Let me introduce myself!

Last week I featured a short interview with Saul and Joe, who are currently recording their Hospice Chaplaincy podcast at Audiohive Podcasting. This week, I’m going to answer the same questions, and offer a little insight to what goes in to taking a podcast from start to finish.

 

  • What made you decide to start a podcast studio?
    I’ve been playing and recording music for 20 years, and have worked in music retail for 14. Over the last couple years I’ve noticed a growing interest in podcast recording. One thing most of the interested parties have in common is this: Zero audio recording experience. One of the biggest hurdles people face in podcasting is the technical aspect. I’ve had customer after customer basically throw away money on recording equipment they couldn’t use. Many of them who were able to figure out the basics and do some recording realized they weren’t getting the sound they had hoped for. This stemmed from a few factors, such as a limited budget for good microphones, or a general lack of mixing knowledge after the recording was complete. I knew I could help, and decided to open Audiohive Podcasting!

 

  • Has anything been more challenging than you expected?
    The editing! You might not realize it, but there’s a lot of editing happening in most of the podcasts you listen to. I’ve spent hours editing my customers podcasts. What am I editing out? Coughing, sneezing, clearing throats, mis-spoken words are common. I’ve also had requests to make the podcast “snappier,” which involves going in and shortening silences between words, questions, and responses. This requires a good ear for timing and cadence to keep speech patterns sounding natural while still speeding the conversation up a bit. I can judge if I did a good job at this if I can’t tell where the edits are when I play it back, even though I’m the one that edited it!

 

  • Has anything been easier than you expected?
    Handling revision requests for my clients has been a breeze, thanks in part to FilePass. FilePass is a revision collection platform that makes it easy for me to upload my client’s podcast for them to review, and put in time-stamped revision requests. I can then easily see exactly where they want an edit to happen and what they’d like me to do. Once I finish a revision, I check it off the list. When I’ve completed all the requests, I re-upload the edited version. Once the client is happy with the finished podcast, they are able to pay for the work and download the file.

 

  • If you could go back and re-record your first podcast, what would you do differently? 
    I’d spend more time getting the introduction, break, and ending voice overs recorded well, and mixed in with the music right away. I realized I was wasting a lot of time inserting vocal tracks, lining up the music, creating the fade in/out on every podcast I edited. I had a “duh” moment and now create mixdowns of those elements before doing anything else so they’re quick and easy to insert into each episode of the podcast. I’d also really pay more attention to how guests are situated around the microphones. I think due to my background with musicians I can take for granted people knowing good microphone technique. Often I find that isn’t the case, and rather than try to get a client to position themselves around the mic better, I try to position the mic around the client better!

 

  • Do you have any advice for someone thinking about starting their own podcast?
    My advice is the same as Saul and Joe’s, just go for it! I make it super easy for you to come in, sit down, and start talking. Have some notes and maybe bring a friend and see what comes out! I can guarantee that it’ll at least sound good.

 

  • What do you think of your overall experience with Audiohive Podcasting so far?
    It’s been a great learning experience. I’ve spent a lot of time recording and mixing music, but there’s a special set of skills and tools for dialogue mixing and editing that I haven’t used as much. It’s really interesting finding things that my recording software can do that I just never needed to use before.

 

I am super grateful for the opportunity to record your podcast! I’ll continue to do my best to make recording easy for anyone aspiring to start their own personal journey into podcasting.

 

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