How to Produce, Record, Edit and Publish a Podcast: A Guide | Dan Berges | Skillshare
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How to Produce, Record, Edit and Publish a Podcast: A Guide

teacher avatar Dan Berges, Entrepreneur & Web Developer

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Intro

      1:35

    • 2.

      How Audio Works

      2:26

    • 3.

      Hardware and Software Needed

      4:41

    • 4.

      Equipment Setup and Test

      4:35

    • 5.

      Recording the Episodes

      3:22

    • 6.

      Editing

      8:46

    • 7.

      Mastering

      2:47

    • 8.

      Publishing

      1:27

    • 9.

      Outro

      0:54

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About This Class

Producing and recording a podcast is not expensive or difficult. In this course, I'll walk you through the entire process, including:

-Hardware and software selection, setup, and testing

-Recording the actual episodes

-Editing

-Mastering

-Publishing your podcast to all major platforms

Skills required for taking this course: none.

Links for sites I mention in the course:

https://www.audacityteam.org

https://freesound.org

https://www.bandlab.com/mastering

https://www.buzzsprout.com

https://www.podbean.com

I'm excited to have you in the course and I hope you'll find all my tips valuable!

Guitar clip used in the editing example by tosha73 (CC BY 3.0)

Meet Your Teacher

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Dan Berges

Entrepreneur & Web Developer

Teacher

Hi! My name is Dan, and I am an entrepreneur, web developer, Spanish language teacher, musician and writer from Madrid, Spain, living in NYC.

I founded Berges Institute in 2013 and Berges Technologies in 2021. In my spare time, I make videos and courses about music, business and web development.

If you like my content, please do follow my profile. And if you have any questions or comments about any of my classes, feel free to message me!

