Episode 2 - Jeff Berlin

ANNC: This, this is The Producers with Ryan Drain, a podcast designed for radio imaging, commercial production, all things audio. Feedback is encouraged at ryanontheradio.com.

RYAN: All right, welcome to episode 2. I know it's, it's been a long run, but, we're keeping plugging away. I want to say a few things. I've got Jeff Berlin as the interview today. Jeff Berlin from KISS 108 Boston fame, but also a pretty big voiceover artist now. In fact, he, basically does that 100%. I think he said he does a tiny itty bit of production these days, more as favors than anything else. We're gonna get it with him here in just a bit. Coming after I do that interview, I've got a couple people to highlight that I'm gonna get on the show coming up soon. So hopefully you listen all the way, and if you're interested in who's coming up, I'll save that till the end. Also wanted to say, if you missed the first episode, please go check it out because Dave Fox was on there. He's a pretty well-known imaging talent in New York City, and And a pretty big voiceover artist as well. And it was pretty informative, I actually thought I did. And I gave myself a B+ for the first episode, so I'm gonna attempt to hit at least a B+ again today. One more thing, if you go to the website, ryanontheradio.com, which the girl told you in there in the beginning, but, I'm gonna get some notes from Jeff. I don't have them posted just yet as I'm posting this podcast because he still has to, you know, send them to me. He's busy and whatnot. But they will be there very, very soon because there's a couple things we're gonna make reference to in the interview that you may want to read up on. And I'll put all that on the website there, ryanontheradio.com. I didn't really say much about myself because this is really more about the people that I talked to, but in case you're curious, I'm the imaging and production director at KSCS in Dallas. We are now called The Big 96.3. We've been revamping the station pretty drastically, actually. Our presentation has changed a lot in the last year. I mean, we're darn near a CHR country station right now, and it's a lot of fun. I mean, we're no CHR station, but it's a big country station, been around 37 years. It's a lot of fun there. I really enjoy it. And that's all I'm gonna tell you about me right now, because I want to get right into it. Jeff Berlin, thanks for being on this little podcast I like to call The Producers, episode 2.

JEFF: An honor and a pleasure.

RYAN: Now, I have some people listening on the Voiceover Universe, so they're gonna know who you are, 'cause you're a member there, but I'm sure you're a member of lots of different things, but you're more of a voiceover guy now, but you started off as a� more of a producer, so gimme some background, give everybody some background on where you've been.

JEFF: Alright, I started as a radio DJ. Although actually, I mean, I kind of was producing when I was a little kid, like 8 years old. I used to like speed up and slow down reel-to-reel tape recorders and play them backwards and stuff. So I think I had it in� I think it was in my blood. I did college radio when I went to college. I did video when I was in high school, actually, which prepped me for the technical shit. Sorry, am I allowed to swear on this?

RYAN: Keep it to a minimum, but I think that everybody will be able to handle that.

JEFF: We'll just bleep that out. So yeah, I did college radio for a year. Everyone like pressured me to make a tape to get on WAAF because a friend of mine worked there and he thought I could be a DJ. And I was like, no, no, no way. So I made a tape, I got the job. John Duncan hired me there in 1978. And I just got him on my Facebook. It was funny, I've been going back with him. So I did WAF on and off for 7 years, worked at WCOZ in Boston, WHCN in Hartford was my first full-time gig. And it got tumultuous. I saw a lot of people come and go at WCOZ when they kind of went� transitioned from a rock station to a hybrid CHR to a full-blown AC playing Julio Iglesias and Barry Manilow.

RYAN: Hmm.

JEFF: And the ratings went from like number 1 to nothing. was listening. And they� you know, I saw program directors in morning shows and afternoon announcers just� the revolving door was spinning at high speed. And that was when I was like, being a DJ is not a very stable career, really. You know, you're�

RYAN: Right.

