Recently, at a local radio conference, I was talking to a 'production junkie' from India about Digital Workstations and how they don't bestow any special ability on the production wizard wannabe. I did put forth to him the idea that the magic is in you and said I would address how one accesses that magic in future coloums. Well, the future is now. Let's begin with a question: Are you a studio junkie? Do you spend a lot of time hanging out at the station or in the studio? Or do you work at a big radio network where the work culture is to leave only after your Programming Head retires to his coffin for the day? Not good.

Studio junkies can quote chapter and verse all things Howard Stern said that one morning, or can speak for hours about the evils of deregulation and consolidation. Studio junkies can tell you what song was at number one two years ago today on the Planet M charts and then explain the power struggle that went behind the scenes at the label that the record came out on. Studio junkies know all about compression, limiting, EQ and signal expansion. In fact, studio junkies know everything there is to know about radio and production…but they don't know jack about life.

If you're a rookie, being somewhat of a studio junkie is forgivable, barely. Rookies often spend the first couple of years of their career honing their skills, pratising the commercial mix or figuring out how bussing works. But after a while, anyone who spends an inordinate amount of time wandering around a radio station is a studio junkie.

So, I ask again, are you a studio junkie? If so, there is no 12-step programme for you. You just have to reprogramme yourself to go home occasionally. You have to force yourself to go out and socialize. Go to a bar. Go to the movies. Take an extension course at a local college. Meet new people; people who know nothing about radio or production. In other words, get a life.

So now it's your turn to ask, "What's all this got to do with bringing out my magic?" The answer is straighforward: Everything. If you want to pull magic out of your well, there has to be something in there to draw from. It's upto you to keep it full.

The listeners really don't care what the number one song was on this day two years ago. They don't care about compression, or any of that other stuff. What they care about is life. If you don't have one, how in the heck are they going to relate to anything you say or do or produce? You have the live the life of your listener. Music artists spend years "living life" so that they can communicate on a meaningful level with their audience. They might not consciously think about doing that, but that's what they're doing, just the same. As artists mature, their message becomes more piercing or powerful. Critics talk all the time about the maturing process and how it improves the enduring performer. If you are struggling mightily to life yourself from a small market that is not a metro city, you have to start thinking like an artist. Getting a life outside this medium is step one.

Step two is a little trickier. As you start living life, think about how you can put your experiences into what you do. Make everything you produce, personal. Turn it inside out and look at it from different perspectives.

During one of my radio days, I was once told to make station sound like MTV Europe looks. It sounds like an impossible thing to do, and I thought so back then. I took the task to heart and started watching MTV, something I seldom, if ever, had done before. For several weeks, I watched every chance I had, and slowly started to hear things in my head that were very MTV-ish. I started to think of blurred images as flanged sound, overexposed film as very clipped compression and scratchy film stock as static. Within a month, people were commenting on how hip and cutting-edge the station was sounding. Hmmm...that sounds like MTV Europe!

At this point, I rediscovered the dangers of being a studio junkie. I started to watch every TV show the same way. Soon I was doing the same thing at the movies and even live theatre. I became thirsty for new life experiences that I could use in my production.

Now, even listening to a CD is a completely different experience for me. As I am writing this, I'm listening to a CD by DJ Nalin & Kane and have already heard several things I want to recreate in promos on the air.

No doubt, the one experience we can ALL relate to over the last several years is the attack against the US on September 11. I still remember the day when my station voice sent me a few chops (sounders) of various station broadcasts from across the country. And I still remember the discussion we have about creativity at such a time. Within days of the event, there were are at least 15, maybe 20, songs mixed with actualities from the horrible experience, which aired on stations all over the US. You just could not miss it on station broadcasts over the Net. It's a pretty tired cliché by now, but it seemed Programming Heads wanted something that made a statement on the air. If they couldn't get one done in-house, they borrowed one from another station.

Well, it was a shocking event for all of us. But we all saw and heard the same things. My question to me was: "How can I do something creative with this?" My second question was: "Why add to the general misery?" Instead of playing the emotionally charged clips of eyewitness accounts of the attack, I decided to produce and play post our TOH News (top of the hour news bulletin), the emotionally supercharged clips of the heroic things people did after the attack and send them to Enrique Iglesias' song, "Hero."

So does this make me more creative? Maybe. I did the same thing everyone else in the US and stations across the world were doing, but I took an event that everyone could relate to and turned it inside out. A skill I learned by watching MTV and making my station sound like it looks, made my prespective a lot different. When it comes right down to it, it is more creative.

So, if you are a studio junkie, even if your addiction is mild, kick the habit. Go home early. Do what you like. If you boss wants to know why, just tell him that you're refilling the well. Live the life of our listener. Keep your mental ears on. You'll be amazed with how much magic there is in you.

The best part of all this, you will soon discover, is that doing production will take less time because the ideas will just flow out of you. They you'll have even more time to have a life.

Send your comments to Mohit S Balani