Number One Imager course

Written by Drew Weber

2023

# What is it?

For several years, I was one of the main go tos for Voiceover and Internet radio production in the blindness community. I also produced imaging for a medium market FM terrestrial CCM station. I was told by the programmer of said station, “I just don’t see it in my head like you do.” I’ve been out of the game professionally for the last five years, but I still gots the understanding / know how’s, ins and outs of imaging.

Within this course I will teach you all I know, so that you to, can be a Number One imager! And #MakeThatMoney!

# What is radio imaging?

Radio imaging is what you hear between the tracks on commercial, terrestrial FM or SXM radio. It’s sometimes called the face of the station. It complements the energy of the music and the jocks. They are short 5-15 second pieces that announce the station name, the format of the station. They are designed to pull the listeners attention from their surroundings and let them know where they are tuned into. Depending on the stations format they can be humorous in nature, (Normally found in rock radio, from classic to active.) Caring in nature and centered around a work day (Adult contemporary.) Powerful and proud (Rock and country radio), or tugging at your heart strings (Christian contemporary, CCM), just to name a few examples. They can be full of fx, listener, artist drops and music beds, or just a dry voiceover. When the station is programmed correctly, imaging will, as a live DJ does, piggyback off emotion or energy of the last song and next songs played.

Imaging is different than a spot. A spot is a commercial 30-60 seconds. Though this course will focus on imaging, you can no doubt carry over the production values and concepts found in this course to writing voicing and producing spots.

# What you will need:

Creativity: Though I would assume you can learn how to produce without creativity, I would imagine Imaging would lose its appeal quickly. I’m a bit overboard, lol. If there is one thing I know I’m literally meant for on this earth, it’s radio, and to be a production director. at a cluster of stations/formats. It’s the one thing in life that gets me high and makes me tick like no other. You need to be able to write captivating copy, voice it, or have a VO artist or artists lined up, and be able to produce epic shit. To me, all of those things take great amounts of creativity.

A Windows computer with some what decent specs. If your running Win 10 or 11, at least 8 gb of ram, a solid state drive and at least a 2GHZ processor.

A DAW, digital audio workstation. I will be using Reaper and Goldwave throughout this course

www.reaper.fm

www.goldwave.com

Though I will give keystrokes to drive these applications, I expect that you may already know how to use your audio production software. My hope is that you may also carry over concepts to other DAW applications if you use something else.

A few VST2 fx that I use, all originally free b’s)

10 Band Graphic Eq v1.3.dll

Reaper sees this as:

VST: 10 Band Graphic Eq v1.3 (x86) (Marco Nelson)

AradazMaximizer5.dll

VST: Aradaz Maximizer5 (x86) (Aradaz)

FreeClip.dll

VST: FreeClip (x86) (Venn Audio)

Limiter6.dll

VST: Limiter No6 (x86) (Vladislav Goncharov)

(Yes limiter and maximiser sound different.)

A software called Sonic will assist in speeding up the rate of the vO without introducing a lot of artifacts. I do not have good websites for the software listed above. They are plugins I’ve tried over the years and they were the best, or what I stuck with for one reason or another.

If you are going to voice your imaging, A Microphone: First things first, use what you have. Don’t go blow your money on a high dollar mic. Train your voice, work up to having high end equipment. Having all the bells and whistles in the world won’t help you much just starting out. If you don’t have a mic at all, I would suggest a Zoom H1 recorder. The mics are decent, the noise floor is low enough, it’s small. You will record your VO onto the SD card and then download the wav files to your computer.

If you just have an iPhone you may use it. Microphones generally come in two flavors, dynamic or, condenser. Dynamics may be generally speaking, a cheaper option, will not, require fantom power, and may be more directional and not pick up as much outside noise. On the flip side of this, they do not provide the larger than life sound, crisp highs that we are used to hearing, and trying to push the EQ to get this will sound fake. You must be on top of most dynamic mics which will bring in the proximity effect right away. This effect may make your voice sound muddy. You’ve heard it when you have been to a church or karaoke event and people are eating the mic. Generally speaking they require more volume power to drive the mic which may introduce noise into the dry recording. Condenser microphones, are built into most digital field recorders, such as the Zoom H1, the iPhone, most USB computer microphones and headsets. IF you are plugging a condenser into an interface or mixer console via XLR, the console must provide 48 v of fantom power. Weather dynamic or condenser The sound you are going to capture, depends on which mic you have.

A Quiet space to record VO. Do you have a walk-in closet available filled with clothing? Use the hell out of it! Can you put blankets on the walls about face level up in a bed room? Can you afford a mic shield that fits behind your mic and is filled with acoustic foam? You are going to be processing your voiceovers with EQ compression and maximization. Sounds such as room reverb, that you don’t hear from the original recordings will show up in the finished peace.

Production fx and beds: Find out generally speaking what formats you may find yourself imaging the most for the first 6 months or so, Listen to the demos of FX libraries and pick one that may suit you.