See full profile

Level: Beginner

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Transcripts

1. Intro: Podcasts are huge these days. According to Statista, there were 65 million podcast listeners in the US in 201788 million in 201920 million in 2021. Podcast tears. Alex Cooper and Joe Rogan recently signed deals with the Spotify worth $6,000 million. Respect Italy. Even though it takes time, effort on luck to get to those numbers. Producing and recording of professional quality podcast. It's not expensive or complicated. This course, I'll walk you through the whole process. I have more than 20 years of experience recording audio. I produced and published my own podcast back in 2019. I hope this course will help you see how the technical part of producing a podcast is relatively easy to master. So let's get started. 2. How Audio Works: When we speak, we create sound waves in the air around us. If there's another person in the room, those sound waves in the air will reach that person's ear. Inside of that person's ear, there is an eardrum that will vibrate. That vibration will be translated to nerve impulses, the world travel, that person spraying. That is how we communicate. When we are recording our voice though, instead of another person's ear, we have a microphone in the room which acts in a very similar way. Instead of an eardrum, it has a coil that is inside, a magnet that lives inside of the microphone. When that coil vibrates, it produces an electrical signal that travels out of the microphone through the cable. That electrical signal will reach our audio interface that has this piece of hardware called an analog to digital converter, which will convert the electrical signal to digital basically to ones and zeros. Then that digital signal, those ones and those zeros will travel to the computer via the USB cable. And then in the computer we can store that file in our hard drive or we can upload it to the Cloud. When our podcast is in the Cloud and with sand, the link to the different services like Spotify and Apple Music, etc. Then users can go on their phones and they can listen to our podcasts. When they hit play, their phone will pull the audio file from the Cloud and then the phone will stand via Bluetooth. That digital signal in ones and zeros to the headphones. The headphones have a digital to analog converter, which will convert the digital audio signal to an analog or electrical audio signal. That electrical audio signal will go through that tiny speakers inside of the headphones. And those tiny speakers will convert it to physical air, sound waves that will read our ears. Then our eardrum will do the rest. 3. Hardware and Software Needed: In order to record your podcast, you are going to need some hardware and some software. For hardware, you are going to need a computer and audio interface. Microphones, wind screens for the microphone's, cables, for the microphone's microphone stands, headphones, and a headphone amplifier. For software, you are going to need a DAW, which stands for Digital Audio Workstation, and a cloud starts service. Here are some gear recommendations. I have no affiliation with any of the manufacturers. I'm just recommending them because I liked them. Any computer with any operating system will do it as long as it's not a very old computer. Just make sure you have space in your hard drive. Because audio files, even though they are not as heavy as video files, they can get heavy when the recordings get very long. Your audio interface will effectively limit how many people you can record at the same time. Make your choice based on that. Here are my recommendations for solar recording. I recommend the focus right Scarlet Solo for recording up to two people or recommend the focus right scarlet to I2, which is the one I used for recording up to four people. I recommend the focus right, scarlet, 1 eighth. If you're on a budget, mao do on bearing gear, they both may really nice 124 input interfaces that have very similar functionality. I use Shure, SM58 eighths. These have been a standard in the live music and live comedy industry for decades. They are pretty much indestructible. And they are very direct signal, meaning that they will only pick up what's in front of them. They will pick up your voice, but they will not pick up any background noise. On each microphone that I use. I use a windscreen that will reduce pops and breathing noise. You will need a standard XLR male to female cable for each microphone. I use the Amazon basic six feet once. Just make sure you're there an extra one. In case a cable fails while you are recording. You will also need a stand for it's microphone. I use newer suspend some bombs, scissor arms stands. But any other desktop SSIS, IR arm, Stan will do it. You will also need a set of headphones for each microphone. I recommend tascam t, h, m, x2. They are durable and very reliable. Lastly, unless you are recording solo and using only one pair of headphones, you will need a headphone amplifier. I recommend the newer super compact for channel stereo headphone amplifier, which is very nice and very easy to use. You are also going to need a cable to connect the amplifier to the audio interface. That will be a 1 fourth of an inch TRS to 1 fourth of an inch TRS cable. Daw stands for Digital Audio Workstation. And there's lots of options in this category. I'm going to recommend for everybody our Udacity, which is free and open-source and works well on Windows, Mac, and Linux. It doesn't look as nice as some of the paid ones, but it is very powerful and very reliable. You will also need cloud storage to backup your audio files. I would recommend Google Drive because it is very easy to use. In the resources section, there's a list of all the hardware and software that I mentioned in this lesson. 4. Equipment Setup and Test: Go to our Udacity team.org, download Audacity and install it in your computer. Connect the audio interface to your computer using the USB cable. Open Audacity. It should recognize the interface automatically. And here where we have the microphone icon, we're going to select it as the input. In my case is scarlet to I2 USB. We are also going to select the scarlet audio interface as the output. Then in here in my case, since I'm using the scarlet to I chew, I want to select two, because I want to use the two inputs that I have. If you are using a four input interface, you'll want to select four in here. And if you are using an interface for solar recording with only one input, you will only have the option one available setup. The armor stands on a desk, please, the microphone in the clips and connect the microphone to the other interface. You've seen the XLR cables. If you are recording solo, plug your headphones into the headphones output of the audio interface, if you are recording with two or more microphones, plugged the headphone amp into an electrical outlet, plug each pair of headphones into a headphone output in the amplifier. Set all the knobs to 0. Lastly, connect the headphones amplifier to the audio interface using the 1 fourth of an inch TRS cable. Now you have to set up the interface. I'm going to use the scarlet to i2 for the example because it's the one I have. But the process is very similar for any other interface. It