Production

Creating the radio jingles and idents

First of all before creating my radio jingles and idents I asked my tutor (Tony Parr) to go through how Logic Pro X works and how to use it to create the jingles and idents I need for my radio show podcast.

He explained that there was 4 main stages to using Logic Pro X - Sound Resources, Sound development, post-production and output mix.

Here are some screenshots that I took when Tony Parr was explaining to me on how to use Logic Pro X.





First of all he explained to me that if I wanted to create my own sounds using the instruments in the software for my radio jingle and idents, that I need to select the software instrument option. I then need to select and instrument - here I selected Reaktor 6 and also ensure that my output is selected to '1+2'.

Here is an individual track that I created.

If you want to import your own audio that you have recorded such as a voice over then you can select the audio option and create an audio track. I am going to need to create an audio track for my production as I am going to record a voice over in audacity and then import it into Logic Pro X.

As you can see here, there is a keyboard - you access this by clicking window and then show typing. You can then play the different software instruments and synthesises to create your desired sound.

Here is a synthesiser - here you can adjust many different aspects of the sound, such as filters like they key and also the Body EQ.

Here you can see the different tracks that I've created and also I've highlighted an area of the timeline, which means that when you record yourself playing a software instrument for example, it will only record in the highlighted region. Also when you playback your sounds it will loop the playback of sounds in the selected region.

My plan is to record my radio jingle and ident using my Blue-Yeti USB microphone at home, and then import this audio file into audacity so I can edit there as I'm very confident using this programme. In fact from research I found a video (Russel, 2016) explaining how to create a radio voice effect for radio jingles and idents on YouTube so I am going to use this information to help create mine. When editing audio for personal projects I frequently use Mike Russel's videos as he works for a company called Music Radio Creative that are very well known and trusted in the audio editing community.

Below is a video of my microphone set-up that I used to record my radio jingle and dents and also the interview that I did with my father on "Is TV Dead?".

Here using the information from the video such as adjusting the equalisation and using the compresor tool I edited my piece of audio (my radio jingle):


Here I am adjusting the equalisation, I am knocking of the bass of the audio track to give it the radio voice effect I want for my radio jingle as described in the video.

Here I am adjusting the audio using the compressor tool. My aim is to make the audio sound more dramatic and aggressive to make the radio jingle stand out. I am reducing elements such as the threshold and noise floor to achieve this.

Here I have added an echo effect to the end of the jingle to make the "Station X" part stand out, as its important as I found out from research that podcasts or radio shows have a strong identity.

Finally I have added a phaser effect to the audio - although this wasn't mentioned on the video, I really liked the effect it had on the audio.

Now that I had the voiceover edited I now needed to use Logic Pro X to finish of making my radio jingle.


First of all I created an audio track so that I could then import the edited voiceover that I made in audacity (.wav file)

Here is the audio that has been imported in the Audio 1 track.

Now I wanted to make the radio jingle upbeat and catchy - this was something that I discovered from my research that radio stations like Capital Fm (who have a very similar target audience) are upbeat and have quite a fast pace to them. I achieved this by creating a drum track.

To create the drum beat I used the Drummer tool in Logic Pro X - this one of the main reasons why I used this piece of software to make my jingle, its a fantastic tool. Here you can select different Drummers to get a drum beat that you like. As I wanted something upbeat and that stood out I went for a electronic drummer called Magnus - Big Room. It took me quite a while to get exactly the drum beat that I wanted. In fact I used the XY pad to adjust the drum beat - at first I played around with the drum beat making it more of a simple beat. But I then made the drum beat more loud and complex, and was really happy with it - it was exactly what I wanted, energetic and upbeat.

I now wanted to make the middle of the jingle sound different to the rest of the jingle, so the jingle didn't get boring - as from my research I knew the importance of podcasts and radio stations having a strong identity. As I only wanted to apply a filter and make one part of the jingle sound different I first of all split the middle of the audio track into one segment and moved it to a new track.

I used command T to split the  beginning of the middle part of the audio track at the playhead and also split the end of the middle part of the audio track.

As you can see here I moved the middle part of the audio to a new track called audio 2.

Now I wanted to make sound in the middle part of the track sound quite thin and tinny almost like it sounds like telephone audio. When I was researching jingles, I noticed Capital FM had a similar effect to this as you might be able to hear in the video on my research page. To achieve this I knew that this would would require me to play around with the EQ and apply a filter.

I spent a while looking around the software trying to find a filter that would achieve my required sound and I came across a filter called: "Phone filter notch".

As you can see here I adjusted different elements of the channel EQ until I got the sound that I was happy with.

