Recording, Orgainising & Compiling A Radio Play

I wanted to share with you my method of recording, organising and compiling a radio play. Organising any kind of audio recording can become very confusing especially radio and voice over recording due to the number of takes created during recording.

So I’m going to take you through some of the steps and tools I find useful to me.

It starts with a script… For the current radio play I’m producing, Unholy Behaviour, I receive a script in advance of the recording session. I first go through the script and make note of every character that appears in the script and the number of scenes for the whole script. Once I have this information I open a new Pro Tools session and name it accordingly. (In the case of my current project “Unholy Behaviour Episode 3”)

Within Pro Tools I create a separate mono audio track for each character.

I create an edit and mix group for all theses tracks. Linking the mutes and solos within this group.

Using groups comes in useful when mixing and editing, but it is also essential for organising takes.

Now that I have a separate track for each character and that they are grouped I can go ahead and prep the sessions playlists.
Playlists are a way of recording multiple takes on the same audio track. These playlists can be named and arranged how you like.

When recording a script I already know how many scenes are going to be recorded.

I start by naming each track with the character name followed by “Scene 1”.

So for example; Jesus Scene 1, Moses Scene 1, would be the track names for the first two tracks.

Once all the tracks have been named in this way I create a new playlist for the first track. This will add a suffix .01 to the end of the track name.
The beauty of this is that because all the tracks are grouped together (as long as the group is active) a suffix will be added to the end of every track.
An active group is represented by the group being highlighted in the groups window, bottom left of the Pro Tools window. Below is a screenshot so you know what you are looking for.

Clicking the group will active and deactivate it. You can also turn on the keyboard shortcut button which is the little a & z. This allows you to turn your groups on and off using a keyboard shortcut known as “Keyboard Focus”. In this case the key “a”.

So you now have; Jesus Scene 1.01, Moses Scene 1.01 etc.

The next step may seemed confusing but it’s really just repetition. Create another playlist, this should add a .02 to all the tracks. The next part is a little monotonous but the benefit is far worth it. All the tracks, now with their .02 suffix, need to be renamed to “Scene 2” from Scene 1.02. For example Jesus Scene 1.02 needs to be changed to Jesus Scene 2 and so on….

So now you have a playlist something like this for each track;

Character Name Scene 1
Character Name Scene 1.01
Character Name Scene 2

Once again create a new playlist for which will suffix a .01 to Character Name Scene 2. Again create one more playlist (remembering to have the group active so it effects all tracks together) This playlist will be Character Name Scene 2.02, This is the playlist that you will rename again on each track to Character Name Scene 3.

By the end of the process you end with something like this.

Character Name Scene 1
Character Name Scene 1.01
Character Name Scene 2
Character Name Scene 2.01
Character Name Scene 3
Character Name Scene 3.01 etc…

Note that you can create addition playlists (takes) by selecting the scene you want with the highest suffix then creating a playlist.
Which will give you something like this;

Character Name Scene 3
Character Name Scene 3.01
Character Name Scene 3.02
Character Name Scene 3.03
Character Name Scene 3.04 etc…

When you come to record a specific scene select the scene with the .01 suffix (make sure the group is active) record your take then if you want to record another take just create a new playlist. All tracks will suffix a .02. Continue recording like this till you have the take you need.

Be sure to make a note with a pen and paper of which lines and takes were best. You may want to compile (comp) different takes together later to create one good take.

Comping

After completing a recording session, the takes need to be comped into final takes. There are a couple of ways you can do this. Some people create new playlists for comping. I duplicate all my tracks excluding all the playlists. So basically I have blank tracks that match my takes tracks.

Below are my two sets of tracks the highlighted and soloed tracks are the new Comp tracks. These are where my final edits will end up. Below these are the original takes tracks which contain all the playlists that have been created during recording.

You may notice that the comps tracks have their own group. This is for quickly soloing the comps so that any other takes can’t be heard.

The only problem with all these tracks is that it takes up a lot of screen real estate. The solution is in Memory Locations.

Memory locations are often used for setting points in a time line, kind of like bookmarks, that you can easily jump to. I use them for jumping to the start of different scenes once all the scenes are in place.

However there is far more you can do with memory locations.

Below you can see a screenshot of my memory locations we are just going to look at number 1 “Takes” and number 2 “Comp”.

These memory locations make switching between the takes tracks and comp tracks as easy as a click.

Firstly I made sure that all tracks other than my takes tracks where hidden. I adjusted their height to fill the screen and adjusted the session zoom settings. This is the amount of your session you can see in the edit window.

Within the Edit Memory Location window you can see that I have set the Time Properties to None. This means the created memory location will not show in the timeline, only in the Memory Locations window.

General Properties allow you to set what aspects of the current tracks are saved and recalled when you click the memory location.

I have saved;

• Zoom Settings
• Track Show/Hide (This is very important, it makes sure the takes tracks are shown and the comp tracks are hidden)
• Track Heights (Saves the height of all the tracks. These currently maximising the screen real estate)
• Group Enables (This recalls any groups that are active when the memory location is created. Make sure that only the group for the Takes tracks is active.)
• Window Configuration allows you to choose custom layouts that get recalled with the memory location. I will discuss this shortly.)

Just for comparison you can see below the Comps Memory Location active. The takes tracks are all hidden. This does not mean they are inactive or muted you need to make sure you mute the other group of tracks before jumping to and from one another. You can also see from the below screenshot that for the Comp memory location the Comp group is active.

You may have noticed that the Memory location screenshot has one more location called Recording. This Memory Location recalls the Takes tracks just like the Takes Memory Location however it makes use of a custom Window Configuration which is set up for recording. Below is a screenshot of this set up.

You can see I have simply narrowed the edit window and fitted in the mix window to the left of it. This handy for monitoring input levels whilst recording. When recording a specific scene I often hide all tracks that are not record armed during that scene. It gives me more detail of the tracks being used. Once the scene is recorded though I simply click the Recording Memory Location and I’m back to seeing all my tracks. I have also added a big time counter for keeping an eye on how long takes are.

I hope this insight into my production process has been interesting and possibly helped you. There are many ways to use Pro Tools and I am always finding new ones by just experimenting… try it, you never know what tricks you may come up with.

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