HOW TO

Make your own podcast easily

1

GET AUDACIOUS You can use any audio app to record a podcast, but we’d recommend looking for one that supports multi-track projects. That means you can have more than one track of audio, so for example you might have a track for your own voice, one for an interviewee, another for little musical jingles and yet another for songs. The Audacity app is multitrack, and it’s completely free.

2

SELECT YOUR SOURCE We strongly advise using a USB microphone: if you stick with your PC’s built-in microphone the sound quality isn’t going to be very good. It’s like the difference between hearing someone down a crackly phone line and hearing them in person. Windows should automatically recognise your mic: select it from the mic drop-down at the bottom of Audacity’s toolbars.

3

CHECK YOUR VOLUME Look towards the top of the screen and you’ll see an icon of a microphone; click on it and talk, and you should see the volume level indicators – they start green and turn yellow, orange and finally red as the volume increases. Chat for a bit and see what they do. If they’re consistently hitting the red you’re too loud. Sit further back, or turn down the mic with Windows’ volume control.

4

RED BUTTON TO RECORD To record your voice simply press the red record button – the one with the red dot towards the top left of the screen – and start talking. As you do, you’ll see the jaggy blue lines shown here. That’s the waveform of the sound waves you’re making. Keep an eye on the volume indicators to make sure you’re not going into the red; if you’re too loud, just stop, delete and record again.

5

IMPORT AUDIO Podcasts are rarely just one voice: they usually feature guests, music or clips. You can add another audio track to your Audacity project by clicking on File > Import. As you can see here, it brings it in as a separate pair of tracks rather than adding it to the end or replacing what you’ve recorded. For stereo files such as songs, you’ll have a track for the left speaker and one for the right.

7

CUT AND PASTE You can move audio in exactly the same way you move words around in Word. Simply highlight the section you want to move, press Ctrl-C and move the cursor to the place you want to put it. Now press Ctrl-V. Your selection has moved, but it’s still on its own tracks, which means we can use the track controls to adjust its gain and pan so it doesn’t overpower everything else.

9

EXPORT THE AUDIO Podcast services don’t import Audacity files, so while it’s important to save your work you’ll also need to export an audio file the podcast service can use. Different services have different requirements (and will tell you what they are!) but if you’re unsure, a CD-quality WAV file is a safe bet. Your podcast provider will convert the WAV for downloading and streaming.

6

TRIM THE TRACK We only want a bit of this song, so let’s trim it. To do that, use your mouse to highlight the bit you want to get rid of and tap the Del key. We’re going to do that on either side of the bit of music we want, leaving just over 30 seconds of the song, and then we’ll highlight the first five seconds and choose Effect > Fade In so it comes in slowly. To add a fade to the end, choose Fade Out.

8

MIX IT UP Mixing – adjusting tracks – is an important part of podcasting: you don’t want music to be terrifyingly loud or anyone to be too quiet. To adjust the level of a track, use the slider at the left. Those marked with + and – reduce or increase that track’s volume, while L and R move it between the left and right speakers. Try experimenting with some effects here too.

10

UPLOAD YOUR PODCAST The process for this is really simple but the specifics differ from provider to provider, and there are lots and lots of providers: they publish your finished podcast to Apple Podcasts, to Google Play, to Spotify and to all the other main podcasting platforms. You can usually publish your podcast for free, but the service will put a little bit of advertising around it to pay the bills.