The Start- Episode 1

In the first episode of The Podcast Hoard, Sydney talks about what it takes to set up your first podcast episode. She includes tips on how to record, edit, and make future episodes easier.

Resources mentioned:

Purple planet music site

Tumblr blog

Music source site is purple planet.

Intro music: Open Road

Underlying music: Tranquility

Outro music: Ecstasy

Transcript

Thank you for tuning into The Podcast Hoard, the podcast about podcasts. I’m your resident dragon, Sydney. 

Since this is a brand new podcast, I figured I’d share the process I went through to create it. I have a podcast running already with Long Live Bat Art, so I have a tiny bit of experience. The first thing I did was look at the royalty free music site purple planet so I could have three different tunes for an intro, outro, and underlying my voice so it’s not just awkwardly quiet when I take a pause. I can’t give an exact reason I chose each one, other than I wanted my underlying one to be very understated and subtle and my intro and outro to be fun. I go by vibes mostly.  

I started with the ‘upbeat’ category and looked for my intro first because that will be the first thing people will hear when they decide to listen to an episode. I wanted it to be the one where I have the best attention span and don’t just fall back to the feeling of ‘sure, good enough for now.’ Even with Long Live Bat Art, I started like that. I want each of my projects to be as good as I can make them at the moment, so I devote a lot of thought and attention to each aspect. This is based on an absolute ton of research before Long Live Bat Art, but nothing teaches better than experience. 

I listen to the full track for each song with headphones on, just to make sure I don’t miss a section I like that might be buried in the middle when the first few seconds don’t grab me. I use headphones because that’s how the vast majority of people listen to podcasts. It gives me a better listener experience. Because the intro and outro music have to be very short, I kept an ear out for interesting and fitting snippets as I went along. 

But as I looked for my intro music, I kept an ear out for my other two desired tracks. If something sounded interesting for one of the others, I noted the name and kept going. After I had the ones I wanted marked, I narrowed the choices to nine tracks. 

I can’t exactly explain how I decided I liked the music. Like I said, I go based on vibes. It either struck me as one that would work or that wouldn’t. I couldn’t tell you what instruments or chords did the job- I’m not a music person. But some options definitely gave the vibe of ‘happy-go-lucky sitcom or cartoon,’ and that’s just not what I’m looking for with this project. 

So the nine finalists for the intro were either tracks that I thought I could split into separate ones for the intro and outro, or ones that I thought worked better for just the intro. 

After I had the nine, I listened to each one again, noting what sections I liked the best with time stamps. I did not go this in-depth with Long Live Bat Art, I just chose tracks I liked and chopped them up. But since I liked more options this go around, and I was keeping track of what I did so I could describe the process for you, I decided to go all in. 

Before I went further, I decided to see what snippet I liked best for the intro. I figured it’d be easier to build the music around the final intro so it felt cohesive rather than trying to mix and match. So I opened a new file for GarageBand, which is what I use for editing since it came with my computer. I hear really good things about Audacity, I just haven’t tried it myself. 

I highly, highly believe in not doing work multiple times. So I make a template for everything. Going from a brand-new file, I first swipe away the extra bits I don’t need- the library of music and sounds on the left and what I’ll call the compressor on the bottom. Then, since I won’t need the beats, I change it at the top to purely track time. I turn off the count in and the metronome, and voila, a good blank canvas for podcasts. 

I have seven tracks to start with, all voice tracks. I just make one and duplicate settings. Again, don’t do the same work multiple times. I name them each, in order from top to bottom- intro, intro music, body, underlying music, underlying music full, outro, and outro music. And please, for the love of everything you hold dear, name your tracks. It takes seconds now and saves hours of confusion later. 

To give myself a good way to test music, I recorded my trailer and edited it to have a better sense of what the final product will be.

As far as recording, basically I have a few practices I always keep in mind. One- I keep a bottle of water next to me and drink a few sips right before I hit record. When I hit record, I leave a few beats of silence to get the room sound. Then I start to talk. If I mess up, I stop, take a few beats, and start the whole sentence over. I don’t care if there’s fifteen semicolons in your sentence. Start the sentence over. This helps because you’re not trying to splice between words when you edit. Trust me, I made that mistake early on in Long Live Bat Art. I remember physically punching the air in triumph when I finished editing that mistake. It took me about an hour of editing when it would have been just a few seconds if I had just said the sentence again. This is just one of the many things experience has taught me. 

Take your time and breathe when you record. Try to make it sound conversational, too. I’m a former theater kid so I’m used to saying lines by myself and making it sound like I’m talking to someone in the room with me, but it does take some practice. You’ll mess up, and that’s what editing is for.

As far as editing itself, I do it in passes. First, I save the first take audio. Then I duplicate that file and edit on the duplicate. I do that so that I have the raw file for outtakes later, as well as have the base for if I ever have a catastrophic failure. Say it with me- make backups of your backups. 

I listen with headphones and take out the major problems- weird silences, re-takes of sentences, the time I had to wait to let an ambulance pass by outside. Major stuff. After all the fat is trimmed, I duplicate the file again and go for a detail edit on the duplicate. This is when I really listen for the small stuff- clicks that happen when you just start talking, the sharp swallows, and the hundredths of seconds of silence that sound weird when you listen to it in whole. You’ll notice a ton of the odd stuff humans do when they talk once you start editing. 

