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A Favorite Episode of Nick’s: Aftermath

From the company headquarters of Aftermath, Inc., amidst a strip of bland office buildings in Chicagoland, Tim Reifsteck makes his living cleaning up after the darkest side of human society. I chose this episode because it definitely illustrates a lot of my favorite editing tricks. Produced with Laura Kwerel.

About Love & Radio

A large part of Love & Radio’s style has been inspired by watching too much television and too many movies. In those visual mediums, the editor acts as a kind of character–every editing choice is right there on the screen. But in radio, we’re both blessed and cursed with an ability to hide the entire editing process: whole phrases are moved around, breaths are added and taken away, and the whole time our listeners are kept in the dark.

These days, I’ve been primarily focused on figuring out how to translate some of those visual editing ideas into a non-visual medium. To that end, I try to make my edits obvious and sometimes rough and intrusive. I’ll intentionally cut out room tone, or add coughs, lip smacks, and other audible detritus to indicate when an edit has taken place. Another trick is to end a region by “fading up” instead of fading out–depending on your ambience, it creates a neat sort of reverse-cymbal crash sound and gives a nice subtle pop. It’s a lot like turning the seams inside out on a piece of apparel.

Phil Dmochowski, who helped produce several episodes last year, once said public radio needed to take more cues from glitch hop. That statement has always stuck in my brain. I’m not where I’d like to be in that respect, but I always try to keep in mind what a radio interview would sound like if it were edited by Prefuse 73.

Tech Info for Love & Radio

I use an HHB Flashmic, but more recently have been using a Zoom H4. The Flashmic is undoubtedly better, but I love working in stereo. Most phone interviews are done with a Broadcast Host. Voicemails are recorded using simplevoicebox.com.

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Love & Radio