If you are imaging CHR, top 40, or hip-hop formats StickyFX has epic libraries

www.stickyfx.com

They also have very nice freebee’s.

If you are imaging rock radio Alien-Imaging may be your jam

www.alien-imaging.com

If you are imaging country radio, a lot of the libraries I like aren’t sold any longer from Alien-Imaging. I love to use Fuse Reloader It’s got the huge tuning sweeps that rise up. Sticky FX freebee libraries have a few good selections.

I know it’s older but Future FX free from radio mall

RadioMall

If you can get your hands on it,

The Killer Hertz libraries.

Also,

Sonic Infusion 2 and 3 libraries From Radio mall. There pricing has dropped.

Artist drops: Easy cowboy, you may over use these quick in your imaging.

https://radioexpress.com/shop/imaging/buyout-libraries/showbiz-central-artist-drops/

Time: To learn, to write, to record and rerecord, to be creative, to make sure each peace you produce is similar but different from the last.

Imaging is a process for me. I write, I voice, I produce. Don’t give yourself as someone just starting out to close of a deadline to get the finished pieces out. As you gain experience, timelines can shorten.

# Types of imaging

Just as there is with spots, there are hard cell and soft cell imaging. The type of imaging you voice/produce depends on #1, your format, naturally, a rock or CHR station will be more in your face than will a Adult Contemporary or contemporary Christian outfit. It’s important though to produce a variety of imaging sounds. Even though rock can be in your face, does the copy always have to be? Of course it may depend on what the program director may want, but watch how much you use listener and artist drops. You may only have so many in your inventory. Once they are used up, over usage of the same drops becomes repetitive and it may cause listeners to tune out.

What about imaging for a variety show?

This gets tricky because you then need both hard and soft cell imaging. Look at, what kind of music is being played? Create a few pieces of each format just as if you are imaging a station of that format. This will help you to have the proper energy to match the music.

# Choosing fX

I think of FX to be an intro/outro to the peace as it blends with music, and as used under the Voiceover, to highlight and bring out the message. They can totally help you do a u turn with thought or sound within the same imager.

# The Bed

The music bed if used in a peace of imaging is there to create an underlying energy, while the FX give bursts of energy.

# Writing copy

It all starts for me, with an idea. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night with something buzzing in my brain, if it’s my show, or my station. Sometimes I sit down with the number of pieces which I am committing to produce, the format and name of the station. Block out at least an hour or two, just to write copy.

Start with a rough draft. Write the script out once. Read back through. Can you hear the vO artist in your head reading the copy? How does it sound? Where are transition FX, where does the Voiceover crossfade on top of itself. IF you can make notes in this for the copy you take to your DAW when producing this may help you through the process. You can of course use a copy without these notes when you go into the studio to record your voice takes.

What could be changed to make things pop. How wordy is the script? How many times have you used the same word or words together in the copy? I am going to pull a random example found from a podcast on the internet.

“

He and his service company,

Can, and often do,

Service all makes and models.

“

This may be written better as,

“

He and his service company,

Service all makes and models.

“

Remember that you need to keep the attention of the listener. The words in your copy, are just as important as the voice who reads them.

# Recording Voiceover.

Think about how the finished peace should sound. Your voice has just as much to do with this, as the copy, and the fx and music bed. How should you speak your lines. What format of music is the imaging for. If you are unsure how you should speak listen back to some of the imaging examples provided here. It’s not that you should try to sound like someone else, as much as understand the tonal voice qualities that other voice artists have. When you are starting out it’s tough, because you don’t have all of the other elements in the production. You at this point just have your copy and your thoughts. So voice your lines and be ready to come back to the drawing board, and re-voice them again once you have a better understanding. As you are producing you can sit at your DAW with phone or whatever easy recorder you have and record some takes that may sound better when you are in the mode of producing. Then you will have these to focus on as you re-voice lines. There are times where you must develop your voice, and it may take time to do so. A lot of times when we speak into a microphone we may speak at a softer volume to try and get a specific sound. Maybe it’s easy to speak deeper at a low volume at first. This isn’t necessary and this will shine through with all the compression in the world. Speak loudly, speak clearly don’t try and speak quickly, you’ll set this up when you are producing the Voiceover.

Remember you are going to be editing your takes/recording, so you don’t have to get your lines right the first time.

Take/record each line or couple of lines several times. You think you’ve said it the way you want it? Maybe you did! congratulations that is awesome!! Say it a few more times. I’m amazed how often I settle on another take than I originally thought I’d settle on.

IF you say a line, and then think about how you said it for the next 20-30 seconds, you may use silence reduction in GoldWave to cut out the dead air, and it’s easier to cut out dead air than extra words. The more comments you make to yourself on the recording the more you’ll have to edit out and that can become frustrating quickly.

Sometimes you may want to use multiple recordings as it gives a sense of not wasting time/space. If you can pause your recording and have one file to work with vs 10-20 recordings, this may be preferable.