doesn't matter if it's focused, right, or if it's any other brand on each input, make sure line is selected. We would use instrument for plugging in a guitar directly, which is not what we're doing. Today. We're going to click here where it says Click to start monitoring while speaking on its microphone, adjust the gain knob, check the signal in our Udacity, it should be moving somewhere between minus 20 and minus six decibels. If it's higher than that, lower the gain a little. If the signal is too weak, turn it up a little. Try to speak loudly. If the meter in Audacity gets yellow or red, turn down the gain a little bit, make sure the 48 volt proton is off. You would have that on if you are using a microphone that is specifically requires 48 volt power, which is also known as phantom power. If you are using Shure SM58, like I am, they don't require 48 volts, so that bottom should be off. And lastly, make sure direct monitor is on. This will let you hear yourself in your headphones while you are recording for adjusting the levels of the headphones. If you are recording solo, speak on the microphone and simply adjust the volume of the headphones in the interface. As an important note, changing the level of the headphones either in the interface are in the headphone amplifier has no effect in the recording input that is going to be sent to our Udacity. This is only for monitoring purposes. We should put them in a level in which we are comfortable the way we listen to our own voice. If you are recording using more than one microphone, you will need to use the headphone amplifier, set the headphone knob in the audio interface close to ten, and then adjust the volumes on the headphone amplifier for each set of headphones, the large knob labeled as monitor is not relevant. We're not going to use it because we are not using a speaker monitors and this is what that would control. Okay. Now hit the Record button on Audacity and record something for a minute or two. If you are using more than one microphone, record something on each microphone. Now, listen to the recording. If everything sounds good, it means everything is working properly. 5. Recording the Episodes: The room in which we are recording should be relatively quiet. Dynamic microphones are usually very good at only picking up what is in front of them. Your mouth, in this case. Some traffic noise outside or some steady noise in general, or even some radiator noise or some AC noise inside should not be a problem if you are using something like a Shure SM58. The content of your podcast is out of the scope of this course, of course, but I still wanted to give you some tips for different content types. If you're, is going to be highly edited, one kind of like 99% invisible or like NPR's Planet Money. Then you will need to script pretty much everything. But then on the script you can leave room some parts for some improvisation or some natural axions are some conversations. If your podcast is an open format and you're recording it by yourself. In my experience, it is very helpful to have an outline or some kind of reference of the topics we'll be covering in front of you at all times while you are recording. If you are recording with a guest, I always recommend having a list of topics you want to discuss and having that list in front of you while you are recording. I always like to give that list in advance to my guest just so they know. But I mean, this is really up to you. This is a very important one. If you are using Shure SM58 or some other dynamic microphone, the guests should be very close to the microphone at all times. If guests are not used to recording and a microphone at some point that will get far from it under voice will be lost. In my experience, the best way to deal with this is before you record, explaining to your guest how they should be close to the microphone at all times, but also explaining to them that during the recording it's very normal to get far from the microphone and that you will remind them during the recording. And that is a normal thing that happens in all the episodes. And then if you tell them during the recording, hey, can you get a little bit closer to the microphone? If it is an edited podcasts, you can edit out that part. But if it's spontaneous podcasts, It's not a big deal to leave that and it's very normal and it happens a lot even in big podcasts. But it is very important that your guests know that just so when you ask them to get closer to the microphone while you are recording, they expected and you don't interrupt your flow. This is also up to you. But in my experience, it helps a lot telling a gas that if they say something weird or something that they don't like, they can e-mail me after and we'll edit out that part. I don't do Sorry, I have to do that, but it makes people less nervous knowing that they have that option. You can control the volume for each set of headphones individually. I recommend testing their headphones and a microphone with your gas and asking them how well they hear themselves. And adjust the volume individually for it headset until everybody's happy. Very important one, have water for everybody on the desk while you are recording. 6. Editing: Okay, so I have here a sample super short podcast that I recorded. And I'm going to edit it with you. For editing, I'm basically going to do two things. I'm going to take out some parts in the audio, and I am also going to add music at the beginning and at the end. The first thing that we have to notice in here is that since I was to use in two inputs, because my interface has two inputs, audacity, when you do that, it automatically merges the two inputs as one stereo track or stereotypes just attract that has two inputs, usually one on the left and one on the right. If you were using in here one mono, you would not have that problem. If you were using for inputs may be Audacity, would merit 122 on a stereo track and inputs 34 into another stereo track. But anyway, it has a very easy fix. So we're just going to click here audio track, then split stereo tracks. The only thing that we have to fix now is that when we've split them, audacity is keeping this one on the left and this one on the right. We need to move this thing here from pan left to pan center. And this one here from Penn right to pan sender. And there we go. Now we have two separate mono tracks that have a single input, or in other words, sustainable microphone eat. This is one of the microphones. I was speaking on it for a little bit. The other microphone I spoke at some time later here I am speaking in the second microphone. So let's give it a listen in that city. You can click here in this area anywhere and it will start playing from that point. Let's start here. Hello, and welcome to my fake podcast. In this episode. I'm sorry, Let's start again. Hello and welcome to my fake podcast. As you can see, I messed up right at the beginning. The first thing that we're going to do is to take out this whole part of the beginning, this whole path intro, and start with the good intro. In order to do that, we need to make sure that we have the selection tool selected. And with this tool, we need to click right here. And then we're going to need a keyword shortcut on Mac, which is what I'm using is going