This afternoon's interview program is ready to go. I hope the interview sounds good. I put a lot of time into it -- it ended up taking about 20 minutes for each minute of final audio. I have no idea how that compares to a pro. Probably a pro is much faster since I don't know what I'm doing. For instance yesterday morning I had the brilliant idea to google "audacity keyboard shortcuts," and suddenly everything became ten times easier.
The only thing I never figured out how to do was to fade in or out from one level to another -- in other words if you have part of the track that's quiet, and then it jumps to being loud, how to fade smoothly from the quiet level to the loud level. The "Fade In/Fade Out" commands fade from/to silence. I could have really used that because the volume of the original Italian dialogue goes up and down constantly -- at the beginning of each question you can hear a few seconds of it at full volume, then it drops out when the English voiceover begins. Since I couldn't fade smoothly between the two levels, I tried to adjust the volume at a point where it wouldn't be too jarring, between words or between syllables if that wasn't possible. There were a few places where it sounds bad but I hope no one will notice. Georg tells me I am obsessing way too much about these details because I've spent so much time listening to it so closely. As he correctly reminded me, most people listen to the radio in their cars.
I had originally intended to play wartime music, like I did with my dad's show last week. But as soon as I read the transcription I knew that wasn't going to work for this show. Signor Bucca's story is much more serious and that swingy big band music would sound totally inappropriate. So I decided to go for tone, and also focus on Italian & European music as much as possible: I found some traditional Sicilian songs that work (one recorded in 1927 that is amazing!), a slow piece from the soundtrack to La Dolce Vita, a song by Piaf, etc. And a few American songs as well that had the right tone. For instance a Mildred Bailey song called "When That Man is Dead and Gone" to play after he talks about meeting Mussolini. The song is actually about Hitler, but that's only specified once, and obliquely ("Satan with a small moustache") so I think it works.
Now the only thing left to worry about is the weather. There's a major thunderstorm system headed for us, predicted to be here right in the middle of my show. And that means EAS alerts. Lots and lots of EAS alerts. Every time a fast-moving storm reaches another town the EAS sends another alert, even if it's a hundred miles away and the people in that town couldn't possibly hear WXDU. The alerts are so disruptive: "BEEP BEEP BEEP! The national weather service reports that there is a thunderstorm warning in Iredell County! BEEP BEEP BEEP!" they interrupt the program without warning, and they last for thirty seconds or longer. About six weeks ago I did a show in which the EAS went off five times in two hours.
After spending months planning this show, I will be crushed if that happens today. I've decided that if the EAS is already going haywire by 2, I'm going to postpone Signor Bucca's show. I'll just do a regular show and hold the interview until next week. I'm taking all my CDs just in case.
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