Crossfade - Why you've not seen the Babble-Blog for six months
DadAndLoriTransitions are as much a part of our everyday lives as they are an important asset in the art of creative expression. They remind us to be aware, to be present, to pay attention and understand that change is afoot.

In theater, the curtain descends.

With film, a scene dissolves.

When dining, a table is elegantly and efficiently reset.

And in the domain of audio, we use the crossfade.

The crossfade, in particular, is unusual amongst all of those devices because it involves no visual cue. One idea begins to yield to another and, albeit for a fragment of time when the two meld and mutually coexist, the first is softly left behind to become nothing more than a memory.

Unlike the other transitions, you might miss it if you're not living in the moment.

We've been dealing with some crossfades of a different nature here at Babble-On over the past six months. Those of you who know us well know of the transitions that have befallen Carol's father and younger sister over the course of this Summer and early Fall. For those of you who don't know us as well, but who have always been curious observers of this space on the web, our absence has been due to the sad and tragic passings of Leonard Knutson in May, and Lori Ann Knutson Stewart in late September.

The time that we took to spend with them over the past few months before they moved on was a very powerful and meaningful experience for both Carol and me. That time was our crossfade; a chance to coexist, to blend, to meld, to be in the moment with them before letting them go to become the memories that they now must be. The new scene that currently plays on is void of two very essential characters that, to date, were critical to the plot lines of our lives.

In some ways, although you've never had the opportunity to meet these fine people, you know them well through the hard work, dedication, open-mindedness and willingness to serve that they exemplified, and that we've aimed to emulate with our approach here at Babble-On Recording. And, with respect to what they've meant to us and the lessons that they hoped to share, please know that we are even more fervently committed to those ideals now that we are back here on an everyday basis.

A word of thanks must be addressed to those of you who supported us, encouraged us, and stayed with us through this long, painful and awkward time. In particular, Babble-On Recording would not have remained viable without the hard work, dedication and truly loving devotion displayed by Greg, Amelia and John. Not unlike the B-17's that flew critical missions over Europe and the Pacific during WWII, they endured more than their fair share yet still managed to fly, maintain, deliver, and hold together as a unit. Nothing can be said or done to accurately repay that sacrifice.

Witnessing death is a peculiar thing - it teaches you a thing or two about how to live. If all one does is cling to the wants, needs and demands of modern life, one is stuck doing nothing more than an endless series of emotional chin-ups - feeding the notion that all this is somehow making you stronger when, in point of fact, it's wholly fatiguing and simply screws with your sense of balance. Learning to let go, live in the moment, embrace your ideals, your friends and the world of possibilities is the power that death can breathe into life. It's the "kick in the pants" that tells us to explore our creativity, to tear down the walls of convention, and to be patient with that process and each other.

We're glad to be back. We're excited about ideas. We're very grateful for everything.

Update - 11/09/06 - As we get back up to speed here you'll see more stuff pertaining to sessions, radio spots, Minneapolis voice-over talent and more. We recently worked on some very interesting radio ads for The Pistons which you'll find down below. Thanks for stopping by....

Update - 11/10/06 - Check out our Babblings for what's been going on with our good friend, Kevin Freidberg.

Update - 11/15/06 - another update to the Babblings section - Chris Preston schools the Babble-Onians

Update - 11/18/06 - We used a novel approach to sound design for some Belay Health spots. See below.

Update - 11/22/06 - More and more Babblings. Some nice Award Winning Radio Ads from The Show to share. See below.
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Cliff Hanger - Creating Sound Design for Belay Health
Bulletin: Coffee is bad for you. Wait, no, Coffee is quite good for you.

Surprise! - Chocolate is
good for you. No, wait, Chocolate is actually bad for you.

Healthcare advice has become a toxic brew of contradictions lapping over the edge of a 50 gallon conundrum. No sooner does a wave of "expert advice" hit the web, then you're slammed with e-mail after e-mail of Ph*rmXy Wund#r Cyurz. Delete. Delete. Delete. A week later,
60 Minutes debunks the whole thing. It's enough to make you want to pour a "healthy" glass of red wine just to endure it all (...until research proves otherwise.)

Further complicating the health care issue for many is the high cost of access to personal health insurance. Ever suffered a
COBRA bite? (a perfect acronym), you know what I'm talking about.

Good news is, at least when it comes to costs,
UnitedHealthcare is making a serious effort to change it with an innovative health insurance program called, Belay.

Parachute Design, a Minneapolis design firm that works with UnitedHealthcare, enlisted local writer Brad Gilmore and his team to help create the buzz for this radical concept. Part of the hype included the creation of a few radio spots for which we here at Babble-On Recording did the sound design, while independent producer/writer/voice-talent/ferociously funny ad-libber Lynda Crotty managed the duties of producer.
Meld-1a
(L to R) Writer Brad Gilmore "Chillaxes". Brad and Lynda review the script. Lynda getting the final edits done.