# Editing/producing Voiceover

# Goldwave

Lets get the VO cuts prepped for editing. Are you using a stereo recorder with a stereo mic? Are you using one channel of a recorder for a mono mic? We will cover that here as we want the VO to be mono, in the center of the stereo field.

Open the VO recording into Goldwave and perform a 100 HZ High pass on the entire file. Go to edit, filter, Low/High pass, type 100 into the Cutoff frequency Initial cutoff (Hz) field and tab to the group of radio buttons and down arrow to High pass. Hit enter. This will take a few seconds to complete. You may or may not hear the results of this on headphones. This will remove hum and plosives out of the recording. Introduce a sub woofer and you will tell the difference. After a hi-pass you will be able to achieve more volume normalization out of the recording. It also will be better prepped to introduce compression and limiting without as much color.

Now lets make sure just one channel of the audio is in the file. Go over to the effects menu and down to Stereo sub menu, hit enter. IF need be down arrow to Channel Mixer and hit enter. In the presets choose, Mono left and hit enter to apply the effect. This will make sure your audio is in the center of the stereo spectrum, and only using one channel of a recorder will have less noise. When this completes, we want to maximize or, normalize the volume of the entire file. Again go to the effects menu, and down to the volume submenu, and down to maximize. In the presets choose full volume and press enter. This will verify that the volume of the file is as loud as it can be without peeking or clipping. After this finishes processing, press control+s to save the file. Alt+f4 out of Goldwave.

If you have the Sonic software lets now increase the rate of the voiceover. You may also accomplish this in Reaper, but you can hear it, when you use sonic it sounds like normal speech without the artifacts. I normally use around 1.12 speed in the batch file of Sonic, Copy the file over into the sonic folder and name the file in.wav. The file that will be created will be called Out.wav. After you have this new file you will need to open it in Goldwave and again, maximize the volume, and again save the file.

# Setting up tracks in Reaper.

The nice thing about using a multi-track DAW such as Reaper for your production is the customization it gives you as the producer. If you are just using software’s such as Goldwave or Sound forge you lack the ability to adjust volume and plugins after the mix is complete. In Reaper you may come back and drop in a completely different VO track and match it up with fx if you need a peace of imaging quick. You can also adjust the volume of your bed or FX when the program director of the station asks you to, without recreating the entire peace from scratch.

Of course the ultimate goal here is to create a peace of imaging, so lets set up a template in Reaper. Open an empty Reaper project.

Create a

Track for VO

Track for FX

Track For Bed

Track for VOTmp

# Editing Voiceover

The ultimate goal of editing spoken word is to have it in many ways, sound natural or without notice of where, the edits have been made. Of course producers will hear edits, but the average trained human ear should not.

On the VOTMP track import your Voiceover recording.

Press control+left arrow to verify this item is selected, and then hit w, to go to the start of the project.

Now start playback with space. When you hear the Voiceover start, press control+space to pause playback, then, left arrow until you believe you are at the beginning of the first word of the first script of the voiceover. As you left arrow, you may press space to start/stop playback to verify where the play head is at. When you are finished with the curser move, pressing space should start playing audio as soon as you hit it. This will show you that you are where you need to be.

Press, s, to split the item. Now as you press space, then control+left arrow you should hear the start of the recording, and when you press control+right arrow you should hear the start of the Voiceover. If this is how it works, then you may press space to stop playback, verify that ripple mode is per track by pressing alt+p which should cycle through the ripple modes, and then control+left arrow to verify the first item is selected. Press delete. Now you should only have one item on the track. Now as you hit w to rewind to the beginning of the project, and then space to play, hear the voiceover start at the beginning of the track. From here on out, you will only delete the items you don’t want as you edit.

We are going to take two views at our VO track. We are first going to edit out the takes we don’t want, Which will be less fine editing of course.

Make sure you listen to a couple takes before you make your decision of what you don’t want. When you find a take your for sure your not fond of, pause with control+space, then page up which will take you back a measure and press space to play. If you need to go back another measure do so, but get yourself to the start of the take. Remember that tapping left and right arrows will move you in very small increments which page up and down will move you backwards and forward in larger ones. You want to be close enough that as soon as you hit space to play the portion of the VO you are interested in starts to play back, just as how it was when you cut the beginning of the track. Press control+1 to set a marker at this point. Reaper may forget as you are moving around what item you are on, or you may move from one item to the next without realizing this. Because of this, press control+left arrow to move back an item. Now press 1, to move to the marker you created. Now press, S to split the item at the start point. Did Reaper report 1 item added? if so, you now need to make sure this item is selected to work with. Press space and then control+left or right arrow to move to the start of this item. You will know when it is selected per the audio that is playing back. Now listen to this item until you get to the end of the bad take. You now want to press control+space to pause playback, and again, make sure your curser is right at the end of the bad take. Yes, if there is a bit of silence before the beginning of the next take, you may place the curser right before the next passage of Voiceover. When your curser is set, press s, to split the item at this point. Now we will have the bad item separated. Again press control+left arrow to make sure this item is selected. Press delete to delete the bad item. As you press w to rewind, and space to play and you listen back to the entire audio starting at the beginning the bad audio should be gone. You will also now hear the edits. We want to keep the audio clean as we go so as to not make the fine editing more of a challenge. Use the methods described above to delete any bad edits. You will listen to the remainder of the track and take these steps to clear out the bad takes, keeping only the good.

