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Season 18 has been all about getting started on your podcast. Whilst it may seem an insurmountable process when first stumbled upon, it turns out to be reasonably straightforward. We need to Record audio, Edit, Publish and Promote. REPP. We need to work our REPPs and our body of content will grow over time. Consistency and persistence are by far the most under mentioned skills required to have a successful podcast. Everything else is just process and stuff.
Gear
And speaking of stuff, the gear required. Since episode 1 I’ve been out in the field making recordings. I still think your smartphone is an excellent tool for voice work. Especially when paired with the Rode Reporter app (available for both iOS and Android). If this is all you have to hand, you can begin a solo hosted show. Teamed with Zoom meetings or MS Teams you can start an interview show. Yes, it will feel clunky to do but it will teach you about mic placement, editing and ideation.
If you are going to purchase a stand alone mic, I’d recommend a USB connected device. This can be similar to the Rode NT-USB+ or NT-USB mini or any of the other options available across the interwebs. Find one in your price range, learn to use it and then forget about it. It will just sit there in your recording setup doing its job. There is nothing particularly unpleasant about any of the mics out there now. I know of a long running podcaster who uses a $30 cheapy he picked up on eBay and makes it work by controlling his recording space, the mic placement relative to his mouth and monitoring his recording with headphones as he goes.
Ideation
We then dived into the vexing question of content ideas. For a Disability Advocacy Service, your content ideas are literally walking in the door. People, their struggles with bureaucracy, the NDIS, the changes you were able to walk through with them are all great ideas. Crafting these into a narrative with suspense, emotion, power and direction is the art part of the craft of podcasting. Season 17 on Storytelling techniques covered the basics of this.
The thing is with Podcasting once you have your episode published, you can wander over to Apple Podcasts and pick up a transcript of the episode. Now you may already have one if you run a fully scripted show but the point remains you have written content from your audio production. With this you have a myriad of options for repurposing your work. We covered this in bonus episode 2 in Season 17.
Podcast Life!
Episode three took us into a somewhat meta space: The Podcast Life. This may seem a little over the top but like all creative endeavours, “Podcasting” is a discipline. Any discipline applied consistently changes the person following that system. I have a particular way of looking at the world based upon the academic discipline of Archaeology I studied at UNE. I’m always trying to find the base layer of a problem to see how it developed over time. Podcasting has added another lens to the process. I’m always looking for the story behind what I see in front of me. This can lead to interesting places and people telling their stories.
Ancillary Options
So having “invested” in some gear, developed a level of skill at using that gear and begun the training of your mind to the nuances of voice in particular and sound in general, other possibilities present themselves to the podcaster. In episode 4 we covered a few possibilities: Geolocated audio travel content, Voice over work and Building a SFX library. All three make use of skills developed through the podcasting process. We could also add public speaking to this list as the practice of hearing your own voice online can be a handy jumping off point leading to public speaking gigs.
A 10 Episode Season
Looking forward to the actual process, episode 5 outlined how to build a 10 episode season. The benefits of this are many. There is sufficient time to explore ideas and storylines, growing them into something meaningful, there’s the ability to go deep and narrow on a subject, say navigating the NDIS and this structure brings listeners with you on the journey. I advocate for a three week gap between seasons with maybe a bonus episode or two to fill the gap. This gap is a built in buffer against burn out. If you decide on this structure let your listeners know from the beginning what you are doing. People are, generally, despite the trolls, decent and will adapt to your structure if they perceive value in what you’re doing.
Scripted Solo Host Show
Going into a little more granularity, episode 6 looked at the Scripted Solo Host approach. Most people think “interview” when they contemplate a podcast. This may be so for many but from the standpoint of the Disability Advocacy Service trying to grow their authority and build trust with an audience of potential clients, an interview show may not be ideal. I’ve heard it reported and can confirm from my own anecdotal experience as a listener, interview shows tend to benefit the person being interviewed, not the host. The guest showcases their skills, talents and abilities, the host becomes a cheer leader for them. A decent enough thing to do but will it grow your service’s reputation? It would appear not. Now I’m not suggesting you don’t interview your clients, I’m suggesting you stay clear of other “experts” in the field unless what they do and say relates directly back to your service’s mission and vision. The best way to avoid this kind of confusion is to use the Scripted Solo Host approach discussed in episode 6.