In Brad's words... "This was a from-scratch project. UnitedHealthcare gave us the magic words every team loves to hear: “Show us what you got. It’d better be good. And by the way, we’re launching in two months... We came up with a word used by rock climbers: Belay...(T)o back it up we spent a week blowing out the creative to demonstrate how the name would evolve into a concept our audience would respond to... Before we could even present our work we were issued three definitive words: “No. No. No.” Nonetheless we (boldly) proceeded to present... Fifteen minutes later, we were issued three new definitive words: “Yes. Yes. Yes.” Fifteen minutes after that, our media budget had been increased... IT WAS MAGIC."

The radio spots revolve around the idea of two rock climbers, one a novice, facing a fairly intimidating climb. The trick to getting the sound-design right was finding a way to create the illusion of space between the climbers; one near, the other far - not a huge gap, but roughly 15 feet. Well, put two guys in a typical sound booth bellowing at each other and you realize...it ain't gonna happen easily - the room size becomes apparent. So, we tricked out a couple of larger rooms we have here and placed Minneapolis voice-over talent Dan Armstrong in one of them and Patrick Coyle in the other with a couple of Sennheiser 416 shotgun mics. We adjusted their distance accordingly and hit record...TalentBlend3
Minneapolis voice-over talents Dan Armstrong and Pat Coyle scaled the heights of our fictional Canyon Suite.

The amount of "air" this produced was dramatic - all that was needed to fill out the scene was a touch of reverb, some subtle foley work and an underlying canyon wind. Lynda, who's "an admitted perfectionist" offered... "It was one of those rare occasions when the planets aligned and everything came together seamlessly. First of all, Brad Gilmore, a consummate pro, truly wanted the spots to be the best they could be and was excited by any and all input. Refreshing. ...I usually prefer the script to the finished spot. For some reason, whatever shape the words take when committed to tape usually leaves me feeling a little underwhelmed. Not true in the case of (these) spots.

Here are the spots, "On Belay" and "Belay On".

Dan Armstrong and Pat Coyle, our Minneapolis voice-over talent for these radio spots, can both be booked through The Wehmann Agency. Our announcer, the honey-toned Tracey Maloney is also represented by The Wehmann Agency.
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Nailing The Call - Cool Mnemonic Fuels Pistons Radio
John-Mason-StuffHere's a voice-over recording session that you don't see everyday, (if ever):

Voice-over talent call sheet:
1 opera singer
1 human beatbox
1 yodeler
1 monk-ish chant singer

Greg saw the above line-up for a recent radio session with Minneapolis advertising agency, OLSON , and, as the saying goes, he was "hooked at hello”. This was either the makings of an old Monty Python sketch or a bad punch line from Studio 60.
John Mason - P.A. man extraordinaire for the NBA's Detroit Pistons

Thankfully, it was neither of them. Here's the deal.....

Scott Dahl, Associate Creative Director, showed up to pilot the conceptual ship that he and Creative Director Tom Fugleberg had concocted for their client, the NBA's
Detroit Pistons. The common thread running through these unique radio spots is Pistons P.A. man John Mason’s signature call of “DEEE-TROIT BASKETBALL.” According to Craig Turnbull, VP of brand management for Palace Sports & Entertainment, who was here at Babble-On Recording for the session, “If you’ve been to a Pistons game, watched one on TV, or even heard one on the radio, you’ve heard our P.A. guy, John Mason, start the sing-song, interactive cheer when an opponent turns the ball over. It used to be that he (Mason) had to say the entire cheer. But now all he has to say is, ‘DEEE’ and the fans finish it.”

Says Dahl,
“It's not often you're handed such a wonderful mnemonic to work with. So we (OLSON) decided it would make great radio and TV to highlight many different interpretations of a call that's gone mainstream in Michigan.”

PistonsBlend1
Clearly, making great radio is as grueling n' bloody as making sausage - (we had Scott fill all the casings)

So, once voice-over announcer
Larry Homuth had finished up his copy via a ISDN Digital Patch patch from his secret lair in Fargo, we set to work recording our Minneapolis voice-over talent -

Dennis Curley, Monk (
Talent Poole), Christina Baldwin, Opera Singer (Talent Poole), Gerry Mischke, Emergency Announcer (Talent Poole), Ronald Affolter, Yodeler and TruthMaze was our Beatboxer

It’s a great concept that applies itself well to lots of scenarios (including the Pistons TV spots that are also part of the campaign), and Scott Dahl, at least, looks forward to the snowballing that he feels will likely occur as fans in Detroit get in on it.
“Once in a while, you're blessed with a concept that truly connects with the audience. This is one of those concepts. So my hope is that the campaign lives on and on. When you think about it, there are endless interpretations of the call. And I'm sure it's only a matter of time before fans take it upon themselves to share their own particular version of it. Initially, we presented a fully integrated campaign that included a feature online that allowed fans to customize and submit their own rendition of the call. Although that hasn't been fully realized yet, I think this year's direction has the potential to go viral. In fact, I bet my coveted Swingline stapler that we'll see a fan's version of the call on YouTube soon.”

