17: How to Record Your Podcast's Intro & Outro
We've already talked about what should be included in your show's main intro and outro, what your main call-to-action should be in your outro, and where to find music for your intro and outro ... now, it's time to record them!
In this episode, I explain how to set-up and use Audacity to record any of the solo segments of your show. I also go over microphone technique and provide some insider tips that will make things easier for you (or your editor) during the editing phase.
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Podcasting for Coaches | Episode 06: The Equipment You'll Need to Start a Podcast
Podcasting for Coaches | Episode 09: What Should be Included in Your Podcast's Intro and Outro
Podcasting for Coaches | Episode 10: Determining Your Main Call-to-Action
Podcasting for Coaches | Episode 11: Where to Find Music For Your Podcast
Podcasting for Coaches on Instagram
Podcasting for Coaches on Facebook
My Launch Consultation Packages
Online Course | How to Start a Podcast (For Your Coaching Business)
Transcript
Welcome to podcasting for coaches. I'm Britany Felix and I'm a podcast launch consultant who specializes in helping coaches and consultants utilize the power of podcasting as a way to build brand awareness and generate new leads for their business. I realize not every new coach or consultant can afford to hire someone to help launch their show. So I created this podcast as a way to guide you through the process of launching and utilizing your very own podcast to help you grow your business and reach a new audience of adoring followers and potential clients. If you're ready to get your voice and podcast out into the world, head over to podcasting for coaches.com to learn more. Welcome to Episode 17 of podcasting for coaches. As promised last week in this episode, we are going to go over how to record your very first item for your podcast. So the very first item that you should record for your podcast is the copy for your intro and outro. Now I explained in episode nine exactly what your podcast intro and outro is and what should be included. And in Episode 10, I helped you determine your main call to action, which is what you should put at the end of your outro if you have one, and an episode 11 I explained where to find the music that you're going to use for the intro and outro for your show. So when it comes to recording your intro, and outro some people find it best to have a script. But then some people also sound a little rehearsed whenever they read from a script. So try it both ways and see what works best for you. And if you are working from a script, I recommend reading through it several several times. So you are completely comfortable with it. And it can flow more naturally and you don't sound like you're reading. So to start we are going to talk about the recording program that I recommend using whenever you do any solo recordings. So even if you are doing an interview style show, which it will not work for interviews. But if you were doing an interview style show, you might still have solo segments that you record individual episode intros and outros, where you maybe give your own little take on how the episode went highlights those kinds of things. So any recording that you do where it is just you, I recommend using a program called audacity, au da ci TY, and I will have a link for this in the show notes on my website, podcasting for coaches comm forward slash blog, forward slash one seven. And I know that is a ridiculous URL. Unfortunately, the platform that I used to host my website does not let me customize that Fingers crossed, we'll get that feature one day, I love everything else about that platform, except for this. But back to the topic at hand and want you to download this program it is free, so you don't need to worry about paying for it. And the great thing about audacity is it's mostly set up for you so that you can just hit record and get going. There are a couple of things that I want you to also download that kind of go hand in hand with audacity, some plugins that help it run a little bit better. And I'm gonna have links for those in the show notes as well. That is an FFmpeg plugin. And this allows you to import a variety of different file formats into audacity, specifically in for a and being able to strip the audio from video files. And I also want you to use the link in the show notes to install the lame plugin. And yes, that is lame lamb. And what that does is it allows you to export your audio files in mp3 format, which is required to attach those files to your RSS feed. Now when you download and install these plugins on your device, audacity should automatically pick them up and they are ready to go for you the next time that you open up Audacity. If that turns out to not be the case for you, I'll also have a link for you in the show notes for a YouTube tutorial not by myself. That will help guide you through the process of troubleshooting that. Okay, so now we are going to pretend that you have audacity on your computer you have successfully installed FFmpeg and lame. And now we are ready to essentially begin recording. One little tricky thing with audacity I have found is that you have to have your microphone plugged into your computer before you actually open Audacity. If you do that, then it should automatically detect that you were using your microphone, but you always want to double check this and you will see in the main menu bar with all the fancy buttons. You'll see an icon for microphone and just make sure that that says microphone and then in parentheses, whatever microphone you're using to mine basically says ATR USB mic because that's the type of mic I'm using. If you want to hear yourself in real time playback, you can set that up for audacity or you can just stop an implant if you want to test it for yourself before you actually really dive into your content. Just make sure you have your headphones plugged into your microphone and not your computer. So speaking of listening to yourself, we want to make sure that you're recording at the correct volume. So now there are some industry standards for podcasts that we are trying to educate everyone on and get people to use. But the crazy thing about audacity is it does not measure in lufs which stands for loudness units relative to full scale, which is basically just a fancy way of saying how loud the audio sounds. So basically every other audio recording playback meter any other thing to do with audio measures the volume and lufs. But unfortunately, audacity has their own measuring system. There are some plugins that you can do with audacity, but I have tried several of those, and they just don't play very nicely. And some of them are incredibly, incredibly expensive. So what I actually did was I basically just took a piece of audio that I knew was at the correct laughs, which are generally between negative 16 and negative 19, depending on whether or not you're recording in stereo or mono. And if that was gibberish to you don't worry about that, you don't really need to know that. Because if you are recording in Audacity, I'm going to tell you that when you look at the output volume, so as you're recording, you're going to see this bar with a whole bunch of numbers, and it's going to move up and down as you speak. And it's going to go from green to yellow to red. Now, on this bar, when you are speaking at a normal