Sound Recordist

CHATTERBOX, THE NORWICH TALKING NEWSPAPER

Volunteer Role Description

Position: Sound Recordist/Technician

Background: Chatterbox produces an audio talking newspaper every week based on stories from the Norwich Evening News. It also produces a range of other audio magazine programmes such as Just Talk, Chataround and Norfolk Magazine most of which are recorded monthly or quarterly. All these productions require a sound recordist. For Chatterbox, there are four teams and each team has a sound recordist, hence Chatterbox is a 1 in 4 weekly commitment.

Timing: For Chatterbox, about 2.5 hours one Thursday in four. Exact times vary between teams but 5pm to 7:30pm is common.

Responsible to: The week’s team leader for Chatterbox, the magazine editor for other items.

Location: Chatterbox office, Petersen House, 240 King Street, Norwich NR1 2TT and at home.

Description of the work

The aim is to produce a master USB stick of the Chatterbox recording – usually 10 tracks.

Recording takes place in the studio and your role is to use simple audio software and a mixer to make tracks on a laptop.

Listening to the readers and checking sound levels is the main job. This usually takes up to 90 minutes to create an hour of recorded material. Some editing/adding other recorded material, may be required. Detailed notes are available and full training will be given. It is important to be supportive to the readers.

Once the tracks have been recorded, named and put into order a master stick needs to be made. Occasionally this will need to have a magazine's tracks added too – this master is the stick all other copies will be made from so it is important to play through the master to make sure the tracks are in order – jumping through tracks is ok.

A separate team handle the copying and checking of the USB sticks.

The recordists final job is to upload the Chatterbox tracks to two websites. Again, training will be given to support this role.

Updated 19/8/24