Those little musical interludes on radio programs, particularly public radio shows, go by lots of names, including stinger, button, bumper, and bridge. By the way, the fellow who chooses and inserts them in our show is our engineer and technical editor, Tim Felten, who also happens to be a professional musician. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Music Between Segments”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello, Martha. This is Lee James Irwin calling from Falls Church, Virginia.
Hi, Lee James. Welcome.
How are you doing?
Just fine, thank you.
What can we do for you?
Well, I have a question about new words. Your show is terrific in digging out the roots of words back in history, but new ones are coming up all the time. And the ones I have in mind today are words that describe the intervals or the breaks in radio programs like yours, usually a musical interlude, and then on to another segment. But I don’t know what you call those things.
And why have you been thinking about that?
Well, I don’t know. Just curious. I notice I listen to BBC a lot, and they don’t do that. And commercial radio doesn’t do it so much. But a lot of NPR programs do.
Yeah, it’s true. You used one of the words that is used, interludes. I can think of about five different terms for music between segments, but they all have slightly different or maybe substantially different purposes. Interludes is one. Sometimes the interlude is music that’s played between segments by the national show so that the local stations can do, say, news or weather on top of that music bed or just simply replace that interlude. So if the local station doesn’t break away from the national content, there at least will be something on the air.
Button is one that’s used a lot for the music in between segments. And I think, I’m not 100% sure, this goes back to what are called cart machines that had these cartridges that looked a lot like 8-tracks that you put in them, like a stack of 4 or 6 or 12 or something, each one with a button next to them. And each one of these had a particular kind of music on it. You could just press it, and then it will play into the system. And it’s a loop. It’s a tape loop. So it’s always ready to go as long as you haven’t just played it.
Oh, here I thought it was just fastening the segments together.
Oh, ma’am. Could be. Interesting. Of course, we don’t have zippers.
Another one is Stinger. But this one’s, again, it’s music between segments, but it tends to be kind of an identifying music bit, like a tone. It’s like the da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, something like that.
Oh, yeah. Some very distinct, like you think, oh, yeah, that’s my station. I recognize that. That’s the little tones that they play.
Bumper music. This is typically, though, a music bed underneath, say, a commercial or an underwriter credit or something like that. One more here. I guess it’s a bridge. Some people use bridge, just like they borrowed from the music itself. You know, a bridge connects two parts of a song. In this case, a bridge connects two parts of a show. So it’s stings and zippers and bumps.
Oh, my. Well, yeah, no zippers. I don’t have a zipper in there. I threw that in there. In public radio, I believe that’s the one that most people use is button.
Oh, I see. Okay. Well, now I know more than I did this morning. I thank you very kindly.
Right on. Our pleasure. Happy to help.
Thanks, Lee James.
All right. So long. Take care.
Call us with your language question, 877-929-9673. You can also email us. That address is words@waywordradio.org.
