Once all the sounds were recorded it was time to start arranging the programme. All the audio files from the various recording trips were uploaded to a shared cloud drive. As you would expect, we didn’t make the recordings in the order they would be used in the programme, so we had to organise them again later. We wrote down a rough script and structure, planning how we would make our point over a 15 minute radio programme, not too dissimilar to how you might structure an essay before you write it.  

The programme was structured out in Ableton Live, Ableton is a very intuitive digital audio workstation (DAW) which makes arranging multiple audio files much easier. A DAW allows you to work with multiple audio files across multiple channels, allowing for you to have audio files playing simultaneously. Another very important advantage to using Ableton was that all the audio files were converted to the same bit rate and sample rate, this was needed as the Zoom field recorder records in a different sample rate as the audio interface used to record the narration.  The programme was arranged in Ableton’s session view mode, session mode display has a bar at the bottom of the screen showing the duration of your project, that we used to determine if we needed to trim any segments down to not exceed the 15 minute time frame. Along the top of the session view you can place section markers; we used this to help us organise the project as we were working with around 40 channels of audio. As I would be mixing and mastering the programme in Logic (a different DAW) I needed to import all the audio files in the correct arrangement order. Ableton has the option to export all the channels of a project individually, rather than just the stereo out. Exporting the entire projects channels separately means that all the audio files start and end at the same time, keeping the arrangement in place, ready for me to edit in Logic.