more.”

Thanks, Darren.  Here are the spots…

Say what you will about this rich and complex digitally connected life we’ve managed to fashion for ourselves – madly tapping away on our mobile phones as we avert ourselves from what is happening right in front of us, but little in life beats a dark walnut booth, a perfectly grilled burger, a few mates with interesting stories to share and a tall pint of India Pale Ale.  If, being enterprising, you would add to this mix a little time to kill, one might end up with that “killer app” for cementing a relationship or two.  For some, a good buzz beats a cute Tweet almost any day.

While the days of the Summit Beer World Tour are over, when André Bergeron traveled with Summit to England, Germany, Norway and Ireland to record people in pubs, the concept has stayed alive – go out and record conversations with everyday people over a beer or two and see what happens.  So, every few months for the past couple of years, Jeff Schuller, the writer from GdB, and André have gone into local watering holes with host Chris Carlson to see what people want to talk about.  From there, hours of freewheeling conversation get condensed into sixty second jewels whose facets affirm that life is interesting when you just let it be.

Okay, well, that, and y’know… we also have a really special brewery over in Saint Paul that makes some notable beers.

In keeping with our schedule, we’ve got another recording event coming up Thursday the 25th of March at Whitey’s Saloon in North Minneapolis.  Please come on out, meet some of the gang, hoist a pint and talk to us about life. We’ll have photos and spots to share in the next week or so right here on our Babble-Blog, as well.

In the meantime, here are a few recent examples of Summit Beer radio that we’ve worked on with GdB.

If you’d like to hear some of the original spots that were recorded in England, go to André’s bio on our Engineers page and you’ll see them off to the right.  Also, you’ll find several other examples from other locales we visited if you were to scroll through our samples page.

All the more reason for us to call attention to a really great series of radio spots that we’ve been working on with Clarity Coverdale Fury for a few years that’s been sympathetic, helpful and… funny: QUITPLAN Services “Monkey On Your Back” campaign.

Back in ‘08, Michael Atkinson and Lynda Crotty, the writer and producer respectively, began recording this series with Greg Geitzenauer. That first radio spot called, “Loon”, had the goal of letting people know about the new flavors of Nicorette Gum as part of QUITPLAN Service’s free nicotine replacement therapy.

It worked -- setting records for calls to QUITPLAN service’s help line and increasing their web traffic and sign-ups.

And people say that traditional media is dead. Hmmmm.

Due to that notch in the belt, more spots were recorded here at Babble-On that worked the same angle -- this time using a Cat, Penguin, Robot, and even a Parrot posing as the pesky monkey.

The campaign has been so successful that everyone involved decided to keep a good thing going further by producing more radio ads, but this time the concept would evolve to support QUITPLAN’s new TV spot, designed to promote a “personalized approach” to quitting. So, for this go around, the radio scripts depicted (yup, you can do that on the radio) an actual monkey on the backs of L.A. voice-over talents Scott LaRose and Hudson Campbell whom we recorded via ISDN Digital Patch from Atlantis Group Recording. Vanessa Marshall was the Announcer.

Ironically, however, in the process of doing sound-design for these ads Michael, Lynda and Greg came to the conclusion that real monkey sound-effects weren’t cutting it. So, local actors Tim Russell and Brian Sostek were booked into Studio C to provide monkey vocalizations that would better fit the scene. For those of us bopped past our kitchenette that day (which is right near studio C) the racket was such that  even Jane Goodall might have flinched -- or offered proper direction. The final results were screechily dead on.

Here’s that series of radio spots -

And, the TV spot to which it is all tied is here

www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0RGOK3a-V4

If you’re looking to hear more of the campaign, feel free to peruse our samples page (it has quite a few there), and look at our sound-design page to see how we creatively approach some of the vexing audio situations we come across.

Another month, another birthday rolls by here at Babble-On Recording.  Like the pagans of old, it seems like these events cluster together for us during the coldest and gloomiest times of the year.  Thank God – (or, okay… gods, if we’re sticking with the whole pagan riff).  Few things beat the drabness of an interminable Minnesota Winter like the brightly colored packets of joy we’ve been getting from Cocoa & Fig these days.

The latest reason for indulging our sugar jones is that Carol Bergeron turned the page on another year.  So, we all took a break from the broadcast TV and Radio projects we’d been working on that day for Purina, Harley Davidson and SuperValu to give her the most thoughtful gift we could – not singing Happy Birthday to her. Instead, we indulged ourselves in a confection that we picked out for her special day – something the Cocoa & Figgers call, Cake Pops. Wow, The Sequel.

We could try and compare these to the Peanut-Butter Pops we had for Greg Geitzenauer’s birthday last month, but such an exercise is like being on a brewery tour with a college drinking buddy – it all tastes good, you can’t make a decision, and in the end… you just feel kinda wobbly. At least, with respect to the Cake Pops and Peanut-Butter Pops we could probably still drive.

Next time your in for a session, lean your head into Carol’s office, wish her a belated “Happy”, and ask her how birthday dinner at Om was. Namaste.