What About Video?
The perennial question from many new podcasters is: When should I add video? A little history will help. Youtube began in 2005, podcasting 2004. Podcasting, through the rss feed has always had a video capability. You can also send .pdf files too through your feed. Back to the question at hand. In the early days podcasting and youtube competed for the video segment. Guess who won? Not podcasting. While I have, maybe three times in ten years, published video episodes, I, like 98% of podcasters, am an audio producer. Youtube and podcasting went their separate ways. This is because audio and video and different media.
Because TV and Cinema came after radio, it is assumed they were “better” media but they are just different. You could but I do not see arguments in favour of ending the written word on paper, books etc, as a medium. Just because a different medium arises, it does not mean the old must conform to it. Each medium has its strengths and weaknesses.
The strengths of audio are: portability, accessibility, time, imagination, convenience. Let’s unpack these. Portability means what it says on the tin. Audio can be consumed, especially via wireless earbuds, anywhere. You can appear to be paying full attention to your surroundings and in reality you are being transported to whole other worlds. This is not a strength of video and its need to be focussed upon. Audio is, therefore, more easily accessed at a time of the listener’s choosing, they are not at the beck and call of the visual media. Like books and ancient spoken word storytellers, podcast audio connects to the visual imagination. It allows the listener to create the pictures they need for the stories they are listening to. A powerful effect that does not lead to questions of excessive screentime but still creates images. All of these benefits clearly point to the convenience of audio. Driving, exercising, resting, washing up, doing the washing, sitting in a cafe, sitting with others watching their screens, all these are opportunities for audio that are less convenient for video.
Never forget the power of the human voice, on its own in the ears of a listener who has chosen your show. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, ad infinitum, podcasting is the latest example of the wandering storytellers who trace back to preliterate times. The Odyssey, the Ulster Cycle, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Journey to the West and to some extent, the Dreamtime are all examples of this. As podcasters we continue this tradition, speaking to many people, one at a time, all at once.
A Spartan Approach
All of this so far is heading towards episode 8: A Spartan Approach. This does not mean sitting out on frozen mountains with just a cloak, a spear and a mic. What it does mean is that like laconic speech, less is more. I would advocate for as light a setup as possible. A phone as backup and a digital audio recorder for both field and indoor work. I’ve used the Zoom H2n for over a decade, it came out in August 2011 and still does the job. This tool works as a USB mic and as a field recorder. Five built in mics, plenty of options for configuring them and an SD card to save your audio files to when not in USB mic mode.
As stated the H2n has been around for a while. A newer version the H2essential has been available for a little while and I’ve been tossing up whether to “upgrade” or not. I think not after some extensive reading. The essential part refers to just the absolute minimum required, a thing I usually support. In this case it seems less than the H2n. Oh it does have a coloured screen and a 32 bit float recording option, I’ll be dropping a bonus episode on 32 bit float between season 18 and 19 to explain that. But it does have fewer mics. I suspect since Zoom just released H5Studio as an upgrade on its H5 that they’ll be releasing “studio” designated H series devices in the future. In the meantime I’ll stick with the H2n and would recommend it to anyone. It is a little less expensive now with H2e on the market. Sometimes newer isn’t necessarily better.
Building a SFX Library
One of the great advantages of this recommended spartan setup is its ability to be used for not just voice recordings but for capturing SFX as well. In episode 9 we covered the basics of this process. As with all things audio, practice, experiment, learn and develop your own ”voice”. The thing with SFX is you can use them in your episodes but you should only use them when they enhance the narrative, not just because you have them to hand. [Insert train whistle here] You see what I mean!
Learn your craft and walk the Way of the Podcast. This will change how you live in the world for the better. You will hear so much more clearly both what people are communicating and what Nature is singing if we would but listen.
If you’re thinking about starting your own show or one for your Advocacy Service please DM on LinkedIn, I’m on there most days or you can use the email in the show notes.
Thanks for listening and let’s keep those mics warm!
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