JEFF: You're at the beck and call of a program director. Like, they can fire you on a whim 'cause your personality just isn't right. And back then, I saw a huge gaping hole in the production end of it. An on-air position at WCOZ would yield about 1,000 tapes. The production position that came open there got about 8 applicants. And I'd always, any station I'd been at, did all their production, did all the promos, voiced the station. It was just a given because I was better at production than any of the other jocks on the staff. So they, you know, I would just, you know, take the mantle and run with it. So that's when I decided to just be full-time production guy, not be a DJ, and I applied at KISS 108 in 1985 and got it, and I worked there for 22 years.

RYAN: Talk about being� Dave actually mentioned the same thing, you know, he was a jock. This is Dave Fox from the first interview, who mentioned you, by the way. We'll get into that in a minute. what was it like to leave the air? Did you care? Were you happy for it? Did you miss it?

JEFF: no, I didn't miss it, 'cause I really, really always loved doing production. I was one of those geeks that would do my air shift for 4 hours, and then would spend, like, 4 more hours in the studio, like, really hammering out spots and promos or whatever. And would sometimes produce a spot several different ways, just to see and compare which one was better, and try different tricks and, you know, different approaches. so no, I was very happy in the studio. And I still do college radio, and I did do an air shift at KISS 108 for a while too. So, I mean, I figure if you ever� if you really want to do it, If you want to be a jock, you can always get a part-time shift somewhere.

RYAN: Yeah, I guess I did that here a little bit. We have a couple stations in-house. But, so you're well known as an imaging producer and now pretty well known as a voiceover artist as well. But talk about the imaging production that you were doing, and I want to hear some stories about, let's say, something you might have had to deal with in 1985 and how life changed all the way until, what was it, '06, when you left there as the imaging?

JEFF: Yeah.

RYAN: You know, I'm sure there were major differences that you've dealt with over time.

JEFF: Well, gosh, I mean, it happens so� it's like watching a kid grow up. You don't really notice unless you look at a snapshot that's 20 years old. Back in 1985 was when MTV was in its vanguard. They were doing brilliant promos that really defined the brand of MTV, and that was like the first thing that I can remember where it was the production that was making the product sell. stand out, whereas previously most radio stations just, you know, had, you know, air personalities and their music, and that was about it.

RYAN: Oh yeah.

JEFF: You know, so that's when I thought in the future, like, stations are gonna become much more reliant on their production to define themselves, and I wanted to be there to capitalize on that. So everything was kind of simple back then, you know, and then as it progressed, we tried to get more theatrical, make things interesting, and I guess I've always been aware that It's a media-saturated environment. People hear more and more and more advertisements every day. Now I think the number's up to 5,000, but back then it wasn't quite so much because we didn't have the internet. And so you had to cut through the clutter. So that never really changed. Trying to get people to pay attention to your message, to retain the information, to act upon the information, I've never considered to be anything less than a minor miracle, even in 1985. And that remains true to this day. I guess the only real radical changes have been the technology.

RYAN: Mm-hmm.

JEFF: Because I think� You know, the technology created a sound in the '90s that, you know, was� people would just leverage it and do, like, really fast-paced production with lots of zings and zaps, probably more than we had in the '80s. But even in the '80s, we had samplers, and so there was a lot of stuttering and a lot of annoying effects that apparently research shows people hate, but�

RYAN: Yeah, I've learned that nowadays.

JEFF: Yeah.

RYAN: Especially women. Women don't like the stutters.

JEFF: Yeah, I guess they don't like the stutters. I wonder about that, but I'm not� you know, I don't have any empirical evidence for or against, so I can't really weigh on the issue.

RYAN: Talk about, what was your first digital editor? When'd you get it?

JEFF: It was a Diaxis.

RYAN: Okay.

JEFF: 1990, I think.

RYAN: Oh, okay.

JEFF: Wow. Yeah, and I was up till 3 in the morning for 2 straight weeks learning that thing. Back then, if you wanted to make an edit, you, you know, you made it and then waited 6 minutes and then moved on. It took a lot longer to get the job done on that than using, you know, reel-to-reel tape.

RYAN: Just� okay, so that's what I was gonna say. So about how long would it take you to make a pretty solid 30-second promo before digital came along? I mean, you might spend an hour or two?

JEFF: Actually, I remember once I did a B-52s concert spot with 12 hooks, and I did it in 20 minutes.

RYAN: Cool. On tape?

