Song segues...how do they do it?

[davideduardo]

It was interesting---the jingle field was crowded in the 70s (PAMS was still the big house, JAM was on fire), and TM was capable of great presentations, but Century 21 tried harder with that one.

Of course, in 1977, TM pretty well won the trophy for good with "Tomorrow Radio"--a 12-inch vinyl record with a comedic look at radio "six years into the future"---1983:

And on the other side, a highly-produced series of jingle demos:

By 1970, Tm Merriman had made TM into big name. In that year, all our Mooney stations used Tm (WMAK, WKGN, WDSR, WUNO) and by 1972 I did both Birmingham stations there. I switched to JAM in 1975.

In 1964, I had PAMS jingles don in Mexico City, and did about 4 packages with them before going with Tommy Gwinn at Gwinsound.

 

[fordranger797]

There’s a lot of comments here, and admittedly, I’m too lazy to read them all. I just thought I’d share a few nuggets from my experience.

Each radio station I’ve worked for has used “trip cues” to manage a segue from one song to another (or from a song to a liner). This trip cue had to be manually programmed, and it essentially would tell the software when it’s appropriate to start the next “event.” The point of having these trip cues (literally to trip the next logged item) is to make the station sound seamless and tight. There are many songs that start to fade out earlier than others, so you want to be on top of that (and segue early).

I have a lot of thoughts on the proper way to do this. I really like software that allows multiple channels on a mixing board to run different items at one time. This allows the host to control the board a bit easier and get the segues they want. I know audiovault allowed this functionality.

At one place I worked, all of the programming was routed through only one channel on the mixing board. Essentially, the only segue you could get was the one the computer would allow you to do. I preferred having multiple channels available so I could segue certain elements early.

As an example, let’s say a song is fading out. Off the top of my head “True Colors” by Cindi Lauper has an absurdly long ending. If I wanted to segue into Hotel California (with an absurdly long intro), it would be helpful to tell the computer to cut the Cindi Lauper song early (especially if the host doesn’t need a ton of time to talk on the air.

 

[K.M. Richards]

Each radio station I’ve worked for has used “trip cues” to manage a segue from one song to another (or from a song to a liner). This trip cue had to be manually programmed, and it essentially would tell the software when it’s appropriate to start the next “event.” The point of having these trip cues (literally to trip the next logged item) is to make the station sound seamless and tight. There are many songs that start to fade out earlier than others, so you want to be on top of that (and segue early).

Most automation software still works that way. For example, Simian requires that a "sec tone" marker be added in Audition to tell it where to start the next event. There are also systems that use the "cart chunk" method to do the same thing; on those, "4: SEGs" tells it where the segue point is.

At one place I worked, all of the programming was routed through only one channel on the mixing board. Essentially, the only segue you could get was the one the computer would allow you to do. I preferred having multiple channels available so I could segue certain elements early.

As an example, let’s say a song is fading out. Off the top of my head “True Colors” by Cindi Lauper has an absurdly long ending. If I wanted to segue into Hotel California (with an absurdly long intro), it would be helpful to tell the computer to cut the Cindi Lauper song early (especially if the host doesn’t need a ton of time to talk on the air.

Again, referring to Simian (since that's what I am most familiar with) you can manually start a "cart" early from the main screen and just stop the previous one as you start talking. The problem, from an engineering standpoint, with what you want is that there needs to be a separate audio card in the computer for each audio channel ... and sometimes that causes problems for Windows. Some automation programs will create separate virtual audio channels, but those work much the same way in terms of having to start an event ahead of the marker and then kill the audio on the previous event.

 

[K.M. Richards]

Don't forget the HDs and the translators!

HD's, yes. The vast majority of translators use a silent ID based on phase-shift keying.

 

[levi99]

You know, some stations have song intros from Reelworld, they have the artist saying hi, and telling them that the song the radio station's about to play is their new single/song and then the Reelworld vocals singing the station name then the song plays just fine

 

[K.M. Richards]

You know, some stations have song intros from Reelworld, they have the artist saying hi, and telling them that the song the radio station's about to play is their new single/song and then the Reelworld vocals singing the station name then the song plays just fine

That's a good feature for current-based formats. I wonder how many stations they have as clients. I'm guessing no one in a major market, though.

 

[CTListener]

That's a good feature for current-based formats. I wonder how many stations they have as clients. I'm guessing no one in a major market, though.

SiriusXM has drop-ins like that on its Highway country channel. "Hi. This is Cody Johnson and this is my new single, The Fall." No jingle, though. Probably done in-house or provided by the artists' labels.