Week 5 :: Podcasts & Audacity

This week in class we've been learning about and experimenting with the music program Audacity. Audacity is a free audio recording and editing program that is easy to use and often used as a medium for creating Podcasts. Podcasts are similar to radio shows, there's some Podcasts that have a more entertaining aspect, some with more informative, and listeners can subscribe to Podcasts they want to listen to regularly.

I caught on to Audacity pretty quickly, but when I was playing around on it at home I found myself forgetting small simple things. In an article titled "How to Use Audacity" they have three categories for tutorials. The first is Recording, which goes through how to connect your gear, activate recording, record/stop/pause, and other options for how you want to input your audio. Playback is the next category which explains what to do after you've recorded audio. It covers reviewing what you've recorded, changing speeds, and to listen to all, some, or one track that is open in the same file. The last category is Editing which covers how to trim, apply effects, manipulate the audio, and saving. I found the information really helpful as both a new learning tool but also a refresher. The most helpful part for me was the screen shots of each explanation. I'm extremely visual as a learner so having those as a guide made learning new things much easier.

I've discussed the program to use to record Podcasts, but how about the process before that? The prep is probably the most important step of Podcasting because of how important it is for the viewers to hear a show that isn't unorganized. Having things planned out allows you to fit as much in as time allows and keeps you on a steady pace. The first way to do this is have a script. If you're prepared and have practiced what you want to say, it'll come out more naturally rather than reading straight from paper. If you're dong an interview, it's good to prepare the interviewee with the questions so they don't get caught off guard. Another  tip is to be natural, people will want to listen to you and connect with you more if you sound like you're having a conversation with them. These tips and more are featured in Dustin Wax's article titled,  "10 Tip for Would-Be Podcaster."

During the process of making my intro/outro submission, I had the hardest time with figuring out how to add in multiple audio clips and integrate them together. Lowing the music volume while keeping the voices loud enough to be able to understand was one of the most difficult tasks for me. Once I figured that out, I worked on fade out effects. This video has a bit more advanced information I was needed for the basics I wanted to do, but it had a lot of easy to follow tutorials. Here is it below:




"How to Use Audacity." WikiHow. Web. 27 Oct. 2012. <http://www.wikihow.com/Use-Audacity>.Video Tutorial: Mixing Voice-Over with Music Bed Using Dynamic Controls. Dir. Dave Dugdale. Learning DLSR Video, 2011. YouTube.
Wax, Dustin. "10 Tips for Would-Be Podcasters." Lifehack. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Oct. 2012. <http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/10-tips-for-would-be-podcasters.html>.