JEFF: Yeah, using 2 reel-to-reel MCI tape recorders. This is back when I was at AAF. And the way I used to do it then was I would put the hooks on cart, and, and I'd� like, in other words, I'd play a hook on cart and then play the next record. So there was no splicing. So I'd cue up the intro of a song and the hook of a song and then play it on the cart and then stop it and then do it again and again and again. And then I'd open up the mic and I'd say, coming to the Worcester Civic Center, the B-52s! And I'd hit the cart and then, you know, play the hook. And then I knew that the bed was coming. That's right, the B-52s! Hit the next cart and then the next one and the next one, and then you're done.

RYAN: Yeah, so you're kind of producing it live.

JEFF: Yeah, you do it live and you just line up the hooks beforehand, figure out what, what the sequence is, and then roll with it and you're done. There's no editing involved at all. It was all spliced. It was all It was all done just by manipulating the sound.

RYAN: Yeah, I imagine a lot of people listening, tape might be before their time. Tape's definitely before my time, but like just barely. I had� SAW was my first system, and I got it in college in '98 or '97. Yeah, so I never actually cut a piece of tape in my life, but I used to hear about how, you know, guys producing in your time could just produce amazing promos live.

JEFF: You had to because, I mean, I also, I mean, I was always crippled 'cause at KISS 108, we never had anything more than 4 tracks. I had a 4-track reel-to-reel tape recorder, which I actually have, still have, 'cause they just threw it in the garbage basically. But yeah, you had to be resourceful back then with what you had. And the argument could be made that that made you, you know, more creative and arguably more efficient. I actually spend more time doing a promo now digitally than I think I used to do with reel-to-reel tape simply because you had limitations, so you couldn't spend any more time.

RYAN: Yeah.

JEFF: Whereas now you can microproduce, you can make it, you know, You know, you can make it so it's 99% there and then spend 3 times as much time as you spent getting to that 99% point getting that extra percent.

RYAN: Yeah, that's true. I didn't really think about that, but, you know, 'cause in my mind I would've assumed when you're cutting tape to produce, things are just gonna take much longer. But no, why would they? 'Cause you generally� yeah, you get to that 99%.

JEFF: You couldn't make it any better, so you were done.

RYAN: Yeah.

JEFF: So, you know, and actually I've never thought about that until you just made me think about that just now, but you did what you could with the reel-to-reel tape. The goal with me with reel-to-reel tape was to not splice, was to avoid splicing. At all costs. So I would edit electronically by like synchronizing one element with another and then popping it into the record, just punching in at just the right moment. Was, was much faster than cutting up tape, I thought.

RYAN: Let's get going here. I want to get into some technical stuff now. First of all, Dave Fox brought up strip silence. I think this is gonna be something that is very useful to voiceover artists and producers. And we exchanged a couple emails and you had mentioned, you know, you heard the Fox one and he talked about that, but you wanted to expand on that.

JEFF: yeah, I mean, I cut voice tracks all day now, and I'm like an assembly line. And I also post several different processing settings. So the way to do it quickly is, you know, cut the tracks. You use strip silence so that any dead air is not in there, especially if you� if it's a phone patch, and so they're giving you instructions and the tape's rolling the whole time. Strip silence is a very fast way to get it so, you know, just the audio that is needed is there.

RYAN: Mm-hmm.

JEFF: You want to leave a Dave Fox mentioned 500 milliseconds. That's exactly what I use. So you have like half a second on the front and half a second on the back so that any producer can just get in there and right away see where it begins and where it ends. And then you compact it. You want to compact it with zero settings. You don't� let me� I can't argue� do it now because I'm rolling Pro Tools, but when you compact the file, you can create a buffer. So it takes out any unused audio that's not in the session, but then it can put like a, you know, sort of like strip silence, a buffer on either side. You want it to be zero.

RYAN: Okay.

JEFF: Otherwise, you strip audio out, say you're cutting out breaths and stuff, but if you leave any� gosh, I'm trying to think of the right word, but if there's any space around where the file gets compacted, you might get some glitches in there, some mouth noises, some breaths that you didn't intend to be in the final file that you set out.

