Can you tell it's me?

[Kenneth_Bruce]

Alrighty folks! So here's something for you. I pre record voice tracks for a digital AM station. Since I am not there to take phone calls and talk to listeners, I decided to fake some.

Let me know what you think! Do the callers sound like me?

Tips? Hints? Tricks?

[Mike Sommer]

It works.

Throw in a few, mm hmm's, yeahs, over the callers conversation, like you're actually listening- just one or two.

[Pat Sweeney]

Sounds good Ken. Maybe a few hums and haws that Mike mentions and also slow it down and make the artist sound even more stoned than he was to make it even more convincing.

[jsgilbert]

I would suggest that you call a friend and pick a topic to discuss and do a back and forth, What's missing are a few things.
1. We don't see either voice stepping on or interrupting the other. This happens a lot.
2. There realli isn't any conflict or resolution and the conversation to me is a bit boring.
3. Lack of personal agendas. Usually you'll hear one of the parties try to convince the other to do something.
4. Conversation stays on topic. I'm a guy who used tio spend hours and hours listening to some of the best talk radio guys in the business when I grew up. Yoou do a show on LSD and you get a caller who starts in with "Hey I tried to call you last week when you were taling about how we thought Kennedy got killed..." I did like the first part about caller are yout there, are you there. The other one would be where you have slap back echo and have to ask them to turn down their radio.

What you did was good. I'm mentioning ways I think it could be better. Finsihing somebody's sentence sort of stuff works well or having the caller search for a word and then you give it to them. The voices weren't over the top and didn't strike me as being the same person. the phone compression on the one end certaikly helps that.

As for tossing in pauses, etc. I would indeed be careful that it doesn't backfire and you start sounding like Shatner. Most people I have found don't seem to put them in at the right place. Ways of getting tha effect would be to look up from your scripts frequently or even to study your script for a few minutes and then record without it in front of you.
I hope this has been helpful.

[jsgilbert]

I forgot to mention about moducation as in getting excited and then baxcking off. The caller talks about droipping out of school, but I don't get a sense of whether he is ashamed about i, rationalizes it or what. Generally someone who will call a radio station and sit on hold for 30 minutes to an hour has some sort of passion or something to get off their chest. The radio guy also seems to be lacking much of a persona and is pretty vanilla. It might be interesting for him to defend the caller as in "hey no big deal, most of my cqllers didn't graduate college... or the other way, well you're only 30 have you thought about going back to school? Anyway, just a thought

[Scott Pollak]

Yeah........ what these guys already said.

BUT!

As I was listening to this, something else struck me.
Most of us know you've been job-hunting, Kenneth, and as I was listening to this you struck me as being very natural at hosting a local talk-radio show. Now I'm sure this was scripted, but I'm betting you could do it with some research, practice and show prep.

Years ago I worked as afternoon drive dj for a local rimshot FM station. Their sister station was an local AM station with a lot of canned programs piped in via satellite. I was approached by management with the idea of me hosting a live, local talk show for a couple of hours in mid-day. I was pumped about it and would have enjoyed it, but it never got off the ground.

I think you ought to develop some scenarios and put together some samples and market yourself to any and all local, small market stations within several hundred miles of where you live to try to pick up a local talk show. Find some relevant current topics, develop a brief mini-show (5 minutes?) and produce it as a demo. Don't use yourself as the callers, do what JS said above, talk to friends over the phone and react, live, to their thoughts on the topics.

Go for it, dude. I think you may have a talent for this.

[Mike Sommer]

Oh yeah, I like that idea Scott. I heard the same thing in Kenneth's voice.

This is something the you could polish, it's not easy but it's something that can be developed.