Microphone placement is key - Tim Dodd setting up colleague William Dart for a recording of New Horizons. Photo: RNZ
It's a golden rule of radio. You hear presenters, but a presenter without a producer is like an organ without a wind-pump.
For 35 years, Tim Dodd has been one of the key players bringing the music - and the people who talk about it - to you.
Before his retirement, Dodd sat down with RNZ Concert's Bryan Crump to talk about his career and love of music, starting with early memories of sitting next to his father at the piano in his Dunedin home, as the senior Dodd played the first movement of Beethoven's Pathetique sonata with its "Boogie Woogie bassline".
Dodd got a degree in physics and worked as a freelance musician (playing the bassoon with Wellington and Dunedin orchestras, and the piano with Flying Nun band The Verlaines) before landing a job with RNZ Concert (then still known as 'The Concert Programme') in Wellington in 1990.
He began working on the likes of the 'What's On' page for presenters, and organising the then regular Composer of the Week feature. It was while doing the latter that he met presenter and academic Marshall Walker. The two would go on to produce the award winning series Letters to Sibelius.
Todd also produced William Dart's New Horizon's programme for many years.
But the mainstay of his work was producing recordings and broadcasts of live performances - mostly in Auckland, where he moved in 1999.
On the job. Tim Dodd (left) and sound engineer Darryl Stack Photo: James Cambell
The job has had its ups and downs. The biggest downer was probably the 2020 proposal to give RNZ Concert's FM frequencies to a new youth radio station, and turn Concert into an online-only station with no live presenters, just recorded music.
RNZ dropped the plan, and it was followed by what was in some way Concert's finest hour, keeping many listeners sane, with ratings going "through the roof", as the country hunkered down during the early days of the Covid pandemic.
Todd says Concert's impact during the Covid lockdown was a good example of why New Zealand needs a non-commercial radio station dedicated to music. But he also believes there is scope for a commercial-free service for younger listeners.
Could one station do both?.
"Well, I've always thought that too, but it's a very difficult thing to do well, I think, and to take your listeners with you."
It will be up to the next generation of RNZ music producers to tackle that challenge, but the likes of Tim Dodd have given them mighty big metaphorical shoulders to stand on.