RYAN: Mm-hmm.

JEFF: The other thing is when you compact a file, say it's a long session and you use Strip Silence, so now it just takes this one big long file and turns it into 100 files. and then you compact that. The 100 files, the 100 regions in Pro Tools remain in your session. You don't want to, you know, try and, � in other words, if you want to send the file out, you want to send out the whole file. the fastest way to do that is to use iTunes, in my opinion. there's a secret command in iTunes. Let me see if I can find it for you right here.

RYAN: Yeah.

JEFF: that nobody knows about. I think it's the Option key. Yeah, if you� so if you're in iTunes and you want to convert to MP3, you go into your preferences and set it to, you know, convert to MP3, not the Apple format. Sure. no one really uses that.

RYAN: Right.

JEFF: And then if you hold down the Option key on a Mac� I don't know if it'll do this on a PC.

RYAN: It's probably Control.

JEFF: Probably Control. Then hit Advanced. Instead of saying Convert Selection to MP3, it says Convert to MP3. You can then direct it to the folder where your compacted files are and convert them all batch processing style.

RYAN: Hmm, okay, that's really interesting.

JEFF: So in other words, now you've compacted the file, then I open up iTunes and I'm converting an MP3 not in Pro Tools, which is actually very slow, and also iTunes will convert at a higher resolution than Pro Tools will. Pro Tools won't let you go any higher than, I think, 128 kilobytes a second for a mono MP3 file. iTunes will let you go up to 160.

RYAN: Really? Okay, because that's true. I mean, with a stereo file you can go to 320.

JEFF: 320, which is 128� I don't know what the math is.

RYAN: A little better than that, but that's 160. But you're right, with a mono file you can't.

JEFF: iTunes lets you go up to 360. Hmm. No, 380, I'm sorry. 160.

RYAN: You know what, I'm gonna have to coerce you into maybe just writing up something about that, because I I think people are going to want to get this again and maybe, you know, little instructions.

JEFF: It's just a real fast way to get your stuff out because once you compact it, then you're done. Then you can just delete the tracks from your session, move on to your next session. iTunes does the conversion. It's looking at the file separately from Pro Tools. It's not looking at all the regions, it's looking at the whole file.

RYAN: That's going to be really useful. I'm going to expand on the Strip Silence and where to get that and whatnot here in a little bit. So if people are sitting here thinking, wait a minute, this Strip Silence sounds awesome, but what the heck? and I'll get into that in a bit. I want to talk about gating though. I had actually a couple different questions come in from people after the last podcast about gating, and that's a pretty important feature when recording voice, you know, amongst other things. Yeah, but talk about what, what do you use as a gate? How important is it to you, and what are your settings?

JEFF: Expand. Here I am right now. The gating is being done using a plugin called Channel Strip, which is made by Metric Halo, and I'm actually not gating using the plugin. I'm using an I'm sorry about that. I'm� I just fired it up for you so I could like show you what was going on.

RYAN: Oh, and it killed you?

JEFF: Yeah, it killed me for a second because I had to think. I'm using a� it's a box called a ULN-2 with DSP from Metric Halo. it's an audio interface, and what it� what I'm having it do is it's taking the digital input that comes out of my A/D converter, my quote front end of Pro Tools, and then it goes through this box where I can process it and then shoot it into Pro Tools. And so the gating is being done after the analog compression and equalization.

RYAN: And so, but you're literally talking about a piece of hardware, is that true?

JEFF: It's a piece of hardware, but the processing is digital, and it's really no different than if you were just using the plugin inside of Pro Tools. And if I'm on the road, that's exactly what I'll do with an M-Box or something. I'll just do it. I'll record through this plugin. It's a really good gate. I'm sure there's other�

RYAN: Have you used the gate that, excuse me, comes standard with Pro Tools?

JEFF: I've tried to use it, yeah.

RYAN: What do you think of it?

JEFF: I think if I worked with it a long time, I might be able to get it to work, but I had a lot of trouble trying to tame that beast.