# Fine editing, arranging your vo per the script.

We are going to now open the text copy of the script that we've typed out. This way we can look back at it and refresh ourselves on any notes we may have written down. Remember it may be another day from when you originally wrote the script out and or voiced the lines. We want to remember why we have the energy we have with our Vo. You may still have a couple takes of your lines instead of 4 or 5.

Start playback with space and listen until you either, get to a line you don’t like the sound of, or hear

breath. Press control+space to pause, and verify you are at the beginning of the bad passage. Press s to split the item. Press control+right arrow until you hear the Windows chime, to get to the last item, in this case the second item. Press space to play and play until you hear the end of the bad passage, or where you want to keep Pause playback with control+space and then verify you are right on the money where you want to edit by using left and right arrows to scrub and space to play back. IF you hear a small snip of the last word you said before the breath, right arrow once and space again to listen. When you are set, press s to split the item. Now, we have three items. We want to remove the second to last item. Find it with control+left arrow, and press delete. Now hit w, and listen to the passage from the start. Does the edit sound correct? Is it to quick, does it click when the edit happens? We will want to make sure each peace is at least clean before we move forward. IF it clicks when audio passes over the edit. Lets fade the ends. In this case we have two items only, but it will be two items that you want to focus on each time you edit. Go to the first item with control+left arrow. Press control+shift+end to move to the end of the first item. Press left arrow 4 times which should barely move the play head back. Now press control+shift+right bracket to fade out the audio. Now press control+right arrow. This should move you to the second item press right arrow 4 times which should again barely move the play head. Press control+shift+left bracket to fade in. Now press w to move back to the start of the project, and space to play. Does it sound better, as far as the cleanness of the edit? IF it does not sound correct press control+z until you have undone the fading, and try a bit of a larger edit instead of pressing 4 times on the arrow keys lets press 6 times. Listen back and repeat until you get it sounding correct, using very small increments.

are the items of audio to close together? Find the item that comes to quick. Turn on numlock and press 6 to move this item over a very small amount. You may hold down 6 if the audio is way overlapping. Now when you playback the audio it should start to sound closer to normal speech rate, you will just keep moving/nudging the item over to the right.

When you are all done with your edits drive back to the start of the audio and play through it again. If you still have a couple takes of lines this is fine to see truly what works best in the imaging. Everything is still on the temp vo track which is perfect. Look at how many items are there and make sense of how they are split. If there are more items than what you want you can glue them together by finding the first item you want to glue, and then how many items after this one you want with it to make as one item. Then select these with control+shift+right arrow and then press control+shift+g to glue the items together.

# Producing basic imaging

You now want to continue to setup your tracks.

On the VO track ad the:

VST: 10 Band Graphic Eq v1.3 (x86) (Marco Nelson)

make sure your VO track is selected, so up arrow to it. Then hit f to ad fx, and type

EQ tab to the list view and find

VST: 10 Band Graphic Eq v1.3 (x86) (Marco Nelson). Press enter.

It will pop up in a bridged window that we can't use, so hit escape on this to get back to the fX window. Tab over to the presets. You will see your own presets in the first combo box and the stock ones in the second combo box. You want Blank1. which is a flat preset in the second combo box.

Shift+tab to add as we are now going to add compression. Press space on this button and type Comp.

Tab down to the list view and find

VST: ReaComp (Cockos)

press enter. This will not pop up in a bridged window, and you can tab down to the combo box to find the preset, stock - Aggressive Vocal. Press enter then shift+tab to ad. Press space on this

In the edit box type

lim

and find VST: Limiter No6 (x86) (Vladislav Goncharov). Press enter on this

This will pop up in a bridged window so hit escape on this and tab down to the presets combo box. You want to find Master1.

Press enter then escape twice to get back into the Reaper tracks main window.

EQ is going to let you curve or set the frequencies heard in your recording if it is sounding to bass heavy, to much mid range or not enough highs. Compression is going to start to even out volumes of the audio. Making soft passages louder, and turning down louder passages. Limiting is going to increase the overall volume of the audio without clipping.

You now have a basic template setup to EQ and make your Voice punchy/loud. You can always ad more compression after the limiter to make it even more punchy if needed.

# E.Q-ING your vocal:

This isn’t a one size fits all so please don’t just follow my EQ directions here and think you are good to go. It depends on your headphones, are they flat? Your mic, what does it sound like it’s freq response, how close you are to it, the room etc.

You want your voice sounding some what thin and, like it’s in the middle of your forehead, vs very midrangy in a box..

I use though as a starting template the following:

32 HZ: drop down to 0 %

64 HZ: drop down to 0 %

Leve

120 HZ

256 HZ

set for now you may or may not have to play with these.

