There are hundreds of articles written about putting audio on the Internet or on your website, however that is only the “how to” and not the “what to” of audio communications.

In my years as an audio producer/engineer the lessons learned are extremely valuable and even though the Internet is a new medium, many ideas and techniques do work over the net, even though they originated and were used on the radio.

First, how does your audience consume the audio information they receive via the Internet?

Are they listening to their Internet audio through the speakers of their laptop, in the ear - full audio quality headphones from a MP3 player or did they burn a CD to play in the car while traveling to work?

When I use to mix records and commercials in the early 80’s, we’d make a cassette copy (remember those) and play it in the car, play it on a home sound system and then play it on a cheap mono cassette player. Why? Well, to make sure that the balance of the lower and higher frequencies would not muffle the clarity of the speaking voice.

Now I am not suggesting that you listen to your voice recordings over 5 to 10 different sound systems every time you create an audio presentation for your website. What I am suggesting is that you at least listen to it over:

1) a set of good headphones to simulate an iPod/MP3 player environment and then

2) Through your laptop speakers

If you can hear the voice clearly, and identify any unwanted noise so you can clean up the recording, you’re pretty well on your mark.

Second, how can we bring them into the audio program we have created?

Speaking with confidence and clearly is one thing, however keeping your audience tuned in until the end is another. This is where the 5 senses come in and can give you a better shot at keeping them listening.

Without getting to much into NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), everyone has there preferred method of learning and tempting the 5 senses has a way of drawing in your listener.

The five of course are:

seeing
hearing
feeling
smelling
and tasting

By communicating to these senses we pull the listener in.

Third, how can we embellish the 5 senses to get more attentive response?

Simply by using adjectives that play on these senses we can bring the listener deeper into our presentation.

For example:

For sight use adjectives that describe color, motion that can be seen, size descriptions, etc. So instead of “This beautiful flag can be yours”, try “This large, rippling, red, white and blue flag can be yours”

For sound, adjectives that refer to audio such as the types of sound muffled or sharp, loud or soft, rhythmic or random, etc. And instead of “The falling hammer, scared us” you might say “The hammer hit the ground with a sharp echoing bang that scared all of us.”

Touch use adjectives that can be felt like sharp, smooth, rough, hot, cold, etc. “We felt the heat that day” is much more exact when it is, “We were boiling under the hot steaming rays of the mid day desert sun.”

Smell and Taste can certainly be the most memorable senses of all and dressing up these experiences with descriptive adjectives just brings home the sensation. “The skunks bitter and burnt rubber odor attacked the back of my sinuses. Or how about “I love bread with warm creamy butter and luscious mild cheddar cheese melted on top”.

Finally a fourth element is sound effects. Put the sound of a frying pan sizzling and a toaster popping up in the back ground of the last example and you have a full screen cinematic mind movie happening!

Let your imagination be your palette and lets hear what you can create.

Bernie Landry is a website MacGyver. He has 27 years of audio communications experience, played on the BBS’s and has been doing new media websites and marketing since the net started. The term website MacGyver was given to him by his clients because he fixes web site problems and marketing situations with what ever is available on hand at the time to get the problems resolved quickly. Audio resources and ideas: http://www.richmediasound.com and http://www.websitemacgyver.com