RYAN: So folks that are looking for a gate, and if they've just bought the simple Pro Tools setup, especially a lot of VO people will do that so they can have the M-Box on the road like you said. Yeah, and it's a pretty inexpensive way to get yourself set up for travel. Yeah, they probably can use that. They can probably utilize it if they tool around with it for a bit.

JEFF: Yeah, I mean, you want the gate to be lightning fast. But you don't want it to be so fast that you hear clicks.

RYAN: Explain lightning fast.

JEFF: Well, I always� let me see where I have my settings here. I'll open up my gate right now. My attack is set to auto, but it's like basically, you know, 0.01 milliseconds.

RYAN: Which is� that's the fast part.

JEFF: The fastest. The attack is as fast as it can be, and the release is as fast as it can be.

RYAN: And what that means is that when the gate engages, it happens like that. It's not like� like you'll hear compression sometimes, and you'll hear it kind of take a second to come back up after something hits a peak.

JEFF: Well, let me give you a hypothetical situation, because I do some work for a podcaster. He'll record in a stadium, and there's a lot of reverb. If you gate really suddenly, it's really obvious. You've heard of gated drums.

RYAN: Right.

JEFF: And that's like an effect where it suddenly drops off. But if someone's speaking, and there's a lot of ambient background noise, it sounds unnatural for it to cut off too quickly. So then you want to have a really slow release of several hundred milliseconds, maybe even a whole second, so it just kind of fades out. And then kicks in again when he speaks, but then releases it slowly, So you don't notice it so much. That would be a situation where you'd want like a longer release time.

RYAN: Yeah, that's a good example. And then of course the converse would be what you do in a room where you want no noise ever. So you want it to be fast because you� there's no need to have that.

JEFF: Yeah, I mean, my room's pretty quiet. It's possible I could get� I mean, I can turn the gate off if you want to hear the noise in my room.

RYAN: Yeah, let's see if we can hear it.

JEFF: Let's see. All right, the gate's off.

RYAN: Yeah, I can barely hear the difference.

JEFF: I don't really hear much of a difference.

RYAN: Yeah.

JEFF: But I get whispers. Do you hear me whispering right now?

RYAN: Yeah.

JEFF: Okay, I'm whispering. I have no gate. I'm gonna turn the gate back on. You ready? Okay, the gate's on right now. You don't hear that much of a difference, do you?

RYAN: No.

JEFF: I have an awesome gate.

RYAN: Yeah, I was gonna say that channel strip.

JEFF: yeah, or that. But see, that's the advantage of being in such a super quiet room. I can set the gate to the minimum threshold, like the slightest noise. it's very� I don't know quite how to put it. it's almost like I don't need it. So, You know, I can have it so that all my mouth noise gets through. I could blink my eyes and that'll trigger the gate. I mean, that won't trigger the gate.

RYAN: Mm-hmm.

JEFF: The gate lets it through, that's what I'm trying to say.

RYAN: Yeah, well, I'm gonna� like I said, I'm gonna coerce you into writing some of this stuff down so I can post it on the site so that people can go get it later, you know, because I think this is pretty useful to a lot of people. Home studios� everybody's, everybody's got one, you know. What's the most important thing that that you think producers and/or voiceover artists has to have in their home studio?

JEFF: I think the most important thing is the acoustics, the sound.

RYAN: Yeah.

JEFF: And it's also the hardest, 'cause you're talking about, you know, possibly knocking down walls and building stuff, but�

RYAN: And it's engineering, you know? It's like smart people have to do it to do it right, right?

JEFF: Well, sort of. I mean, if you're gonna really set up a, you know, yeah. I mean, you can turn pretty much any room into a room that you can record in. I just use foam to absorb sound. and essentially turn my environment into as much of an anechoic chamber that I can, given whatever limitations you're working with. But I think that's the, like� I mean, a lot of people are building whisper rooms and stuff. I think you can have a whisper room, and if it doesn't have enough foam in it, then it sounds literally like you're talking in a closet, because you are.

RYAN: Right.

JEFF: So, I mean, you want to, like, really minimize that. The problem with a whisper room, too, is, like, if you raise your voice, you know, it becomes obvious that you're in a small room because now your louder voice is bouncing more readily off the walls and reaching the microphone in between your intonations.