Of working on radio commercials in general, Dahl says
“I love waking up on radio day. It means a good lunch, great company and best of all, instant gratification. With radio, you can hear your idea come to life in just a few short hours. TV, print, web, etc.—it often takes weeks to feel that rush. As for the success of the spots,... the campaign just launched, so we'll just have to wait and see what the fans think. But what we've heard so far, at least anecdotally, is fantastic."

Here are the radio spots "Call", "Test", "Opera", "Beatbox", "Yodeler" and "Monk".
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Babblings - November '06
Babblings 250 wideFreidom is so sweet - We're happy to wish fair winds and safe passage to Kevin Freidberg, an exceedingly gifted writer and beloved fellow eccentric with whom we worked on so many great radio spots over the past few years.

Kev, most recently of Minneapolis advertising agency
BBDO, has decided to embark on a career as a published essayist with a minor in stand-up comedy. And, since "essaying" doesn't quite seem to make it into the Minnesota Hot 100 jobs, Kev has moved his laptop and fine assortment of Cross pens to New York ("Brooklyn", he would no doubt clarify for me) to pursue is dream.

Kev got the insatiable itch to head east after having been published in the New York Times Sunday Magazine on April 9th, 2006 with a humorous and insightful essay on meditation called The Very Quiet American. We liked the piece so much, we offered him some time in the booth to record it for posterity. Give it a click, listen and laugh.
Kev-Montage-4
Kevin got in the booth and sidled up to our beloved M149 to record his essay, The Very Quiet American

Kev's just inked another wry work called, "Please Buy This Chicken", that recounts how he lost his job after an ill-fated attempt to write, in his words, "even one acceptable headline for pre-cooked, un-refrigerated chicken". We recently recorded Kevin reading that piece here at Babble-On for submission to Ira Glass' program "This American Life" - we're just waiting on the phone call. Good luck, Kev.

Chris-PrestonBetter Direction 101- If you've ever tried to direct voice-over talent, you know that there can be those difficult moments when you just can't seem to effectively communicate what you want...

You ask for..."More energy", "Less energy", "Frame this", "De-emphasize that","Go quicker but, y'know, keep it sounding
natural", "Let's try making it sound like a Soccer Mom in fishnets", "Stay tough, cool and aloof yet really sensitive about the added value of this free checking account for Seniors", "Can you highlight the word 'is' in your script? - the client really wants that punched up."

And, yet, the performance, um...
sucks.

Chris Preston (pictured above), of Minneapolis advertising agency
Kerker, has been toying with a new approach; Instead of politely asking a voice-over talent to consider his direction, he just berates them with an incoherent tirade. Chris says that, from his experience, this unique approach works only when the actor is holed up in some glitzy studio on a coast far, far away - and, he advises, you gotta wait 'til at least take 15 - otherwise, the line mysteriously goes dead. He's yet to try this on any Minneapolis voice-over talent, but he's stoked by the prospect.

Zing! - Yet another tip from the pros!

Yeah, we're just full o' crap. - Chris, was in with
Greg and aped for the camera while working on some new ads for Johnsonville with Jim Belushi this week. Hope to have more on that later.

Show_pushpinWhat have you got to show for it? - Babble-on was lucky enough to have worked on a few radio spots that ended up doing well in The Show (the annual Minneapolis Advertising Awards soirée). The big event was on November 10th at The Depot in downtown Minneapolis so... we're a little behind on the Thank You cards.

First off, a tip of the hat to Eugene Fuller for his A.G. Edwards spot called "Tortoise" which was a Radio Single finalist (gotta Babble-Blog story on that
here). Eug was at Carmichael Lynch at the time, but just recently landed a gig at Publicis in NYC. Yes, our MinneApple is tasty, but the Big Apple had the sweeter bite.

Kudos too to Michael Atkinson of
Clarity Coverdale Fury for his Radio Single finalist,"Legal Speak", a Dairy Queen ad.

And, our friends at
Olson were the sole finalists in the Radio Campaign category with some quirky ads for the Ely Minnesota Chamber Of Commerce. The radio spots, "Glitter Glue", "Kiss" and "Sushi" were an experience to record and produce - as this photo proves so well. We're hoping to have some more info on these spots in a future babble-blog entry.
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