500 HZ: drop it down to 20%

1KHZ: drop it down to 20%

2KHZ: drop it down to 20%

4 KHZ: drop it down to 30%

8 KHZ: pull it up to 70%

16 KHZ: pull it up to 60%

6-12 DB boost put it at 100% it’s an on/off slider so 100 or 0 % will cause a change

Mix slider: this will thin out the vocal with these settings, I normally have it at 70% for a condenser mic, and 90 for a dynamic.

Now down arrow to the FX track. You want to ad compression to this track. Hit F and ad the VST: ReaComp (Cockos), much as you did to the track above. In this case we are going to want to use the preset, stock - Master Bus NY Comp.

Then ad the same to the bed track.

Now we want to lower the volume of the fX and bed tracks -9 DB. In my version of Reaper, when I am in my list of tracks, select the track I want and tab to get to the volume slider. I page up until I reach -9 DB.

You are now going to need to preview work parts/FX to find what you want to kick off your imager with. I use the preview feature in Gold waves open file dialogue for this. You will most likely want a start fx, which will be short and punchy. Your goal is to grab your listeners attention with the FX and the VO. When you find your first fx work part, copy it with control+c from the files list view of Goldwave.

Alt+tab back over to reaper and make sure you are on the FX track. Press alt+p until Ripple mode editing is off. Hit w to make sure you are at the start of the project. Hit alt+i to invoke the insert menu. You should be on insert media file. Hit enter. Paste control+v into the file name edit box and hit enter. You should land back in reaper on the FX track and there now should be 1 item which is the fx you have just inserted. You want the first part of the fx to play and then your VO to start. Listen to the audio examples to get a sense of what I mean. Play the fx until your where you want, and press control+space to pause. Press control+1 to set your marker

Now we are going to down arrow back to the vOTMP track and mute the track with f5. When you need to hear Vo on this track solo the track with F6. Cut the first item or items you want. Up arrow to your VO track and hit 1 to move back to where you set your marker, and paste the items. Hit w and space to play. How does it sound? IF the fx are to loud you can turn the fX track volume down another 3 DB so it's -12 DB.

You can always nudge your items with numlock on using the numpad, 6 to move the item forward by a very small amount, and 4, to move it back. This way you can get things locked in and sounding very tight.

As you listen to your voiceover, either moved to the main VO track, or back on the vOTMP track, which as you have muted it you will solo with f6, find the next section you want to highlight with fx find your next fx in Goldwave and repeat the above steps to drop them in.

IF you hear two fx that you want to use the woosh or other fx from, and then use the impact from another work part you can also edit these in Reaper, soloing the fx track, playing the peace of the fx you want first, pausing, hitting s to split the item, pressing control+1 to set your marker, deleting the rest of the fx, dropping the next fx in, splitting and deleting what you don’t want from it, and then cutting the last item from the second fx, hitting 1 to move back to your marker and pasting. Do the fx line up as one? Nudge the item until they do. You can also adjust volumes individually if you need to. When an item is selected by control+left or right arrowing to it, tab down to the volume of the individual item and page up or down several 3 dB to get it sounding appropriate.

# Beds

Music beds will be the underlying energy to the imager as fx are the high energy items. Low energy though can play into high energy. A music bed may be at the start of the peace and may just be a beet, or include musical elements such as melody. Don’t use recognized songs as beds. As we don’t know what someone will recognize, use royalty free music tracks as beds. You can find royalty free in nearly every genre these days.

I use beds a lot in top of hour legals, but drop them promptly when I am saying the final tag line such as,

The Nest DB, is a Weber broadcasting Variety station.

This way, the timing can be set so the next song if it has an intro may ramp over this section of the imager, also, if the bed drops out a bit early, there won’t be noticeable key matching issues between the bed and the next song if it includes musical elements. Never! Use an end of a bed to finish out imaging, you don’t hear it in commercial radio. To be clear the end of a bed can match up with end of VO that’s fine, but don’t fade it back up loud, as you might use fx to finish off an imager.

There’s a lot of times that I use different beds or small pieces of beds through out an imager especially if the imager is a few seconds longer. I always try to key match if I’m going directly from one bed to another, or drop and fx in when I cut the bed and use this to pull the listeners attention as I highlight a peace of the voiceover and then start another bed.

Beds as well should be -12-15 dB under the voiceover so, set the bed track volume accordingly. I like beds just a couple DB under the fx. You must listen for this as everything is mastered at different volumes as far as work parts go. The compression should help to take care of slight volume differences without so much tweaking to items.

You will use similar techniques, previewing in Goldwave, then importing into Reaper, and editing the bed in reaper. Solo the bed track so you can get precise edits. IF you are cutting a bed and it’s the end of it, fade it out quickly so you don’t have clicks and pops.

Sometimes you don’t just want to cut the bed but you want it to fade out, but not change the melody as it’s doing so.