RYAN: Sure.

JEFF: So, it kind of limits what you can do performance-wise when you're inside of a closet. And the solution is to put so much foam in there that you don't hear the bounces. You can't tell I'm in a tiny 4x4 room right now, I don't think.

RYAN: I can't.

JEFF: I don't know, but that's because I've got like Maxwalls, like I don't know how many Maxwalls, I got 2 or 3 Maxwalls in here, I've got RealTraps, I got Leonard Bass Traps, it's like this room is filled with foam. on every� the only thing that doesn't have foam is the, the floor I'm standing on, and that's still carpeted.

RYAN: if you don't mind, how much money did you put into just the room, the acoustics of the room, so people can get an idea of� I mean, you've got a good one. I, I'm�

JEFF: well, it's a whisper room that I had when I was at KISS 108, and I bought it not so much for the acoustics but just to block out the external sound, which was extreme there, because I planted my� it's a long story, the studio I built myself at KISS 108. We can go into that if you want, but I was wedged between the music director's office, Kid David, and then Billy Costa was the news director, and then the air studio was on the other side. So I had sound coming in from all of it. It was impossible to do voice work. And the studios there sounded like shit. I didn't want to do anything in there. So I bought a whisper room. It cost $6,000. I got the double whisper room.

RYAN: Mm-hmm.

JEFF: And it, for the most part, worked. And then later on, I got deflectors to make it so it's not like a rectangular room, 'cause a rectangular room readily sets up resonant frequencies.

RYAN: So you can get standing waves.

JEFF: of, you know, different� that correspond with the dimensions of the room. Whatever the waveform is that would fit in that room, it bounces off one side, comes on the other, it's twice as loud. You want to stop that any way that you can. Hmm.

RYAN: So, a square room is actually better.

JEFF: Better than a rectangular room?

RYAN: Right? Is that what you're saying?

JEFF: No, not really. I think square, rectangular� you just don't want uniform sides. You want, like, different angles, obtuse angles, to diffuse the sound. So, you can't have a standing wave if it hits the wall and then goes off in another direction. Whereas if it's, you know, if it's� bouncing off a wall and going exactly right back where it came from, then it's gonna double up on itself and will appear to be twice as loud. That's why if you ever, like, take a tone generator and run a mic and then sweep up the whole frequency spectrum, start at zero, go up to as high as you can hear, I mean, you'll notice little peaks. You'll notice, you know, the sound will appear to be louder at certain frequencies. And arguably, that's what's causing it, is just simple resonance.

RYAN: Hmm.

JEFF: And that's just the sound bouncing off the walls at the same time that it's coming in. And, you know, The principle of physics is that, you know, if the sound� if the waveform� if the amplitude is twice as loud, because the wave is riding itself back, it's gonna be twice as loud. Conversely, if it's out of phase with itself, then the result is zero. You get nothing even though the sound is there. Sure.

RYAN: Phase issues are funny. My first phase issue, I was probably 6 months into my first professional, you know, commercial radio station gig, and I offset left and right on the guy's voice. Wasn't really thinking, and I did it just so that when it played on the air, the VO disappeared.

JEFF: Yes.

RYAN: Have you ever had that happen to you?

JEFF: Oh no, I've known about this. I learned all this stuff in high school physics, right? I always know whenever I do a chorusing effect to listen to it in mono.

RYAN: Well, and it's also important for people to know, if you're gonna do a chorusing effect or any sort of, you know, you know, you're gonna change up your left and your right so that you can get that, you know, wide stereo effect, you need a 3rd channel set to the center and just bring it down a little bit. bit, but don't ever just take your left and right and separate them and leave it there. Well, it can work, but you also could have problems.

JEFF: You could have problems, but that's why� I mean, I'm listening, I don't use a board anymore, I have a Mackie Big Knob, it's got a mono button, I'll listen to it in mono. Yeah. I mean, sometimes� I mean, I do believe that most people hear our FM radio stations in mono, especially if it's a fringe signal or if you're listening in the car. The car won't hesitate to just throw it in mono. The stereo light will be on, but you'll actually be hearing in mono if you're like more than than 20 miles from the transmitter, usually, is what I've been told. So you always� it's very important that your production sound just as good in mono as it does in stereo.

