How to make your own Podcast

Having produced a Podcast I often get asked, how do you produce them? To answer those questions here's my short guide.

Producing your own show

In starting your own programme its best to think about what is your message or theme? This will help set the tone for your show and give you the chance to rally up friends who might want to help out.

There are four stages to the production process behind Podcasting:

1. Pre-recording research
2. Recording
3. Mixing
4. Publishing

Pre-recording research

Before recording you might want to consider the sort of things you're going to discuss and if you will play music. There are some websites on the Internet that offer music copy write free as part of the Podsafe network , you can also ask bands directly for use of their music in person or on myspace. Finding out some facts about the bands prior to recording can add to the banter of your show.

Recording

To record all you need is a computer and a microphone. Any type of microphone will be suitable - when starting out you might want to buy a cheap PC microphone. In recording our show we use Samson USB mic's but essentially your looking for something that will give your voice a warm tone.

For best results you should consider getting a 'pop' shield to stop the harshness of p and t sounds when talking.

To record plug the mic into the computer and in your audio preferences menu set input to your external microphone.

Open the programme your using to record, we use Garageband but you can also download Audacity free for Mac or PC. Make sure you set the preferences in either Audacity or Garageband with the input set to your external mic.

Its best to test to make sure everything's working first, then create a new track and start recording!

Mixing

If you've chosen to include music import the tracks into your audio programme where either cutting and pasting or using the mouse can then arrange them. You can also use the mixing stage to improve the continuity of your show. The best way to navigate the editing process is to look at the documentation supplied with your programme.

Once your happy with your show choose to export it as an mp3 and it's onto the final stage.

Publishing

Now you have a show you'll need somewhere on the Internet to upload it to.

Podbean is a free service that can help with hosting and keeping a blog for your podcast if you're a beginner.

For publishing our Podcast we use Blogger, we upload our Podcast to a hosting space and create a new entry within our blog. Feedburner monitors our blog and updates other services like iTunes for us automatically. You can find out more about this process in this tutorial.

Victoria Baker is a graduating student of Interactive Media Design at Dundee University; she is the technical arm of the Podcast Ragnarok Radio.