You may use Goldwave, and the delay effect. Set your start and finish marker over the final end section that, is in the same note and have it end right after a kick drum or snare of the bed. Fade this out right as the drum hits. Then again select the last passage with the start marker starting on a kick or snare, and set your delay to match the beet this way you have a longer fade out but it doesn’t change melody. You may check the stereo checkbox in the delay option so it bounces left right left etc.

You have to play with the delay timing numbers to find what you want make sure it’s in time tempo to the rest of the bed as it bounces. An easy way to do this is to play the bed and start tapping your foot or set a metronome in Reaper and play it and do your best to start the bed in Goldwave on the click. You will set time tempo by tapping h 4 times. Remember to set your project tempo back to 120 at the end or your entire project will be fast or slower than it should. Then back in Goldwave, set the volume to probably -6 or -9 before you hit ok. Listen to the last part of the passage back does the delay work? Do you need to select the delay and do a volume fade out before you save? Save the entire bed or peace of the bed you are using as a new file so you don’t overwrite your main music file, then if need be reimport it into reaper. Remember you may always set your marker at the start of the bed item before you delete the item and import the new one to keep the same positioning.

Continue the above steps until the editing and production is finalized on your imager.

You should now have all the VO on the vO track, all the fx you are using for the project on your FX track, and your beds on the bed track.

Delete any unused takes off of the VOTMP track.

Play back your project. How does it sound, how is the mix?

Is the Voiceover on top of all other elements?

Can you understand what your saying?

Are there any jarring fx that are louder than the rest?

Is one bed louder than another?

Does your message get across?

Is it quick 8-10 seconds. Are there any long pieces that could be cut to save time?

If you can check off the above checklist, congratulations! You’ve created a peace of imaging. Now, let’s master and render it down to be played back on other systems/ radio!

Press shift+f to invoke the insert fx dialogue on the master track. Now you may type Comp as we are going to add compression.

Tab down to the list view and find

VST: ReaComp (Cockos)

press enter. This will not pop up in a bridged window, and you can tab down to the combo box to find the preset, stock - Master Bus NY Comp. Press enter then shift+tab to ad. Press space on this

In the edit box type

lim

and find VST: Limiter No6 (x86) (Vladislav Goncharov). Press enter on this

This will pop up in a bridged window so hit escape on this and tab down to the presets combo box. You want to start off listening with the Master1 preset. Press space to playback, watch it it’s going to be loud! Does it clip? Is it distorted?

You may down arrow to master two is this any better? Find the best sounding master preset and then, you may add another instance of the compressor and preset stock - Master Bus NY Comp. This will drop the volume a few DB. Everything will sound different, punchy. You may escape once you are set. How are levels, you may need to adjust individual tracks volume.

There are subtle sound differences between the limiter and the maximizer plugin mentioned above. If you are not happy with the sound of the limiter on the master bus, you may try another limiter or maximizer plugin.

Now press control+alt+r to pop up the render window or get to it from your file menu. Type in the path for the file including file name, or tab to the brows button, put a file name in the file name box, then shift+tab twice and find your location to save. Tab back to the file name box and press enter. You will be back in the render box, shift+tab back to the file path box and hit enter, or tab to render and hit enter. It will take a few moments to render all the tracks/vst fx down into one wave file.

After the status shows as complete, launch your newly created file in Goldwave via the Open Dialogue. You will want to use f4 to play, and F5 to rewind. Do the start and end of the wave file line up with the start and end of the imager? If not you will want to trim the ends so there isn’t blank space in the file. This can happen when the vO Temp track was longer than the imager and then you have the rest of that time in the file. Rewind, with f5 until you start hearing the end of the imager playing backwards. Press f4 which will play back forwards at normal speed, and press [ left bracket as soon as you stop hearing audio. Make sure you are listening on headphones and have the volume up decently loud so you don’t set the start point on the tail of your outro fx. Then press f8 which will stop playback, and press control+x to cut the remaining silence from the imager. Now, press control+shift+home to set the start marker back to the start of the file and control+shift+end to set the finish marker to the end of the file and play through it again backwards with f5. Note if Goldwave isn’t set to play selection you may be in the middle of the file. If it starts playing back the end of the imager in reverse as soon as you hit f5, you are good to go. Press control+s to save the file, you may now alt+f4 out of Goldwave.

Play it back on another set of headphones, or another stereo, how does it sound, can you still hear everything clearly?

If you are the station owner and you have a second setup of Stationplaylist assuming this is the playout software you are using, play the imager back through your radio processing, how does it sound? I’m sure it sounds awesome!!!

You may now set the intros outros in the SPL track tool as well if you are satisfied with the imager to ramp over music.

# Producing imaging with highlighted voiceover

There are a few ways I highlight voiceover. We have discussed using FX to highlight what is being said, and another way is to drop the bed out completely with an impact fx and just have dry Voiceover. This will catch the listeners attention as it’s just voice nothing that may become noise in the listeners ear. Another way would be to keep the fx and bed and perform a 4 or 500 HZ high pass in Goldwave on a selection or part of the Voiceover. I use them both just switching out for whatever sounds best on what I’m producing.