RYAN: Yeah, okay, maybe that's the better way to say it. What I said was don't do it, that's wrong, but what you're saying is just listen to everything you do in mono after you've produced it.

JEFF: Yeah, make sure it works in mono. And if there's a wild discrepancy, if it's a lot louder in stereo than it is in mono, then your intention may be thwarted, you know, because any production is like music versus voice. You want the voice to be so loud, but you want everything driving it underneath. If it doesn't matter to you, I guess it doesn't matter. But I'll try to do my chorusing effects so that they work just as well in mono. I've always loved the harmonizer, the Eventide harmonizer for that. They had an awesome chorus effect that sounded just as good in mono as it did in stereo, and I was never sure how they did that.

RYAN: Yeah.

JEFF: And Waves chorusing is good that way as well, I think. I'm sure there are others. But there are some chorusing effects, you put them in mono and they disappear, or it's hard to understand what's being said. And that, I think, defeats the purpose of what you're probably trying to do, which is to convey information using the spoken word.

RYAN: Yeah, absolutely. Definitely something that� that's a good lesson for the producers listening to this, for sure. Talk about� I'm gonna let you go here in a minute because we've gone a little longer than I want to keep you for.

JEFF: What�

RYAN: I'm gonna put you on the spot a little bit, but what is the one thing, in your opinion, every producer should know about Or do?

JEFF: Shower every day.

RYAN: Leave the house at least once?

JEFF: Gosh, I don't know. I mean, I remember I was listening� I listened to Dave Fox's and it was awesome, and he really was promoting watching TV and being in tune with what the listener's life reflects, right? I was yelling at someone today, like, you know, about Facebook and MySpace and all that, and if your listeners are actively into social networking and you're not, then you're possibly missing out a perspective, and it's hard to relate to them when you don't share that perspective. But I'm really not a pop culture freak, and so I've always just been told, like, all right, this is the artist on American Idol that everybody likes, and just tell me how to write a script that will resonate with people, and I'll roll with that. But I don't actually� I prefer not to watch American Idol if I can help it.

RYAN: Yeah.

JEFF: So, I don't really necessarily subscribe to what Fox's suggestion was. 'Cause I just don't. I'd rather ride my bicycle, I guess. So, in that sense, you just kind of want to be your own person and try to� I guess the metaphor I was thinking, if you look at who's� what do they call them? The taste setters, the trendsetters.

RYAN: Tastemaker?

JEFF: The tastemakers. These aren't necessarily people who are watching TV and are trying to pay attention to what everybody else is doing. They're doing their own thing. They're in the vanguard, and everybody else is following them because they are true to themselves, and they're writing music, or they're brilliant in some way, and so they draw a following for that. They're not, you know, in other words, they're leading, they're not following. So when you're watching and consuming a lot of pop culture so you can regurgitate it back to your listeners, you're not necessarily leading. You're just kind of spoon-feeding them something that you know they'll be able to relate to.

RYAN: Yeah, that, that's actually pretty good. I mean, basically you're saying, hey, have your own personality, you know, be, be your own person.

JEFF: Yeah, be interesting and be compelling so that people will gravitate towards whatever you have to say.

RYAN: I definitely know that when you hear production, you can tell when the producer has a lot of personality or not. You know, when the producer is just more mechanical, just knows how to operate Pro Tools, but doesn't necessarily have their own quality, interesting personality, it kind of sticks out.

JEFF: Yeah, there's like, really, like Miles, Miles Hillcohen, he's the production guy at KISS in Cleveland and WMMS in Cleveland. He's a brilliant writer. He writes the funniest� I was gonna use a bad word again�

RYAN: Ass.

JEFF: But, you know, he's just a great writer. It starts with the writing. But anyway, I'm getting way off track. You want to know the one thing every producer should know.

RYAN: Well, that's actually pretty good, to be honest. I mean, it's the opposite of what Dave said, but not really. I mean, I think Dave would completely agree with you. You a little agree with him.

