So, while producing my tech column for this week, I was digging around for some sound effects. I ran across one called “Muttering Crowd.”

Often, when you’re in public radio and on a limited budget, you have to make your own sound effects. This is something that my colleagues who produce Definitely Not The Opera at quite good at doing. That’s part of why I enjoyed working for that show. They’re based in Winnipeg, but as the west-coast producer, I could call up (as I did) and say “Hey, I need the sound of a crowd kind of muttering in the background about nothing. Something I can layer underneath a piece I’m working on.”

So rather than dig through the thousands (read: dozens) of sound effect CDs we have for just the right sound, the crew in Winnipeg would all gather in the little sound booth and just make the sound for me.

And so, I present to you, for the first time revealed in its entirety ever publicly, the raw sound of a crowd muttering, as performed by the production team of DNTO. (Some of them were laughing a bit during it because, let’s face it, gathering a dozen people in a room to mutter incoherently — for a living — is kinda funny.)…

Download/Listen to SFX Crowd Muttering
(All mutterings, ramblings, and incoherent babbling are copyright © 2006 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. All rights reserved. Not valid in Quebec.)

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	DNTO, How Shows Work, The Odd File