So you have your gear, now its time to record a show. If you are doing a solo podcast, its pretty easy. Just open up Audacity or QuickTime and start to record. However if you’re recording with a cohost, things are a touch more complicated.
If you are able to record in the same room as the other person, that might be the best option as you’ll get more natural conversation. If you do so, remember that podcasts are an audio medium and the visual nature of your conversation will not be seen by your audience. Also make sure you record in such a way where there is little to no bleed over of each others voice in the other person’s microphone. If there is and you have any crosstalk it can make for an echoey mess.
For many shows however, recording in person is impossible or impractical. For those shows its best to get on some sort of conference call. You can record you call with apps like Call Recorder for Skype. Skype also lets you record the call in the app, but it comes as a single file which makes editing difficult since crosstalk is impossible to separate and its much harder to correct for any volume differences between hosts. Call Recorder will give you your voice on one track and everyone else in the other. So for shows with more than two people, it’s also not the best option. Whenever you record Skype, you are susceptible to call drop outs and degradation of quality. For that reason, I highly recommend not recording Skype for anything but a backup or syncing purposes.
What I do for all my shows is a double-ender, meaning each person records their own local track and sends it to the editor. The nice thing about this is that everyone’s recording is direct from their microphone, with no loss in quality. In order to sync everyone’s track, I start the call by counting down 3, 2, 1 and everyone claps. This isn’t a perfect method because of audio drift between computers, but in my experience its pretty reliable. If audio drift is an issue, you can try putting multiple sync claps in a recording or using a recording of Skype to sync to.
I hope this helps you start to record your podcast with a cohost. When I added Chris to The Prog Rock Block, the show became far better and more fun to make. So find yourself a cohost and start your podcast!
Will this series go over hosting and how to get your podcast onto the internet?
Thinking about it. That’s one of the things I’d offer to do since it can be complicated but I figure I can write up some options.