Trust The Process

Oh, yeah, I was gonna tell you about my process.

Here's what I did: I decided that I didn't have enough time for a long-form podcast. Short-form -- the rough equivalent of a daily two minute radio feature -- was something I COULD do. So, I came up with the idea of expounding on the kind of stories I feature here at All Access' Talk Topics and christened it "The Evening Bulletin." Find it here. But that's not the process.

This is the process: I sit down and write three to five scripts. Yes, I type the whole thing out. Then I quickly add a brief description and title for each, to save time later. Next, I plug a Shure SM-58 mic into a Zoom H6 digital recorder, turn the recorder on, check the levels, and quickly record all the scripts, one after the other as individual files. Because it's short, I tend to just delete and record again if I screw up, but sometimes I leave the mistake in, pause long enough to make the location obvious in the waveform, re-read the portion correctly, and edit later. Mostly, though, the ideal is one or two takes, and since it's just a couple of minutes, that's enough.

Once I'm done, I take the SD card from the Zoom and slide it into my Mac. I drag and drop each audio file into Levelator, which you can still find and which is invaluable. And then I open GarageBand, Mac's free audio editor; you can use Audacity if you prefer, and that's free, too and available for PCs. Here's where I have one time-saver that might not be available to everyone: I use a generic teletype effect on one track, looped and easily extendable by dragging the end of the waveform to as long as I need. I drag and drop the audio file into GarageBand as another track, edit the dead spots off the beginning and end, do whatever minor editing is necessary, fit the teletype waveform to the main track, then export the track under "Share" as an MP3.

That's basically it. The rest is uploading to the host (I use Libsyn), copying and pasting that title and description I wrote earlier, scheduling the release (I like to have the thing posted at noon Eastern every weekday), and then going off and doing other things, because I don't want to spend my whole life recording and editing and posting podcasts. And neither do you. You may not be able to do what I do, not specifically, but you CAN come up with regular, repeatable processes that make your job easier, from standard music or SFX beds to recording segments in modular fashion in advance to paste into future episodes. However you do it, you CAN save time and get podcasts posted and have a life, too. What's YOUR process?

Got a question about podcasting? Go ahead, send it to psimon@allaccess.com or tweet it at @pmsimon. That's what I'm here for.