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January 18, 2007

Dangerous Curves

After being in the project studio business for 16 years, I thought I'd done just about everything. In fact, my unofficial motto has always been "Everything but Heavy Metal."

Well, I finally got to do something completely new. I was involved in creating a workout CD for Curves International.

Since Curves is a place for women to work out, I obviously didn't know much about it. But I found out how it works: the ladies exercise to the accompaniment of high-energy music, all of which is at 140 beats per minute. At the same time, they play a CD that instructs the exercisers to "change stations” every 30 seconds. Then at the end of six minutes, the ladies are instructed to get off their machines, check their pulse, and then move to the next machine to continue their work out, where they are once again instructed to "change stations" every 30 seconds.

The woman I produced a CD for is the owner of a Curves franchise, and she thought it would be a good idea to substitute affirmations such as "you are beautiful", or "you are strong." for the "change stations now" instruction.

She brought this idea to the corporate offices of Curves, and they gave her the go-ahead to do a test CD. That's where we came in.

She came into the studio and recorded some 60 affirmations, one after the other. My job was then to create a CD that started with 30 seconds of silence, followed by an affirmation, followed by 30 seconds of silence, followed by an affirmation, and then at the 12 minute mark (she changed it from 6 minutes) splicing in the section instructing the exercisers to do a heart rate check and then continue exercising.

I was arranging dozens of little sound bits. It was rather like putting together a giant aural jigsaw puzzle.

Anyway, as I write this, the CD is now being tested at the spa. I will be very interested to find out how it works!

Bye the way, this blog entry has nothing to do with “Dangerous Curves.” I just thought it was a cool title.

Posted by leon at January 18, 2007 07:02 PM

Comments

Glad you explained the title, or else you could have thrown us a "curve ball", if you hadn't!

Posted by: Sandy at January 18, 2007 11:22 PM

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