Dad's Last Tape

Following on from The House That Fall Into The Sea, I worked with Clare Jenkins from Pennine Productions again, this time on a BBC Radio 4 documentary entitled Dad's Last Tape.

Clare Jenkins explores why people record their life stories and what impact those stories have on other people when the interviewee is no longer themselves, or no longer alive. Twenty-five years ago, Clare recorded her father talking about his life: growing up in a Scottish tenement, being 'sold' as a farmer's boy at a hiring fair, a wartime stint in the RAF, working as a gardener to the wealthy, amateur poet. Jack Jenkins died 18 years ago, and Clare never listened back to the tapes - until making this programme. Broadcaster Rony Robinson never listened back to recordings he had done with his mother until Clare asked him to. Nor had singer-songwriter Sally Goldsmith listened to her mother, who died two years ago, singing May Day songs recalled from childhood. This programme explores the different circumstances in which people's life stories are recorded, and the memories and emotions that come flooding back when the tapes are eventually heard. We hear from the wife of a man suffering from dementia about her bitter-sweet feelings when listening to tapes of his voice. "They really calmed him and made him smile. And it was amazing for me, because I'd forgotten how funny he was." Another woman, terminally ill with cancer, has made a series of recordings for her newborn granddaughter as part of a hospice project in Sheffield. "I want her to hear about my life - and to know that I don't have a Yorkshire accent!" she says. We also hear from Mary Stewart of the British Library, who has been studying the way recorded interviews are used by and for those most intimately involved. Along the way, we discover the power of the beloved voice.

I needed to restore some of the recording but by and large they well remarkably good. Radio Times have chosen Dad's Last Tape as one of their recommendations for the week. This is what their reviewer Jane Anderson had to say...

There is nothing so effective in recalling the very essence of a dead loved one than hearing a recording of their voice. This gently edited programme mixes old recordings of elderly mothers and fathers with deeply moving stories of people facing death in the near future and their reasons for wanting to leave part of themselves behind for their families. Hankies at the ready.

"Gently edited", I'll settle for that. Once again it was a pleasure to work with Clare on what was for her a very personal programme. So if you can get to a radio at Monday 2d July you can enjoy it then otherwise take advantage of the BBC iPlayer for 7 days after that.

The Houses That Fall Into The Sea

One of the core parts of my work is helping radio producers make and realise their radio programmes. A recent example of this was for a programme called The Houses That Fall Into The Sea for BBC Radio 3. This is in the Between The Ears strand and is a documentary series, but as the strand name suggests requires a significant amount of sound design in the development and completion of the programme.

Here is some background information on the programme…

Lyz Turner’s house, in the East Yorkshire town of Withernsea, is falling into the sea. “My house has started talking to me,” she says. “It produces haunting sounds like far-off women wailing.” This programme, combining interviews with music and the sounds of the sea, the wind, the land, the dying houses, explores how people cope with natural calamity: with anger, stoicism, distress, and art. One winter, Ron and Judith Backhouse watched as first their fence, then their shed, and finally three trees slipped over the cliff at the bottom of their garden on a private estate above Scarborough. “The crack is running up towards our next door neighbour’s house,” says Ron. “It’s maybe five or ten metres away from his bungalow now and we’re connected to him. So if he goes, we go, too.”? Artist Kane Cunningham bought a condemned bungalow on the same estate so that he could live in it, use it as an artistic installation and document its demise. Since he moved in, the neighbouring three houses have been demolished for safety reasons, and he reckons his is next. “You can’t fight Nature,” he says, “so you may as well celebrate its destructive force. Houses aren’t immortal, and neither are we, despite what we may want to believe.” “As I listen to the soft wailing through the wall,” says Lyz Turner, whose family have lived here for three generations, “I feel the house knows what’s coming. Since Domesday there’s been a dwelling where I live, and it seems all the voices of the past, whoever lived here, all the people from the lost villages under the sea, are crying for us now.”

I had great fun working form my collection of 40,000 plus sound effects weaving sounds of wind and the sea from the appropriate perspectives into the interviews.  For example, when we meet the artist Kane Cunningham who bought the condemned house on his credit card, and uses the house as a studio and as an art installation too. He explains that as part of an art project people can write letters to the house. From those that the writers agreed could be opened we had some children read out quotes from the letters which I matched with Kane’s reading.

At one point we had a reference to a message in the bottle so out came my TL Space convolution reverb and selected a suitable ‘small space’ and put the reader in the bottle. I also had fun creating sounds as the contributors talked about the houses groaning and moving and wind singing and whistling through gaps and cracks.

There were a number of times where I wanted element of the programme not to be in the foreground, especially when we wanted hints of sounds, like the use of an excerpt from My Favourite Things from The Sound of Music. So I created a dedicated track with a suitable reverb effect from Reverb One and then automated both the Wet/Dry and Decay times as well as the volume, all in real time, to blend in the sounds into the soundscape of the programme.

You can listen to the programme very easily via the BBC iPlayer for the next 7 days. 

Action On Hearing Loss - Your Ears Are Your Life - Look After Them

Action On Hearing Loss is the new name fro the RNID (The Royal National Institute for Deaf People). They have an online hearing check which I have just taken, and I am pleased and relieved, to report that all is well.

You can also read about how to look after your hearing, remember our ears are not user replacement devices. We only have 2 ears and once they have been trashed, thats it you have had it and without good hearing we are unemployable in the audio and music business. So take care of your most important assets.

There are also some very interesting pages that relate to our industry including their current Loud Music Campaign.