The Setup<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Debbie and I are members of a rather large Sunday School class \u2014 almost 90 members \u2014 and our quarterly parties are kind of a big deal. Each of our four geographically-organized “small groups” plan them, provide the food and decorations, and come up with some kind of entertainment for the evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Horseshoe Bay small group was responsible for the October soiree, and I had the poor judgment to suggest a “Name That Tune” contest. By doing so, I instantly and certainly unintentionally also became responsible for putting it together. But lest I give the wrong impression, once the die was cast I was happy and motivated to figure out how best to make it work. And I landed on the absolutely brilliant<\/em> (humility being one of my strong suits) idea of creating a radio broadcast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alert Gazette readers will remember that I once worked as a radio DJ back in the days when transistor radios were high tech, breaking news came to us via teletype, and all of our music was on vinyl or reel-to-reel tape. [I wrote about that experience in 2002<\/a>.] So I sorta kinda had an idea of how things might work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some of you might be of the vintage to remember how radio stations used to have contests wherein they would assemble a handful of very short snippets from the week’s Top 40 or whatever, and listeners would call in and attempt to identify them. That approach was the inspiration for my project, but with some significant variations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Our goals were threefold. First and foremost, we wanted it to be fun, and that meant choosing songs that were more likely to be recognizable to our group’s mostly Boomer demographic. So, I didn’t choose anything later than the Eighties (and, actually, mostly stayed in the Sixties and Seventies). In addition, I wanted to span multiple genres, including hymns (Sunday School, remember?), “classic” TV and movie theme songs, as well as rock, pop, and country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Second, we wanted it to be hard enough that no team (the group would be seated at tables of eight, and each table would be a team) would be likely to correctly identify all of them. But we also wanted to make it easy enough that everyone would be likely to correctly identify the majority of the audio clips.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And, finally, I wanted to put the whole thing into the radio-centric format I alluded to above, so that it wouldn’t be simply a series of clips with no context. I decided to attempt to create a “Top 25 countdown” of audio snippets that the teams would attempt to identify.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With those criteria in mind, I got to work. The primary tool I used was Audacity<\/a>, which is free, open-source, cross-platform software. Audacity is one of the best tools I know of to create and\/or edit audio files. It’s extremely easy to use, but also feature-rich and quite powerful. It was perfect in every way for the NTT project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I wanted to employ some sound effects, jingles, and stingers<\/a> throughout the project to evoke the days of 20th century radio. There are tons of websites offering those things, some of which are royalty-free, but I discovered that I had everything I needed on my iMac. If you have a Mac, drill down through the following path (I’m running Mac OS 15 \u2014 Sequoia):<\/p>\n\n\n\n Depending on your OS and installation, within the folder labeled Apple, you’ll find a series of folders that contain literally hundreds of royalty-free sounds, neatly categorized by musical genre (e.g. modern R&B, blues, dubstep, etc.) or by subject matter (e.g. sports, jingles, transportation, stingers, etc). Every one of those sounds can be imported to and edited within Audacity to achieve the desired effect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I also wanted a way to introduce each snippet so that the teams could keep track of where they were in the countdown (they would have answer sheets with blank lines numbered 25 through 1). I enlisted one of our class members who we knew would be unable to attend due to some physical challenges, but who we knew would enjoy being a part of the project, with the added advantage of having a distinctive “radio voice.” He eagerly agreed to join the production team…which brought the total number up to three (we’ll get to the third member in a bit).<\/p>\n\n\n\n I asked him first to record the countdown as “song number 25,” “song number 24,” and so on. He could do that in one continuous recording because I could easily break it into 25 discrete introductions. I then asked him to record an overall introduction to the countdown and I provided a script for him to use as is or adapt to his style. Then, finally, he scripted and recorded a couple of commercials which I inserted into the countdown, again to maintain the feel of an actual radio program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While he was doing all of that \u2014 and, incidentally, we never physically met; he recorded his parts using the Voice Memos app on his iPhone and texted or emailed the resulting MP3 files to me \u2014 I recorded things like station identifications, an overall introduction to the countdown, and a formal ending to the program. Oh, and I also created the audio snippets that comprised the countdown (kind of a significant detail, right?).<\/p>\n\n\n\n I have almost 7,000 songs in my Apple Music app (formerly iTunes), including a couple of albums worth of theme songs from movies and classic TV shows (it’s a long story, but if you’re really<\/em> curious, this link is for you<\/a>). I assumed that I was well within the spirit of the legal doctrine of Fair Use<\/a> to extract up to 30 seconds (and sometimes as little as 10 seconds) of audio from the files and arrange them in a random sequence that skipped around the various genres I outlined above.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, the original radio contests used shorter snippets and ran them back-to-back-to-back to make it more difficult for the listener. We had mercy on our listeners and I included about five seconds of “dead air” between each snippet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With all of these aural building blocks in hand \u2014 or in computer \u2014 I constructed a 15-minute program in Audacity, and exported it in mp3 format. I then imported that file into Apple Music and sync’d it to my iPhone and iPad (for redundancy), from which I could stream it to a robust Bluetooth speaker at the party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Throughout the whole process, from concept to final version, my friend and silent partner, Scott, acted as a sounding board and it was with his assurance and support that I was fairly<\/em> confident that we had a good product for the party group. Nevertheless, I was still relieved at how much folks seemed to enjoy it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Scott took over at the end of the recording. We had decided beforehand that we would let each table ask for a replay of one snippet that had stumped them (I had also put the individual snippets on my phone for quick access). We gave each table that option, and then Scott declared the contest ended, and he gave out the official answers. He identified each song and also provided one or two bits of trivia about it; the trivia was also well-received.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The team results \u2014 one point for each correct ID \u2014 seemed to confirm that I’d hit on the right selections for the game: low score was 18 (from a shorthanded team) and high score was 23. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I had a great time creating the Name That Tune “radio program,” and while it took quite a bit of time to build, the response made it completely worthwhile. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But enough of the sausage-making. Perhaps you’d like to try it out for yourself. I’ve embedded a slightly edited version [1]<\/em><\/sup><\/a> below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Following is the Name That Tune Countdown in mp3 format. I thought about suggesting that you post your answers in the comments section below, but that’s not very efficient or helpful. Instead, if there are any songs that stumped you, feel free to post either the song number (or the title after you check the answers). I would be interested to see if there’s a common Thread of Confusion (apologies to The Temptations<\/a>). \ud83d\ude04<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Project<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
The Tools and The Building Blocks<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
![\"Screen](\"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/applefilepathtosounds.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nThe Results<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
The Countdown (For Your Listening Pleasure)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n