Tom Dick + Debbie: audio

ELT songwriting in Oxford

Evie — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 09:15:33 +0000

Our Oxford recording studio has been rocking out to the sound of primary school English language teaching songs over the last couple of weeks. Our composing team have been working round the clock on several large projects, producing some incredibly catchy ELT songs which we’ve all been humming non-stop. Our favourite so far is a song written to the theme of La Bamba, which caused a flurry of questionable dance moves among the TDD production crew. Arriba!

Recording Radio Jingles in Oxford

Evie — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 13:55:22 +0000

Oxford-based musician Mike Gerrard popped in to our recording studio in central Oxford yesterday to record a jingle he’d written for Chris Evans’ Radio 2 breakfast show. Listen out for it in the mornings – it’s called ’Give us a Wave’. Music production in Oxford is a hugely dynamic and active scene and we love being at the centre of it and working with fun new talents like Mike.

Oxford Recording Studio Gets a Makeover

Evie — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 10:12:09 +0000

We get lots of compliments on our fabulous Oxford recording studio; unsurprisingly, as it’s fun, funky and filled with clever stuff. But never ones to rest on our laurels, we’ve been updating our recording space to make it even more conducive to producing absolute top quality audio recordings. Who’d have thought the best recording studio in Oxford could get any better?? Yep, you heard it here first people…

Keeping it cool in Oxford

Sam — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 15:39:16 +0000

Well although today has been a tad rainy in Oxford, we’ve spent our summer keeping our actors nice and cool in our fully air-conditioned recording studios, allowing them to record our audio books and educational songs in a cool bliss. One pleased voice over artist was Dean Williamson, also known as the football coach in the Roundtree’s Randoms advert. Now it doesn’t get cooler than that!

Work Experience at an Oxford recording studio?

Lana — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 12:26:13 +0000

Within moments of stepping into the Oxford recording studio on my first day, I found myself sat in on a recording session with the talented Giles Andreae (creator of Edward Monkton and Purple Ronnie) for one of his exciting new projects. An extremely surreal and fascinating experience, I appreciated everyone being super-friendly and allowing me to observe for a short while. Certainly a huge contrast to the negative stereotype of work experience consisting of little more than tea and coffee runs!

As the day progressed I went on to the surprisingly challenging task of casting a voice-over artist for an ongoing ELT project. The criteria of young, French, singing superstar is not as easy to come across as you may think! Now it’s day 2, and my voice-over casting continues… watch this space to see how we get on.

For now it’s “Au Revior” and hope you are all having a great Friday.

Lana x

Podcast? Oxford? We’ve got the recording studio…

Lana — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 11:51:43 +0000

Oxford-based marketing agency S-Group came in the recording studio yesterday, to record a podcast with their accountant client K&H following George Osborne’s emergency budget.

Julian Sharples, director of S-Group said, “I love recording here – it’s my favourite studio in Oxford!”. We like Julian – and look forward to having him back!

Check out their website for marketing services in Oxford.

Australia comes to Oxford

Evie — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 13:46:22 +0000

Our recent search for Aussie voices was super successful, and on Wednesday we welcomed Sheila’s Wheels voice over artist Cathi Ogden to our Oxford recording studio to finalise the recording of an ELT book for a large Oxford-based publisher.

Cathi stood out during casting because of her obvious sense of fun and enthusiasm. We hope Cathi enjoyed her day working in our recording studio – we certainly enjoyed working with her and got some great material to take to post production.

Recording animal audio in Oxford

Evie — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 13:58:16 +0000

The comedian W.C Fields once famously said you should never work with children or animals. It’s not an aphorism today’s studio guest has paid much heed to – Michaela Strachan of The Really Wild Show and various other critter-based creations. The delightful Michaela came in to our Oxford recording studio to record some ELT audio books as part of an online literacy project for children – teaching them to read as well as teaching them interesting stuff about animals. We were particularly grateful for Michaela’s time as, being a resident of Cape Town, she was missing the first day of the World Cup!

Pictures of Michaela’s session to follow…

American audio and songs for global ELT course

Evie — Fri, 28 May 2010 10:10:06 +0000

The usual calm, zen-like state of the Tom Dick and Debbie office was livened up this week by the presence of some fantastic U.S. singers who came in to record for an ELT project. They were loads of fun, especially 11 year-old Max who despite his tender years was super-talented with a great vocal technique. We were really impressed by his voice and enthusiasm for the project. Here are some pictures of the guys in action (although seasoned pro Max somehow cleverly avoided the paparazzi lens…)

Actors practising

An American in Oxford

Rehearsal with the actors

The singing American in Oxford

Searching for sound effects

Richard — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 15:52:37 +0000

Hi I’m Jennifer and I’ve been here at Tom Dick and Debbie this week doing work experience. I was given many different tasks to do, one of which was to search through the SFX library finding various different sound effects for an audio book project TDD are currently doing. It was a lengthy job, I was amazed at how many different sounds they had, zebras, red crested cranes, they had the lot! Of course none of this would have been as enjoyable without the super lovely Tom Dick and Debbie staff! I may have made them the occasional cup of tea and done the odd bit of washing up but I’ve definitely learned a lot of new things and enjoyed my time here very much.