Once you have a clear outline of what you want to say, the main difference between a pretty good podcast and a great one is in the performance. Engaging audio is relaxed and conversational, while staying on topic. Imagine that you are speaking one-to-one to a listener across a table. You can address them this way, informally (“Listen to what the bass is doing here. Can you hear how it’s playing the same rhythm as in the last piece?”). Don’t be afraid to use your hands, and think about using your face expressively to tell the story. It’s an audio medium, and nobody will see you, but you can hear the difference.
Find a quiet, enclosed, and ideally echo-free place to record. Closets, with lots of clothes around to dampen the sound, are often quite good. Bathrooms are not.
Plug in your mic, and check your recording level (in Audacity, click the microphone icon) speak at a normal volume, and watch the monitor bar – you want it to be around 75% most of the time, and never in the red. You want to be pretty close to your microphone – not more than a foot away.
This isn’t live radio, so you can go back and re-take sections as many times as you want. You can piece together many short takes.
If your mic/computer record an audible click when you start/stop recording, zoom in with the magnifying glass tool, select and delete those clicks.
Think about using some music (or other sounds) as an intro, or underneath what you’re saying, within the first couple minutes. Don’t be afraid to chop up and use tiny excerpts of some examples in order to help your listeners understand what to listen for when you play the whole piece.
If you’re not sure how to pronounce any of the words you’re going to use (genre names, songs, artist names) ask me before you record.
Check the levels of the different songs and recorded speaking segments – they should be nearly the same. The Effects menu in Audacity has a couple options that can help you: you can use “Amplify” to either raise or lower the level of clips (negative numbers will make it quieter). “Normalize” is a good way to raise the level of a recorded clip that is way too quiet.
When you’ve mixed and edited your project, you need to turn it into an audio file that can be heard on other computers (MP3 works best). Select File->Export->Export as MP3. If you have an older version of Audacity you may need to download a LAME MP3 encoder – there is a link explaining how to do this in the Course Resources folder on OAKS.