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Is that ME? Carting records and extraneous noises

T

Tom Wells

Listening to my own on air signal the other day, side 2 of James Brown's "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" was playing
and in a tiny space of "air" in the recording, I heard a cough.
A cough that was clearly my own, meaning the mic pot was partly open when I dubbed the record, and it's run this way for a LONG time.
The fact it's a cough in this particular song is kind of funny.

In "Walk Tall" by the Ace of Hearts, I detected the squeaky wheel of my desk chair.

They're hardly noticable, and I'm not sure if I'll "fix" them.


Anyone else ever hear extraneous noises (you or someone else was responsible for) that made it into the on-air copy?
 
This will sound like one of those hard to believe stories, but I was there and it really did happen.
At a small station where I worked, the overnight jock got a bit bored and decided to clean the accumulated gunk off the console.
He found some '409' cleaner and sprayed it on the board and had it shinning by morning. The morning jock came in, the overnight guy went home and the morning proceeded. That is until the morning jock shouted a 'blue' comment to the newsguy and the phones lit up with calls from shocked
listeners. Mind you the jock had yelled at the newsguy while his mike was closed but...it seems the '409' cleaner had leaked into the board via the pots
and had done something that made the mike pot stay open/on even when the key on it was closed. We tried it out by shouting with the mike key closed and the shout was heard on the air. A call to the station engineer was quickly made and a big sign posted in the studio until the problem was fixed.
 
Not as funny as the Formula 409 incident, but I bet the most common example of this, historically, is somebody's watch beeping during recording. Now that most production is done on PC's, probably the most common extraneous noise is the dreaded e-mail or IM plink.
 
Another one I forgot...GSM cellphone bursts. Is it live or recorded, and is it on the xmit or recieve end?
I know there's at least one song where the burst happened in the recording process.

I pull the wireless card out when I use the laptop in the studio, and set the cellphone about 6 feet away from me...

There's a technology I can't wait to be obsolete.
 
Here's one that didn't actually get on the air, but I thought was funny. I was carting up some commercials from an Ad Agency. I kept hearing something in the background but couldn't put my finger on what it was. Then after the last spot it all came clear. The production company had left the slate mic on. I guess someone had set something down on the switch by accident. It was the production folks and talent talking in a very colorful way about how they hated working with this gal from the Ad Agency. I called the production company and let them know about it. They were spots that went out to a ton of radio stations all over the southeast!
 
I can see that 409 incident happening by shorting out the key switch as it is water and liquid, a great conductor.

Didn't someone turn down the pot? a short term option in theory anyway.
 
As Production Director at a 1kw daytimer, I was visiting a bud while he was on the air one Saturday in 1977. I can't remember what the intended use was, but I had put a short bit of Monty Python dialog - from the soundtrack of 'Holy Grail' - onto a cart. If anyone remembers the film, it was what the Knights Who Say Ni changed their name to ("ekcy, ecky, ecky, phatang, something or other"). Well, somehow the cart found its way into the air studio, and during the next newscast, an actuality was called for.

"We asked the Mayor about the budget for the township's new playground..."

Not sure which was funnier: that, or one of my first on-air bloopers, also during a newscast. The line was "the County Board of Chosen Freeholders." It came out "the board of frozen cheeseholders."

Thank you. I'm here all week. Try the veal.
 
When our AM would bleed over our FM & our FM would bleed into the Prod Room board & having to wait 'til a "louder" song went off to record something.
Also when, not listeners, but station neighbors would call complaining about "My Bonnie Lassie" bleeding through their phone so loud they couldn't even have a conversation (pre-cel phone days). :D
 
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