The Archers

After listening to one of The Archers shows and linking knowledge from Alan Beck's article, the first thing I noticed was 'background field' which is the baseline of Ferrington's three aspects of soundscape from the article being 'Background field', 'Contextual sound', and 'Foreground sound'. I also heard some contextual sounds of sheep in the foreground that drew a picture of where this scene was located, which Ferrington called 'Signposting'.

Signposting he described was the prompt sound you hear at the beginning of the scene which could either be foreground sounds, or dialogue from the characters indicating the location. In this case of The Archers they mainly dialogue is used to break into the scene scenario.

Another thing I noticed when initially listening was the way they used distance away from the microphone to create the illusion in your head that its a 3D space rather then having the same sort of volume uniform throughout the show. In music this this is called dynamics which links in the same way to this. According to the article the way that production do this is to have a set in which the actors can roam around to create this sense of space. However most of the time at least one of the characters sounds as if they are miked 'up front' basically meaning having the microphone pretty much next to their mouth which I guess having the other character 'roaming' creates the sense of space and distance.

I personally don't listen to any sort of radio drama or audiobook but I could hear how well constructed the soundscape was. Everything sort of blended that made me create my own interpretation of the scene almost like a book which I guess is why people enjoy them. My personal likings are visuals, and I would much rather get the direct idea of the director/producer is trying to tell me.