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Now that you have your editing software and recording equipment, you are ready to get started with the project. But before we start recording, let's look at how we can re-use audio that other people have recorded and are generous enough to have made available for us to use with our project. Even the most professional and polished podcasts rely heavily on content that others have created.
For this project, we'll keep it simple and follow a basic plan to create the micro podcast, but other projects may be quite different. There are a wide range of ways to plan and design a podcast, from a simple conversational style to a highly-edited soundscape.
There is also more than one way to do pretty much anything when working on an audio project. This tutorial shows a few techniques but doesn't cover all of them. You may want to use one or more of the techniques in a different way or use different editing software. The basics covered in this example will be applicable in other situations and with other software. The specifics may be different, so you may need to search for more tutorials on YouTube for your particular software or tool.
Podcast styles vary widely: from very simple interviews with little to no editing or sound production to large productions with multiple voice actors, sound effects and musical scores. For any of these styles, it is important to think about the soundscape that you are creating.
If you choose to go with a simple style and production, you may use the tools below sparingly. It is unlikely that you'll be 100% happy with no additional audio at all. Whether it is simply combining multiple recordings or adding layers of other sounds, you will want to incorporate some minimal audio to enhance your podcast. For example: a simple intro with a few bars of music that fades out as you start talking; recording your intro/conclusion separately and mixing it in to the rest of your production later; or using audio markers to let your listeners know when something is happening, like coming back from commercial or skipping ahead through an abridged interview.
On the other end of the spectrum, you may envision several different types of audio being used in your podcast. Perhaps multiple songs for different segments, simple sound effects to go with narration (e.g. if you are talking about playing soccer, having the sound of feet running on grass playing quietly in the background), or even recording multiple spoken parts that you then edit all together later. If this is sounds like your ideal option, keep in mind that the post-production phase will entail a lot of work. A lot.
You can still keep it simple when you are building this type of project by being organized and rehearsing your recorded parts so that you can minimize the recording phase and concentrate more energy on adding new audio rather than editing and enhancing your recordings. No matter how you do it, though, keep in mind that you will be spending 2-3 times more energy and work on the post-production editing than you do in recording. Two ways to approach a big project like this are to:
For this project, we are going to imagine a scenario in which I've been assigned a podcast project that I'm collaborating on with a classmate. I will conduct an interview with them using Zoom because they live outside of the area. To create the vision of the podcast that I have in mind, I will need to gather multiple audio tracks:
The video below shows how I will gather my audio. You can follow along or use the descriptions below to gather your audio. For a tutorial on recording to Audacity, see the video further down in the Recording section.
There are many ways to record yourself. You can use your phone as a microphone, holding it up or propping it up so that it is within 1-2 feet of your mouth. There are several apps that you can use to record to your phone, our recommendations are listed on our Creating Audio With Your Phone guide.
You can also record to your desktop or laptop computer using a variety of programs. In this tutorial, we will be editing the project using Audacity and BandLab, which you can also record to.
You will likely want to use an external mic to increase the quality of your recording. While you can clean up your audio to a certain degree, it is always best to record the best quality that you can.
A simple external mic option is to use the mic built into headphones. This might be a gaming headset or a simple phone headphone (think iPhone headphones with the white pod on the cable for the mic and volume control).
If you want something that is a step up, the Cal Poly Humboldt Library Makerspace has equipment that you can borrow. You can see what is available on our Creating Audio: Equipment guide. If you have questions about what is best to use or how to reserve something, email the Makerspace at makerspace@humboldt.edu.
For our scenario, the two people involved in the interview are in different parts of the state. We are meeting via Zoom. We were hoping to be able to record the Zoom session so that we can simply export the Zoom recording and convert it to an audio file that can be imported into Audacity. However, the interviewee has an unreliable internet connection and their audio was a bit glitchy when we met last week to test things out.
To fix this issue, we are both going to have our discussion on Zoom and will record it just in case it turns out better than last week. But we are also going to record ourselves independently using our phones. This will give us two separate audio files that we will merge in Audacity during editing.
In our scenario, the two separate recordings we made were much better quality than the Zoom recording. However, we will need to figure out how to sync them up. Since we both hit the record buttons on our phones at slightly different times, we will sync the two tracks using a simple and time-tested technique: a clap. After hitting record, but before starting our interview, we both clap at the same time into our phones (if the Zoom connection is good enough, one person can clap and the other needs to make sure the clap is picked up by their phone's mic).
During editing, we will be able to line up the two tracks using this clap. The details are covered later in this tutorial.
There are many options for finding music for my project. Openly licensed music is one of the easiest ways and in this example, I am going to use Pixabay Music (found on the Podcasting Open Content page). Pixabay Music has a few ways to help search for music but this is a time-consuming part of the process. The only way to find out if a track is right for your project is to listen to each track that looks promising. If you find an artist or genre you like, you can search for more tracks by that artist or genre. For projects like this, using the 'Instrumental' genre may be helpful for finding music that won't distract listeners from your speaking parts.
Lastly, I will be using SoundBible (found on the Open Content page) to find some ambient sounds to help create a soundscape. In the intro, I mention that I was on a hike in the woods, so I want a clip that will help people visualize this. I can search by keyword in SoundBible and if I type in 'hiking sounds' I will see a list of a few good options.
With these openly licensed audio files, I will need to be sure that I can use them for my project. If you haven't already, you can learn more about open license permissions. The licenses for the two clips that I downloaded are:
