Yesterday I started my Radio Adelaide training and I loved it! I am doing the ROCC, (Radio and Online Contributors Course), which is part of a Cert III in Media if I wish to take it further. I’m thinking yes! Today we learned a bit about the instrument panel in the studios, and I recorded my first interview! It was fun! The sound of your own voice in your headphones is slightly weird, but I really enjoyed myself. I’ve been feeling a bit down and tired since the move – possibly still recovering from that, maybe the new meds, who knows. I’ve been concentrating on better separating my work and play times and making sure I actually go and do something I enjoy for my relax times instead of just zoning out and letting the hours go by. This afternoon in between two different training sessions I took time off and played computer games, and I felt a lot better afterwards, more energized. But getting into the Radio Adelaide training was even better yet, I love learning new skills, I love a challenge, I felt my brain wake up and focus and take everything in – this doesn’t always happen, but it’s magic when it does.

I remembered that so far my new study has been admin and paperwork, which grinds me down, but that soon it will be new skills and being stretched and exposed to new ideas and I will feel excited and enthused about it. That was very encouraging. I remember why I had been so excited about all my new study!I’m going to learn how to use WordPress – Radio Adelaide are setting up a blog for interesting stories and interviews to be hosted on and as part of this training we have to learn how to use it and upload content to it. I’ll also be learning how to podcast – hurrah! We’re working with Adobe Audition which so far has been delightfully easy to use. I love it when programs use similar commands and hot keys. We did basic editing of a sound file using the Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V cut and paste commands! Couldn’t be simpler. Wheee!

What awesome skills to develop as a Peer Worker! I don’t know exactly how or where I’ll use them, but I am very excited by all the possibilities. I did an impromptu interview with fellow trainee Gary, he elected to be asked about his carbon footprint and chatted about bike riding and recycling, and I elected to to talk about some of my earliest memories (these were the only options we had) and chatted about how excited I was as a little girl about wearing my new red sandals for the first time, and the experience of being accidentally smacked in the noggin with a gold club – which I think for the duration of the interview I called a ‘golf stick’ whoops. But there you have it, two vivid early memories of mine. I like the sound of the voices in the microphones, you have to get very close to them and the voice kind of burrs, become softer and base-y, it’s oddly intimate sitting in a studio with a stranger asking questions about their life. I imagine it would be easy to become comfortable with the other person and forget this was going to be aired to the rest of Adelaide!

Sound editing! Recording processes! Absolutely fascinating. Apparently next week we will be learning how to use a portable recorder for interviews outside the studio, and possibly how to edit multi-track files – where you have more than one layer – say the voices for your interview is one, then maybe some music fading in is a second layer, or some sound affects a third. Just think of the possibilities! Some poets record their poems and post the sound file alongside the written form – very useful for those with a print handicap of some kind, and sometimes reading a poem can bring it to life. I certainly enjoy reading mine, such as at the Broken Hill event recently, and listening to a well read poem is a joy. New horizons beckoning.