JEFF: I think what Dave and I are in agreement on is it starts with the writing. The writing is very, very important. You want to make sure you have a solid script, because if it's a stupid script, you can doll it up all you want. You can make it into a compelling piece of ear candy, but people won't really remember it. They won't remember what you were trying to do. They'll just listen to it and then move on. Ideally, you want a piece of production to be heard hundreds of times and have them not get sick of it.

RYAN: Yeah, absolutely.

JEFF: Well, actually, no, that defeats the purpose too, because a really good, well-written script, they'll perceive differently. I'm going off here. That's a whole other subject is how do you� do you perceive it as information or do you perceive it as emotion? Why is it that you can hear a commercial 2 or 3 times, you love it, but after you've seen it or heard it, you got the point, you know the joke, you don't to see or hear it anymore. But your favorite song, you can listen to it 1,000 times and not get sick of it. What's going on with your brain that you can absorb this one so many times but not something else? And how do you apply that to your approach in production?

RYAN: I would 100% agree though. Copy is about as� I mean, yeah, without good copy, then forget it. You're wasting your time.

JEFF: Yeah, I'm not sure.

RYAN: Let's leave it on that note because I know I've kept you for a little longer than I wanted to, and I appreciate it. Jeff Brillant, thanks for being a part of episode 2.

JEFF: It was an honor. Thank you.

RYAN: Again, thanks to Jeff Berlin. I'm actually� I paused my recording there at the station studio. I'm now home finishing this up because we had this little thing called Hurricane Ike flowing through South Texas. They're saying it's gonna rain and get crazy up here, and it's� we're just getting the rain up here in Dallas. I'm actually in Arlington, so I'm at the home studio now. It doesn't sound that different because my home studio isn't that great. Yes, My work studio at KSCS. It ain't that great. The the engineers did an awesome job putting it together, but over the years it's just gotten really noisy and just kind of yuck. But it does the job. It's an it's a nice studio. I wanted to mention a few people that are going to be coming up here because I've been talking to a bunch of random people. I have some friends that I want to get on. One guy, Fat Matt Gansel. It's kind of a fun story. We'll get into it in more detail when I get him on. I'm not sure if it'll be next episode.

JEFF: Yeah.

RYAN: Or the one after that. He's the guy who is most famous for imaging the Wolf in Dallas. And it's fun because when I was brought to Dallas 2 and a half years ago to make KSCS not sound so damn old, which I think we've accomplished now finally just in the last year, I first tuned in the Wolf. I'm like, all right, I know where I'm gonna be, but let's find out who I'm gonna be going up against. And I heard some of the best imaging that I ever heard. actually. So I was like, wow, awesome, I get to go to Dallas and compete with that. But luckily, the people at The Wolf now have decided they don't like� how do you say it� they don't like good radio. So it's working out just fine for me and the Big 96.3. But Fat Matt Gansel is the guy who basically created the awesome brand, as far as the imaging goes, that is The Wolf, which you now hear all over the country And we're gonna talk to him soon. Also a really cool guy that I've met over the last couple months, he is a British bloke. He works as the VP creative something at Jones TM Studio Century Smith Barney, whatever the heck they're calling themselves these days. It's a great company, they just keep getting bought by different people. He has his own production company, images stations all over Europe, and He also is, like I said, the VP over there at Jones. He's going to be a really interesting person to talk to when it comes to production because we're going to get to get into a little more music production as well, which I know some people are going to want to hear about. And he's just a pretty solid imager. Other people in the works� again, if you want to hear somebody on this thing, hit me up, email. You can do show@ryanontheradio.com. You can just send a little contact submission in there if you've got questions, if you think I did something wrong or right, tell me. I really do want to hear about it. And again, the website ryanontheradio.com is where I'm gonna have more stuff from Jeff Berlin very soon. It will be very soon. In fact, depending on when you got this, it might already be up there. So check it out. Until next time.

JEFF: The Producers.

RYAN: The Producers. Send your questions, feedback, guest requests, love, and of course constructive criticism to show@ryanontheradio.com. Episodes available Available through iTunes, other podcast sites, and RyanOnTheRadio.com. We thank our guests for their expertise and time. We thank you for listening.