It’s awards-submission time again. And as happy as I am when my newsroom wins an award (especially if it’s a Murrow from RTNDA), it still takes a lot of time to review the material from the previous year and decide what to enter.

But I always enjoy re-listening to the stories I’ve marked as potential entries in the “Best Use of Sound” category. In radio stories or podcasts, sound is what makes your story different from having someone read the newspaper to you out loud.

I’m not talking about the sound bite that serves as “the quote” in your story, but rather the ambient sound that places a listener in the scene and the distinctive sounds that move a story forward.

Whether you’re producing a long-form feature for NPR or a quick spot for a commercial newscast, good sound makes great radio. But before you can use that sound in your story, first you have to capture it.

There are all sorts of recording tricks and production techniques I can talk about in future blogs, but the first and most basic rule of getting good sound for your story is this: Turn your recorder on, and don’t turn it off.

In the old days (yes, I’m old enough to remember them) we used to record sound in the field on cassette machines. I was always turning my machine off because I didn’t want to run out of tape, and (honestly) I never wanted to log all that tape in real time.

But the flash recorders carried by most audio producers today solve both of those problems. The sound card in my machine lets me record more than six hours of audio, and I can dump all the sound onto my computer in a matter of minutes.

But still, I see reporters in the field dutifully turning their recorders off after an interview, walking around a bit, and then turning their recorders back on for another interview.

Stop that.

When you get to an event or interview, turn your recorder on before you get out of the car, and leave it on until you get back in the car. Sure, you’ll need to pay attention to your levels during interviews and location changes, but the only way you’ll get that dog barking in the distance, or the train that comes through town while you’re leaving, or (heaven forbid) the gunshots, is if you’re recording the whole time.

I used to tell my reporters: “Tape is cheap, use all of it.”

But bytes are even cheaper.

When you produce your story, you’ll rarely say, “I wish I didn’t have so much sound.” If you don’t need it, ignore it or delete it, but if you caught something good, you’re on your way to that award-winning piece.

Vincent Duffy keeps his record button on in Ann Arbor/Detroit where he is the News Director for Michigan Radio; WUOM Ann Arbor/Detroit, WFUM Flint and WVGR Grand Rapids. He can be reached at vduffy@umich.edu.

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