I have a command that’s a keyboard shortcut that is an absolute lifesaver. I memorized the basic one- ‘split at playhead,’ which is command-T, but I made my own for a key part- ‘delete and move’. Basically, if you just delete a bad take, there’s a gap in the audio file. To prevent the hassle of moving everything to the playhead again and not overlapping it or leaving a tiny gap of pure silence which will sound weird, delete and move will delete the unwanted section and move whatever is to the right of the deleted part perfectly to the playhead. Oh, and if you don’t know what ‘the playhead’ is, it’s just the vertical line that indicates where you are in the recording. This will be your guide as to where you mark your cuts. That shortcut for me is command forward slash, but I think that was purely from some guide I found that suggested that particular combination of keys. Make it whatever you want if you choose to use it. 

After the audio was nice and clean, I played with intro music. Basically, I had each option on its own track, then muted and highlighted tracks as necessary to see what fit best. Again, no rhyme or reason here, just vibes. I decided on a track called Open Road for my intro music, specifically about seven seconds of it.

I know from my own experience to keep the intro and outro music extremely short. Don’t think so much as a theme song to sing along to, think more musical motif to introduce a scene or character. It’s a little hard to explain, but basically you want it to be recognizable but not annoying. Think of the podcasts you yourself listen to and time their musical segments. My bet is that they’re under twenty seconds. 

For Long Live Bat Art, my intro and outro music are about seventeen seconds each. My underlying music goes throughout each speaking section, and even that’s chopped up and adjusted to avoid the louder parts of the track. And my transition music is about five seconds. Give the vibe and move on, don’t make people want to fast-forward. 

After I decided on my intro music, I listened to the energy category on purple planet for my outro. I went through the same exact process. I listened to the full track through headphones, keeping an ear out for any sections I can isolate for the snippet I’ll need for the outro. After I decided on a few possibilities, I cut up the audio to the parts I liked, tested them the same way I did the intro music, and chose about eight seconds of a track called Ecstasy. Then it was just a simple matter of going to the gentle category and choosing one. Weirdly, I liked the first one I picked enough- a track called Tranquility- that I finalized it.

After I chose the music, it was time to start adjusting the volume. In GarageBand, there’s something called ‘automation.’ It’s not what it sounds like, no AI is involved. Basically, you choose to show automation from the ‘Mix’ menu from the toolbar, and that will bring up a faded yellow horizontal line through each track you have. As I mentioned before, I have seven. The speaking tracks, which would be intro, body, and outro, I make the automation all the way at the top. That makes it as loud as I can get it because I tend to be a somewhat quiet talker. That’s most natural for me, instead of speaking louder on recording. You might need a different level, so I recommend recording a test audio and playing with what you like best. 

After the speaking track settings are done, I move to the intro and outro music tracks. I fade in and fade out of those so that the cuts aren’t as obvious and abrupt. So I start at the beginning of the music and click outside of the used segment of the track so it makes a point, click just inside the used segment of the track so it makes another point, and adjust. The outside point gets brought to the bottom and the inside point gets brought to the level I like the music at, which is about halfway up. I tend to play a bit with the fade and how steep the graduation is, just to see what sounds good to me. Then I do the same for the end of the music. 

After the intro and outro music is done, I adjust the underlying music. That’s easier- I just chop off the very end where the music fades out, and then keep the volume very low but still noticeable. I listen to my speaking track along with this music track to make sure I can just barely hear it under my voice and it doesn’t overpower me. Even when I pause in talking, I can barely hear it. 

Then it’s time to make the rest of what will become my template useful for the future. I have a set intro and outro for this show, so I recorded that in the template, along with the positioning of the music. Then I select the empty body track, move the playhead to just after the intro, hit the headphone icon so the body track is the only one I hear, and boom, I’m ready to record every episode. 

I save the project as a file called ‘template,’ and whenever I sit down to record a new episode I duplicate it, name the new file the episode number, and I can jump into recording without doing every single automation thing again. This makes it not only way easier for me when I produce it, but each episode will sound consistent to the listener. 

You may have noticed that I have two tracks for the underlying music, one called ‘underlying music in full’. This is so that I have a clean copy of the audio I can copy and paste into the real underlying music track so that nothing is weirdly skipped. When I finalize each individual episode, I’ll just delete the ‘underlying music in full’ track and export. 

All in all, this whole process took me not even a day. I spent a night listening to the music choices, then the next day I spent a few hours recording the trailer, editing it, testing the music, and finalizing the template. This is probably because I have a small amount of experience choosing music and editing it in Garage Band, along with past trial and error to know that a template is an absolute must for me. 

I know when I made my very first template, it took me so much longer. Everything takes experience and time, and the only way to learn is to do it. You don’t get better at things by learning about the theory, you get better by doing the things badly at first. 

Thanks for listening to this episode! Feel free to drop by my Tumblr The Podcast Hoard if you have any suggestions you want to throw my way. Otherwise- happy listening, and I’ll see you in two weeks.