to be Command Shift K. In Windows, it's going to be Control Shift K. When I do that, Basically the selection happens on both tracks. Now to split the clips at this point on both trucks, we're going to need a second keyboard shortcut. And this one is going to be on Mac Command I. And on Windows Control. I am going to do that command I. There we go. Now we just need to delete these sections in here. So I'll just select them by clicking here at the top part. And then I'm just going to press the delete key. So this one is gone, and this one's gone. And the last thing that we need to do is we need to move these tracks to the beginning here. And same for this one. There we go. Let's give it a listen. Hello, and welcome to my fake podcast. This episode. I'm not going to have a guest. It's just going to be me. Okay. So the other thing that I don't like is that in here, there's a long pause, so I'm going to get rid of it. I'm going to do the same thing. I'm going to click here. And then I'm going to do command shift K or control Shift key on Windows. Then I'm going to do Command I or Control I on Windows. And I'm going to do the same thing right here. So command, shift K, command. I am going to get rid of these two. And I'm going to drag the clips. Okay, Perfect. The second thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to add music at the beginning and at the end. For adding short music clips and other sound effects, I recommend freesound.org. I have an account in here already, I'm logged in and now I can download anything. Just keep in mind that different clips have different licenses. So you need to check that. My case, I'm going to use this distortion guitar. And this one has an attribution license, which means I need to give credit to this person. In my case, I'm going to add this person's name in the course description. If you're using it for your podcast, you can mention them in the podcast itself, or you can mention them in the podcast description when you publish it. I'm going to go ahead and download this clip. The clip, download it. Now I'm going to drag it into Audacity right on this gray area in here. Okay, Perfect. Already looking at the wave, this looks like it's going to be very loud, so I'm going to bring down the gain in here. Let's bring it down to minus 12, for example, and then we can adjust it. The other thing is that right now if I hit Play, this is going to play on top of the voice and we don't want that. Let me play to show you. I'm not going to have from the beginning, this is still pretty loud. I'm going to bring it down minus 17. I need to drag all this to the right. Before we do that, I'm going to join these two axioms. For doing that. I'm going to make a selection that includes the part where the split is happening. Then I'm going to say edit, clip boundaries join. And the same thing for this one. Clip boundaries join. Perfect. Now I'm going to move them to write after guitar part. Okay, perfect. So let's see how that sounds from the beginning. Hello and welcome to my fake podcasts. Okay, great. I think I can bring the volume up a bit. Hello and welcome to my fake podcast in this episode, I'm perfect. So basically the other thing that I need to do is I need to trim the Andean and I'm going to add music at the end as well. Here I am speaking in the second microphone. I'm just talking some non-science. I'm here. I am in. Welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today? Then the other Dan responded, Dan, I'm good. How are you? Nice to be here? And this is the end of my podcasts. So again, I'm going to click here. I'm going to do command shift K and then command. I. Going to get rid of this. And I'm going to get rid of this. I'm going to copy the guitar part, going to do Command C for copying or Control C on Windows, of course. And then right here I'm going to click here and do Command V or Control V on Windows. And there we go. And let's listen to the n Then. Hayden, I'm good. How are you? Nice to be here? There we go. That's our whole podcast. 7. Mastering: We are going to master our podcast. So for that, we need to export it as an audio file. So we're gonna do File Export and we're going to export it as WAV. I'm going to save it right on my desktop. And notice that it ends in dot wav. Save. Your trucks will mix down and explain it as one stereo file. Perfect, That's what we want. And we don't need to fill any of this. Okay, good. And it's been exported. Now we're going to create a new Audacity file, an empty one. And I'm going to drag the WAV file that I just exported in here. There we go. Now this is one stereo track with everything together. Now we're going to need a shortcut for selecting everything. It's going to be Command a on Mac or Control a on Windows. Once everything is selected, I'm going to click effect. I'm going to go to loudness normalization. Here we need to make sure this number is minus 16. Loves That's the recommended number. We'll leave this like that and we'll click, Okay. I'm going to export, again. I'm going to export it as Mp3 this time just so I get a smaller file, Export As MP3. And I'm going to save it in my desktop. There we go. The last thing that we're going to do is we're going to run that file through an online mastering tool that is free and it is really amazing. It is called band lab. And you can find it at band lab.com slash mastering. They do other things but they're mastering tool is free to use, using it to create an account. I've already done so and I'm logged in already. I'm going to import the MP3 track that I just exported. Now it is mastering. Just a note. If your file is very long, this is going to take awhile, so just be patient. Okay, there we go. I'm going to choose the clarity setting and you can listen to the master version and the original one. So I'm going to download it. That is going to be our final product. Our podcast is ready for distribution. 8. Publishing: So in order to publish your podcast in all the major platforms, unit to host it, add up podcast hosting platform. I personally use paths proud, but there are other ones that are grayed. Here is for example, pod bean. I have no affiliation with any of them. I just liked proud, it works really nicely. And I personally use this plan here, which hosts the episodes forever. The way it works with partners proud is just manage your podcast here you can add a new podcast. I already have mine here. Then here under episodes, you just upload a new episode when you have it ready. So after you've uploaded your first episode, you want to publish it to all the different big podcasting apps. So for that you just got to directories and you follow the instructions for each one. So for example, to get it published on Apple podcasts, you need to do all these things. The steps are different for each service. To me, the most important ones are Apple podcasts, Spotify, of course, Google podcasts, Amazon music, and the stator. You get listed in all of them. Your podcast will be available pretty much everywhere. 9. Outro: Podcast in both as a podcaster and the listener is one of my biggest choice these days. I'm happy to share my Audi related knowledge with you. And I'll make sure to listen to your podcast. I've command on it. If you upload or linked to an episode in the project section.