I produce a weekly radio show for blues music called "House of Blues Radio Hour". The show is hosted by Dan Aykroyd and I'm in charge of production, editing, interviewing, scheduling, etc., basically radio music production.

EDUCATION | In college, I majored in Radio and Television. I went to SF State because they have a good program for this.

HOW TO GET STARTED | Know ProTools. That's a Mac-only software and it's used universally in radio production. Familiarity with the program is what we look for in interns and it's pretty complicated, but you can learn it in college. I would recommend anyone in production to learn ProTools if they want to do music and sound editing work for anything: radio, TV, movies.

MUST HAVE TRAITS | Creativity is a big one. When I'm working with the show, it really is my creative decision of what stays and what gets cut. Basically I have this interview and I have to churn out the best parts and tell the story and not just have random blurbs about people. We start with how the artists learned music, how they got started, and what ends up making it into the show is my decision. It takes creativity to craft a story out of an interview.

how I got started | I started out doing internships for radio shows. At the time, I wanted to be a radio DJ and I recorded my own shows. I listened to them afterward and was really disappointed in the way they sounded. I started editing my tapes and found that I had more fun doing that, so I got into editing. I worked for a classical music radio show and then for "House of Blues". The internship eventually led to a full-time job and now I produce the show.

why this job?| I love music. I would listen to the radio as a kid. There wasn't one particular show that I stuck to; I just listened to everything. I think that's important actually. Before I started this job, I knew nothing about blues. But working at a job and the adaptive process itself can end up inspiring you. You have to be willing to try new things. Of course, a love for the fundamentals of what you do - in my case, music and editing - is essential.

why I love this job!| The music, the perks, lots of things. I think radio's cool. The coolest part about this job is meeting the musicians. I've met Mick Jagger. [Interviewer: But Mick Jagger isn't a blues musician....] No, but Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones were heavily influenced by the blues; they named their band after a blues song. I've also met BB King. In the past, people like Aerosmith, Eric Clapton, they've all been on the show. Also, I get the perks of free CDs, concert tickets, things like that which come with the music business.

my typical day| How about I run you through the process of a show. So a person will come in and I will personally do the interview, record the interview on two tapes, one with my questions and one with their answers. We'll transcribe the entire interview, take the questions that I asked and write up a script for Dan Aykroyd. We send the script to him and he records himself giving the interview. We then edit everything together. If any of this sounds strange, it's actually pretty common in radio shows that are hosted by celebrities. Live radios shows are always live but celebrity-hosted ones are usually taped and edited and that's what we do. As for the editing part, most days are spent putting music together, editing songs into an interview where it's appropriate or if we happen to reference that song. In addition, I spend a lot of time sound-editing speech.

what they are | The job can be difficult at times. A lot of blues musicians come from a non-educated background so a lot of them may not have graduated high school. They're amazing musicians but they may not speak eloquently. The trick for me is to take what they say and make them sound like geniuses. Take out their "um's", pop their p's. You can do all of that with sound editing.

all about growth | Radio is on the decline but if you would have asked me three years ago, I'd have said that satellite radio would kill us. Over the years, that hasn't happened yet. Satellite radio hasn't had the impact I thought it would. That doesn't mean radio's the best place to be; people are hiring fewer DJs. Computers and robots are replacing jobs. On the bright side, there are great transferable skills. The editing skill set. If I were hired to edit sound for a movie, I would have the skills for that. Actual music production like making CDs, it's the same skill set that you get from working in radio production. Anything with editing sound.

my website| http://www.thebluesmobile.com