As you are working with the Voiceover on your main Voiceover track, split the item at the point you want this to take place, and play through the script. Until the end of the passage. Split the item again so you have an Item that you will perform the high pass on. You may press control+shift+g to glue this item. What this will do is create a new file with the selected item Launch this in Goldwave with control+shift+o. Go to edit, filter, lo-high pass and type in 500. Make sure the high pass radio button is selected and press ok. Goldwave will work it’s magic, and then you may hit F4 to listen back to this passage it will sound thin, almost like it’s in a box or you have your hands cupped over your mouth. You may go to the effects menu and then to the volume sub menu and maximize the volume on this selection to the full preset. Then save the file. It will repopulate in Reaper. When you play back the track now you should hear the change. Take care to listen for any major volume changes and adjust the hi-passed items volume accordingly.

Another way to highlight your message would be to delay the vocal with the delayed copy 4 or 500 HZ high passed. In this instance you will do as explained above splitting the item to have only the script you want. Copy the item. And paste it so as it’s a delay after the first copy already split.

So if the script was

You could win $500

just by playing today.

You will split and have only,

You could win $500

On an item. This will be what’s copied and you will paste it at the start of

just by playing today

You won’t be able to understand as the two are on top of each other. But find the second instance of,

You could win $500

And open it in Goldwave with control+shift+o. Perform your high pass as explained above and in this case don’t maximize the volume as it’s not necessary. Save with control+s and move back to Reaper. Play the project, and turn down the hi-passed item, You could win $500, By -15 DB. Now as you listen back is that wordage kind of in your sub conscience? You think you heard it but your not sure but it’s what you remember.

You can also use these same concepts but include a very fast stereo delay on the item in Goldwave to make the image wide.

Yu will open the item in Goldwave, and it will already be high passed as you have done this above. Keep in mind, if the item is stereo? We will find this out in a moment. Go to Effects menu, delay. Make sure the stereo checkbox is checked. Delays set as 2, set the delay timing as 0.0666, and play it back with f4 from the delay dialogue box as preview, is it in the center of your headphones, mono? Or all around you? Stereo? If it’s big and wide you are good, if it’s in the center, press escape, this will not apply the delay changes. Copy with control+c and press control+n make sure stereo radio button is checked and look at the time you only need like 1 second as we are going to mix this audio in. Press enter and a new sound window should pop up. Press control+m to invoke the mix dialogue press enter to mix at full volume. Now go back in the delay dialogue again and set the above settings. Now as you play back it should be big and wide. Press enter to apply the changes. Now we want to save this file as. As you press control+s the save as dialogue will pop up. Make sure you know where it’s going, files of type, wave is fine. Now move back to reaper and import the new item. The difference here is that you are not copying and pasting the item and then high passing it, you are importing the item that is finalized but still using the same techniques explained above as far as script example and audio placement.

# Reverse reverb

Another way to highlight a section of your voiceover, or bring it in when things are getting quiet is to use reverse reverbs. This technique lets you hear in your sub conscience what is being said all around you wide, before it is said in mono. I use this technique pretty sparingly and a lot of time only reverse a small passage maybe just one syllable of a word just to bring this in early, but as to not be annoying.

You want to select the section and split the item before and after it, making it is’ own peace. Then set your marker at the start of the item so as to not lose placement. Create a new track as you are on your Voiceover track which will put the track under Voiceover. Call it reverse VO or something to that effect. Copy this item then move down to track two, hit one to drive the play head to your marker and paste with control+v. Solo this track so that you can focus on it.

Now lets reverse the item before adding reverb to it. Select the item with control+left or right arrow, there is only one item on the track. Now press control+shift+end to move to the end of the item. Press alt+i and arrow down to empty item and press enter. Now select both of these items by first pressing control+left arrow until you are back at item1, then, control+shift+right arrow twice. Press control+shift+g to glue the two items together as one. This will make sure that there is time for the reverb tale after the Voiceover. Press F4 to launch the actions dialogue and type in Reverse and hit enter. Tab down to the list view and choose the

Item: Reverse items to new take

Option. Press enter on this and then escape out of the dialogue. Now lets insert reverb as an fx by hitting f and typing in verb. You will use

VST: ReaVerbate (Cockos)

You will go down to the preset

sink - wide wide

Press enter on it and then escape out of the dialogue. Now as you play the project back this small section will be very loud and with way to much reverb. Press control+shift+I to apply the effects on the item. Press F4 to launch the actions dialogue and type in Reverse and hit enter. Tab down to the list view and choose the

