Radio GH

and how to set up an internet radio station promoting Scottish Dance Music RADIO GH

By Derek Hamilton and Ewan Galloway

Acouple of years back this magazine had Ian Simpson review various radio shows around the country, so when I encountered Ewan Galloway and Derek Hamilton in Shetland last year and they told me about radioGH, I asked if they could let readers know not only about what they did, but also how and why they began such an undertaking. This is their story:

Every Sunday for nine years Ewan Galloway travelled from his home to do a live show, The Scottish Shindig, from Galashiels-based community radio station TD1 Radio. The aim was to keep alive his love of Scottish dance music. Here Ewan arranged for guest presenters to come in when he was unavailable and latterly Derek Hamilton took on the mantle of co-presenter.

Because of the distance and the travelling time, Ewan decided to try to find a radio station that would take his popular Sunday show closer to his home. Sadly, none of the local stations in the East Lothian area were interested and Derek suggested that he would investigate the possibility of doing the show from studios set up in both Ewan’s and Derek’s homes.

The first thing to be considered before all else was – how legal would this be? On investigation it was found that a licence needs to be obtained from two bodies, namely the PRS and the PPL. These licences are fairly costly for a small operation with no direct income - approx. £550 pa. With these licences in place we set up a studio in the East at Ewan’s home and a studio in the West at Derek’s home. For two computers, monitors, a mixing desk, an output compressor, two high-quality condenser mics with desk stands, cables and software the cost for equipment was ca. £1700! We agreed that the venture would be non-commercial but we do have a page on our website which allows for donations to help offset the costs of licences, equipment, website hosting and streaming.

Ewan’s studio

We were now good to go but how did we get ‘on air’? We needed a company to stream our output to the internet. Our licences stipulated a number of listening hours allowed which translates into bandwidth used. Of course, as newbies, we hadn’t a clue how many listeners we would get and therefore how much bandwidth we would require, so we found a company who supplied bandwidth on a ‘pay as you go’ basis. This would allow us to assess our requirements as our listener-base built up. The system is much akin to the pay-as-you-go phone service.

We then needed a database of tracks to play. We could have just used a couple of CD players and a record deck patched to the mixer but we felt that a database on the computer was better, and we set about ripping all our CDs and records to mp3 files to create a database. We can add tracks at any time

and with the collaboration of some good friends we have about 46000 tracks so far!

Derek set up a website and we chose the name RadioGH (Galloway Hamilton). We did some trial broadcasts and enlisted some friends to tune in and give us a report on how it was sounding. We did our first live broadcast at 6.00 pm on 7th April 2019 and have now gone to 24/7 broadcasting using our recorded live shows, together with shows from the team at Cuillin FM who broadcast Balaich nam Port for 10 years from 2004. We have all their two-hour programmes and their Saturday nightcap programs. We also have the rights to air Double Scotch, Ian Lees’ popular weekly programme made by Bridge FM in Dundee. Add to that the fortnightly programme Highland Fling with John ‘The Prof’ Matheson and Sandra Burt. We also have a large collection of John’s older Highland Flings.

We have developed ambitious plans for 2020 to bring on board a new presenter, Andy Philip, with his Continental Corner. We have secured hundreds

of recordings from accordion clubs done by Peter Rae of Biggar and are now editing these and seeking permission to use the recordings. Ewan will be presenting Radio GH’s Armchair Accordion Club weekly. We have plans for a Vinyl Vault Hour and a Vintage Blend Hour featuring recordings of bands of yesteryear. We’d love to hear from budding presenters who have the facility to record a programme for airing on Radio GH. We’ve already recruited Pia to do the weekly Club News spot.

Incidentally, if any guest artist would like to appear on our new Armchair Accordion Club please let us know and we will endeavour to record your guest spot and include it in the programme. Contact us by email: Studio@radiogh.co.uk

It’s been a learning curve, but well worth the effort; and we hope that we can help to keep alive a keen interest in Scottish music in general but Scottish dance music in particular! You can tune in anytime: www.radiogh.co.uk. l Derek Hamilton and Ewan Galloway

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