Finally to make the "Station X" part of the jingle stand out, I turned up the volume of the end part of the track. To do this first of all I clicked the show automation button and then adjusted the volume at the end by adding 2 key frames at the 'Station X' part and adjusting the volume using the horizontal line.

I then exported it using the bounce feature  and now I have made my radio jingle! Originally I clicked export and then selection as audio file however I found out that after exporting it, all of my different audio levels of the different tracks were not as I mixed them. So I discussed this with my lecturer Tony, and he told me to use the bounce feature and click 'Project or Section...' as this would export my audio with the correct audio levels.

I then chose my audio file to be in a wave format as Tony explained to me that this format is recognised by many different pieces of software such as Adobe Audition. I then clicked the "OK" button and the audio had successfully been exported from the programme. One of the main benefits of bouncing the audio is that it saves in the programme and can easily be re-edited and used in other Logic Pro X projects (it improves your workflow) and also other apple software such as Final Cut Pro (video editing software).

The next piece of audio I needed to create was a radio ident. The radio ident is shorter than the main radio jingle- the ident is a short clip of music, sound effects and vocals to tell you the radio stations name and gives the radio station an identity.

To do create this I copied the "Station X" part of the audio from my main radio jingle and pasted it into a new Logic Pro X project.

I then copied the 'Station X' audio onto another track and slightly offset it to create an echo effect.

And just like the previous radio jingle I created a drum beat using the drummer tool on Logic Pro X.

One of the major differences between creating this ident and creating the jingle was that when creating this ident I used the software instrument option. 

I then used a synthesiser from the software to create the background sound you can hear on my ident. I did this using the keyboard on my laptop.


I applied the Trailer FX 3 effect to the synthesiser to create a dramatic background sound and then used the keyboard to create the sound. Although this background sound is quiet in the background it definitely makes the ident more dramatic and gives it more impact.

Here is me using the keyboard to control the synthesiser:

I decided to make one more radio ident.


All I did to create this was I used the previous ident I made, and copied this into a new Logic Pro X project. Then I removed the synthesiser part and also the drum part, so it was just the voiceover part.

To improve this further I added a Bass Improve EQ preset to make the voice more impactful and to make it stand out.

I had now created one radio jingle and two idents that I was really happy with.

One of the other things that I needed to do was create a music bed, as I identified this was a common theme with radio stations like Capital FM, and also fond out earlier on in my research that this was popular with my target audience.

As I had experience using the Drummer tool creating the radio jingle and idents, I decided to also use this drummer tool to create an upbeat drum backing track for my radio show podcast. Just like I explained earlier you can choose the drummer you want, and adjust the beat by using the XY Pad. Here you can see me using it below:

I also censored this song as I want it to be able to be listened by everybody in my target audience (15 to 29) - and as some of my target audience are under the age of 18 I don't want to expose them to explicit words.

I recorded the rest of the radio show podcast using the Rode NT1-A condensor microphone, which I plugged into the Zoom H4n recorder via an XLR cable. I knew exactly how to use the Zoom H4n recorder because I had previously used it along with the Rode condensor microphone in the Radio Drama project that we did. I also used a sound isolation shield when using the Rode condensor microphone. My lecturer Tony explained to me that the sound isolation shield is placed directly behind the condensor microphone, and blocks out any extra sound to help produce sharper vocals. I also learnt that the foam in the sound isolation shield works to absorb ambient noise before it reaches the condensor microphone which is very sensitive.

I am really happy with how this has gone. I have managed to record the rest of the radio show podcast. At times it was frustrating as I had to record certain parts of the show many times before I was happy with how it sounded and also the length of the different segments however I am now happy with what I have recorded. I feel like I was passionate but not to 'in your face' (from my research I found out that people didn't like this)in terms of my personality on the show.

Now I needed to start editing all of the audio that I had recorded and created to make my radio show podcast:

I also decided to create a SoundCloud account to publish my radio podcast show on as after all podcasts are listened to and downloaded on the internet. The reason why I chose to publish it on Souncloud is that it gives you the option to download content, so people can listen to my podcast on the go on their phones. In fact I asked Also there is a SoundCloud app available on Apple App Store and the android store so you can listen to my podcast on the app - as my target age group is 15 to 29 this should be very popular with them.  Here is my SoundCloud page.



Here is my final radio show podcast:

Ensuring that my listeners can listen to the radio show podcast on their phones and download it, is really important to me as smartphones are driving podcast usage. As you can see from the graph below their has been a 157% increase since 2014 in users listening or downloading a podcast on their smartphones (Winn, 2019).