Item: Reverse items to new take

Option. Press enter on this and then escape out of the dialogue. Now as you drive to the start of the item with control+left arrow and press space to play you probably won’t hear anything but as you keep listening or start to page down you will start to hear the reverse reverb. Find close to the start of where you start to hear it, pause playback, now lets split the item and delete the first empty item as it were. Now we need to drive back to the start of the item, and play it a little bit you will probably hear that when you press space to play that it’s not silent you can hear the reverb some. Lets play it for a second or so, then pause playback, and then fade in with control+[ left bracket. Now as you play the item back from the start of it by pressing control+left arrow you will hear it come in from silent. Now we want to cut the item. Now unsolo the track and press 1 to set your play head at your previously set marker. Paste the item here on the second track. You will now need to move the item back. You can nudge it with number lock on, 4, and you will have to nudge it quite a ways. What you want is for the end of the reverse verb tail to line up with when you start speaking the passage on your voiceover track. If your reverb tail is coming in way to early so there’s to much sub conscience and it’s distracting, you can set your marker at where playback starts on your main VO track on the item in question, and then page up once, if this is a good length for the tail to fade in you can down arrow to your reverse verb track and split the item here, deleting the first item and then fade the volume of the reverse tale once more so as to come in from silent. Now we want to turn this reverse verb track down by -9 to -12 DB. We can add some compression to the track, you can choose whatever preset sounds best to make it a bit more punchy if you’d like.

# Making a section of your vo stutter or skip.

Split the VO item where you want this to start. With playback stopped, press right arrow a couple of times, and press s to split the item here. Set ripple mode to track. Copy the item with the very small section of voiceover. Press control+left arrow to make sure this item is selected, and press control+shift+end to move to the end of the item Press control+v to paste. Now press control+right arrow and playback are you on the new very small section of voiceover? Press control+shift+end to move to the end of this item and paste again. Continue to move to end of the last small section item, and paste and then control+left arrow several times and play back the audio. How does this sound do you hear the studder, is it way to close together, nudge each of the new short items a couple nudges to the right to space things out a bit. Note that this is going to move the rest of your voiceover so you may have to realign/nudge the fx and bed over to the right some for the remainder of the imager.

# Using listener or artist drops.

I realize I’ve said this before but these can become overused quickly and if you use the same artists or listener drops in multiple pieces of imaging it becomes noticeable.

Create a track under your Voiceover track called drops. Ad dynamic compression to the track as explained above and use the stock - Aggressive Vocal preset. If you have written in your script where a drop is to be and or the text spoken by the listener or artist it will be easy to find where to import them. Again you want the drops to gently crossfade at the end of your spoken vo. You also want to take special care and listen to each drop you are using after it is in the project to hear it’s volume and any extra noise in the background, is it rumbly or windy? Perform a 100 HZ high pass on it in Goldwave as explained above. Can you not get the volumes just right because the dynamics of the speakers are so different? Ad another layer of compression or two using the same preset as mentioned above. This should help even things out. Play it back with your entire project, can you understand what the drop is saying? Does one drop have harsh reverb on it and the rest don’t? Add some verb to the track to make things fit. Does the drops content fit your script or genre? No joke, I heard a drop for winning T-Pane tickets within imaging on a country station and thought as a producer WTF?

# Using the chorus/hook of a song.

There are times where you want to use the chorus or hook of a song or songs within imaging. Make sure not to use to much of it, just half the chorus is fine you want the listener to recognize it but not be wanting to hear that song next in your stations playlist. You can use similar reverse reverb techniques as explained above at the beginning of the hook to fade it in and give it some sparkle. You can then use bouncing delay as long as it fits the beet as describe above to end out the hook. Make sure to add some compression to your hooks track and make sure volumes are very similar between songs. Is your station pitching up the playback of tracks to squeeze in more advertising? Please pitch up the hooks to by a few sense to match or perfect pitch listeners will be distracted, just saying.

# Using sound fx within imaging.

It’s ok to use sound fx alongside production work parts, just take care to put them on there own track, and pay attention to quality of the fx. Also take care to pay attention to length of the fx, listeners may tune out when a bowling ball goes rolling down the lane for 3 seconds. Have the fx under voiceover if you can to make them work for you instead of by themselves. To me sound fx in radio imaging can bring humor and it’s done well when they are under the spoken message.

# Course Summary

This concludes the Number1 Imager course. Within this course you’ve learned:

What is radio imaging?

What you will need to write voice and produce radio imaging.

Types of imaging

Choosing fX/Work parts

What is The Bed and how to use it.

Writing copy

Recording Voiceover.

Editing/producing Voiceover

Setting up tracks in Reaper, volumes and fx plugins.

Fine editing, arranging your vo per the script.

Producing basic imaging

E.Q-ING your vocal:

Producing imaging with highlighted hi-passed voiceover

Using reverse reverb to highlight the message.

Making a section of your vo stutter or skip.

Using listener or artist drops.

Using the chorus/hook of a song.

Using sound fx within imaging.

I hope that the concepts learned within this course will help you for many years to come. Keep an ear on radio imaging in your local market, no doubt imaging will change as time passes and new technology becomes available. Do your best to figure out how to recreate what other producers are doing so you have it in your arsenal to always be cutting edge.

End of: Number One Imager course

Written by Drew Weber

2023