On Sunday I performed a live radio session for Radio Stafford (a local internet radio station) with my acapella group the Pebbles. We have been together in different lineups for twelve years and have sung many concerts often to quite large audiences. But this experience was very different.
The radio people were lovely – very friendly and pleased to have us singing for them. And the ‘studio’ was nice to sing in – not large for nine singers, but large enough. But it was strange that we couldn’t see out audience. There was not response or feedback to the sounds we were producing – the sound engineer smiled and put his thumbs up, but that wasn’t the same!
The other strange thing was not being in control of the timing of you performance. Normally in a concert we announce what the next song will be, give a bit of background to the song, then I give everyone a starting note and when everyone is ready we start the song. In the radio setting though, when someone is saying (or signaling to be precise) three – two – one go, I had a sense that I didn’t have that control. So what we needed was to have a pre-warning so that we could get our notes ‘off air’ and be able to start with a degree of confidence when we got the signal.
The newness of the experience made me much more nervous that I would be at a concert, but it was great fun, and I am grateful for Stafford Radio for giving us the opportunity.
If you would like to hear the session, it is available daily until next Saturday between 2 and 3pm (GMT!) from the Stafford Radio website. Go to http://www.staffordradio.com/ and click the “rewind” button.
