Radio Jingle

Short Introduction to Radio Jingles: 

A radio jingle is a short, catchy tune, used for advertising. It may advertise the radio station itself, a particular show, new film etc. A jingle usually includes dialogue and music plus sound effects (Foley sounds) relevant to the jingles purpose. An example of a radio jingle is a jingle advertising the Chris Moyles show on Radio 1. Regularly, radio jingles will include the following information; Radio Frequency, DJ’s name, Time/Day of show, Station Name, Genre of show and a Website (linking to Podcasts etc).

Logic Pro:

 I made two short jingles. One was to advertise a new film and the other to advertise a product. To make these jingles, we used ‘Logic Pro’, a Digital Audio Work Station (DAW). This software enables you to create, edit and record sounds and music on a timeline. Other examples of DAW software are ‘Sound booth’, ‘Pro tools’, ‘Garage Band’ and ‘Q Base’.

Logic pro also allows you to bounce your final projects into different formats, ready to upload to the Internet. MP3 is the best format for uploading to the Internet as it can be easily compressed and quickly downloaded for free on many sites. It is also cheap to host and uses less space. However, MP3 is not the best format to use when burning a CD, as the quality is poor due to compression that has removed the top and bottom ranges such as effective bass. An AIFF or WAV format would be more suitable for this.

Logic pro has a variety of inserts to add to music, sounds and vocals. These plug-ins allow manipulation in ways such as distortion, changing pitch, EQ and more. I used these inserts on my jingles, for example, to change the pitch of my voice to sound like 2 different voices, as well as Automation. Automation changes the parameters of the project as it plays. This lets you create a set of volume changes along one channel or pan sounds from one speaker to another. The benefits of this automation are it is quicker, easier, effective and sounds as if your recordings are live. I also used computer-generated instruments to create backing tracks and/or converted tracks from ‘Youtube’ to an MP3 format to play behind my jingles. The link for one of my two jingles is below, however the second could not be added as errors occurred when saving the project.

Radio Jingle Link:

http://www.supload.com/listen?s=Rt1GyP

Evaluation:

During the one week we were given to study and produce Radio Jingles, we had a lot of technical difficulties with the Apple Macs. This therefore hindered my (and others) progress. Of the two jingles I did produce, only one seemed to save successfully which was disappointing. This means that I can only evaluate one jingle. The product I had created (in my imagination) and was trying to sell was ‘Chameleon Converse’. These were shoes that changed to the colour of the ground the wearer was walking on.

My target audience was teenagers and older age ranges of children. I aimed my product at them by speaking enthusiastically, as if an excited child about a present and using language such as “cool” and “amazing”. I used a MP3 recording device to record my voice and imported these dialogue tracks into Logic Pro. I also used a computer-generated electric guitar to form a simple tune behind the jingle. Another channel instrument was added but did not appear to play on the final bounced version. Apart form the computer problems I encountered, I was happy with my final Radio Jingle as it represented my product as I had planned and sounded semi-professional for a first attempt.

If I were to do this project again, I would have recorded more dialogue, as there were noticeable pauses between sentences. I believe this would have kept potential listeners interested throughout and therefore sold the product (if it were real). I would also have re-created the film jingle which was lost if I had time.