I'm going to leave Saturday's show on the system for next weekend; there's no point putting something new on if the one in the queue hasn't aired!
General News
Omissions. As you can see, some notable items are missing from the shows; for instance, there are tons of duets that you might have been looking for, but did not hear on that show. I recently discovered an entire disc of duets by Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna. There is an article about the lovely opera star, talking about her breakup with Mr Alagna, which you might be interested in. I don't listen to a lot of Italian opera, so I will find it difficult to select a duet or two to play on the program. The pop duets available are numerous, and I will try and find some for you on another show!
Overtures, too, are numerous; classical music fans all have their favorites, and might not find all of them on next Saturday's show! The same with the Variations; the Enigma Variations were conspicuous by their absence. I will try to squeeze them in. Also, I want to present a set of variations of the sort: What if Mozart wrote "Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas"? I don't know where to look for those sorts of things!!
Running a Radio Station. All I really know is how my particular show is run!
There is a computer in the station, with an enormous hard disc, and a clock-driven program that runs continuously. Like an alarm you might have running on your own computer or on your smart phone, the station program is designed to play music from a particular folder at a particular time. That's mainly it.
At particular times, too: roughly every 30 minutes, according to FCC (radio) rules, the program is instructed to play a station identification, which sits in a particular folder. At these times, brief service messages (Public Service Announcements, or PSA's) are played, to take up a total of two minutes, for announcements and identification. The messages played on the hour are a little more formal than those played at the half-hour.
For some programs, the show host sits right in the studio at the microphone, and plays music he has got ready as MP3s, or conducts an interview, or anything he likes. These are live shows. In these sorts of cases, the show host is in charge of the mid-hour interruptions.
For other programs, the show host sends in (by mail, by Internet, or by actually coming into the studio and uploading it) two 28-minute MP3s. That leaves 2 minutes for the station messages at the half-hour and the hour. This is called a Podcast, and they tried to get me to do this. Unfortunately, when this plays over a car radio, for instance, no information is displayed except the name of the program.
For yet other programs, like ours, all the music files are loaded into the computer, with a playlist, which is just a text file with the music files listed carefully in order. When the Station program plays this playlist, your car radios (and some home stereos) have the ability to display: the Title, the Performer, the Album, and some other information. I like that, because I don't always announce the performer, but I make sure that the performer is listed on this extra information, which is called metadata. If I tire of providing all that, I can go into a podcast format, where the extra information is not broadcasted. I have to organize the playlist so that the music playtime adds up to four groups of 28 minutes (plus a couple of seconds, possibly), so that the program can splice in the station messages every half hour.
Finally, if there are slots where local programming is not available, the Station program is instructed to splice in a program from somewhere else. These are called syndicated programs, which are selected by a sort of committee at our radio station. We only air syndicated shows that are free; commercial stations have to pay for their syndicated shows, and NPR stations have to pay for their shows as well.
The broadcast stream. The signal from the station goes via a trunk Internet line to a computer sitting at the foot of the transmitting tower, where it sends the signal (and a power cable) up the tower to the transmitter. Ours is a tiny 1 Kilowatt transmitter, which only transmits at about 50% capacity, because it is old, and the connections are corroded, and there is a lot of power loss. The station is in a constant battle to get a more powerful transmitter, and a higher location. It so happens that a commercial station in Martha's Vineyard has just upgraded to a more modern transmitter, and we're trying to get their older transmitter for ourselves. But we can't afford the extra juice it will need, and we don't have the resources to lug the transmitter here from Massachusetts!!! Everybody at our station is a volunteer, though some of them would dearly like to be paid a stipend.
Ideas for Future Shows
Obviously, I have to keep a list of potential themes for future shows.
Children's Music.
Early Music. This is music from before Baroque times, and even early Baroque.
Unusual Instruments, and Early Instruments.
Unusual performances of well-known music. I do some of this already, but there's a lot more available. Computer performance is a major subclass.
Opera. We've heard a certain amount of opera, but a few snippets could be interesting.
Modern Music. I'm going to be very selective here, and only feature very mainstream music from the 20th century and later.
Music with stories associated with it.
Modern Suites. For instance, the Mother Goose suite of Modest Mussorgsky, and Pictures at an Exhibition.
World Music. There are other programs on our station that are based on this theme, but it's a big world.
Folk Music.
New Age takes on classical music, in other words, fusion music, and crossover music.
[Added later:]
Sonatas for various instruments.
Death, suffering and Grieving. I don't know about this; young listeners are often hostile to this sort of thing. But a lot of music was written in troubled times, and it is useful to be familiar with works that are concerned with suffering, death and anguish, so that when you're in that mood, you know where to go.
Choral music. Writing good choral music is very hard, and when you hear good choral music, it is amazing. It might be an acquired taste, and if you've sung in a choir, you're halfway there.
Marches. This is a more popular genre than anyone would think, ranging from military marches to songs and tunes that just happen to be written as marches.
Music for plucked string: guitars, banjos, mandolins, lutes, and harps. And, of course, harpsichords.
Symphonies. These are just large-scale works according to a certain pattern, or form. We've already listened to a number of them. The 19th and 20th centuries had a surfeit of them, but some of them are excellent, and worth getting familiar with. Obviously I don't know all the good ones, but I'm happy to share the few that I do know.
Halloween!! I'm going to try and get together a nice mix of music, but scary music is not very common at all, unfortunately. Luckily for all of us, another theme in Halloween is humor and comedy, and that might be helpful.
If you have ideas, tell me about them!
Archie.
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