volume, you want your voice to fall between negative 12 and negative six, which means it's just going into the yellow, and you never ever, ever want it to go into the red. So if you're going into the red when you're laughing or emphasizing certain words, I want you to either a restate what you said so that it's a little bit quieter, or be adjust your volume down and record again. So again, do a quick test recording. And all you have to do honestly is just hit the red record button and start talking into your microphone and really see where you're falling on that scale. And make adjustments to the slider that also has a microphone icon on it as well, you'll see a minus sign in the plus sign. And that will help you adjust where that should be, I can tell you I generally record between point eight 1.89. So that gives you a fairly good indication of where to start depending on how loud you just naturally speak. Okay, so we have got audacity open, you know, to just hit the button to record, you know, to use the microphone icons to select that your microphone is actually the input device and you're not using a built in laptop mic. And you know, to adjust the volume for your recording at using the other little microphone icon that has the negative and a plus sign next to it with a little slider bar. And you're going to want to adjust that so that your volume falls between negative 12 and negative six on the scale where you can see it actually measures the volume that you're speaking at as you are talking and it fluctuates with you. So I would be remiss if I did not explain a little bit about microphone technique. Because this is absolutely a factor when you go to record, if you sit super far away from your mic, that's going to sound way different than if you're practically eating the microphone. And you actually have to do two of those things depending on which type of microphone you're using. So right off the bat, if you're using a Blue Yeti microphone, which I talked about in Episode Six, where I went over the equipment that you need to start a podcast, I don't actually recommend this microphone. But if you already have it, that's what you had on hand. And that's what you're making do with. There are absolutely ways to do that. But there are absolutely correct and incorrect ways to use a Blue Yeti microphone, there's actually going to be a link in the show notes for a fantastic YouTube video that again, I did not create. But I want to share that with you because she goes over some very, very important steps for using a Blue Yeti microphone. And she has some visual cues that are going to be much more beneficial than if I were to run through that here. So here on the show, I want to talk about using an ATR 2100 microphone, because that's actually what I recommend for beginner podcasters. And for those who do not have a studio kind of setup where they can really have a soundproof area that has been treated acoustically to provide the best sound. So with an ATR 2100 microphone, if you order that straight from Amazon, it's going to come with a little tripod stand. And you can absolutely use that. But the thing with this microphone is you have to be very, very close to it, no more than like one to three inches away from it, unless you're just a very, very loud speaker. And at that point, you're going to want to back away just a little bit, but you do still have to remain pretty close to this microphone. So if you're someone that doesn't really want to hunched over, I actually at various points in time have used like a stack of books to put the microphone I'm at a better height with my mouth. And then eventually I got what is called a boom arm, which suspends the microphone in front of my face. So I can have it as close as I need to without having to hunched over. I no longer actually use this microphone, I have switched because I talk with my hands a lot. And so I didn't want something right in front of my face. But again, for using an ATR 2100 I want you to have your mouth no more than just a few inches away, test this see what sounds best, you'll be able to hear it. If you're sitting too far away, your voice will sound really distant and hollow. It won't sound rich, it won't sound like you're going to be right there next year listener and that's really kind of all you have to know about the ATR 2100 to be perfectly honest, that's part of the reason that I recommend it for beginner podcasters is because it has to be turned on, you have to sit no more than a few inches away. And if you want to hear the volume, your headphones have to be plugged into the mic itself and not your computer. And that's it, you're pretty much ready to go. So when you are doing your first recording what I want you to do that will help you in post production are a couple of things. I want you to leave three to five seconds of ambient noise at the beginning and the end of the recording. When I say ambient noise that means I want you to sit very still. Don't make any mouth noises don't breathe, don't cough. Don't move anything on your desk. Don't ruffle your shirt, just sit there silently and let the recording go for three to five seconds. So it can pick up the general room noise. So what this is going to give you is white noise essentially. And you can use that later in post production when you're editing to remove that white noise and that static from your recording, and it's going to sound a lot more crisp and clear. Also, as you're recording, especially for your intro, and outro, I want you to correct yourself if you stumble. So if you say something wrong, or you just don't like the way that you say it, or you kind of stumble over your words a little bit, just take a second pause, and then start the sentence over again. If you guys long with these episodes look like as I'm recording them, I can tell you, they're generally almost like twice as long. Because I do this for myself. And it makes it so much easier in editing. I can just cut out whole sections where I know I stumbled and go back again. What some people also like to do is if they know that they have stumbled and they're starting over, they'll clap into their microphone, because you'll see that as you're editing. I don't really necessarily recommend doing that. Because those loud claps can throw off a part of the editing process that I'm going to talk about in next week's episode. So again, if you feel that you have stumbled you just don't really like the way that you say it just start over, it's fine. You're going to edit that out and it's no big deal. And when you are recording your intros and outros even if you're sending them off to somebody else to edit, I recommend doing a full run through at least three times for the intro and for the outro that will give yourself room to maybe splice some things together if there was a background noise that you didn't catch as your recording. If you didn't catch somewhere that you stumbled if there was just a funky glitch, any of those things, you'll have plenty of options to work with. So that's going to wrap up this episode of How to record your intro and outro next week, we are going to talk about editing and mixing that together and mixing basically just means combining all the elements so it's one final track. If you have some copy that you would like reviewed before you actually record your intro and outro I am more than happy to take a look at that for you and provide some feedback. Just email me Britany BR it a ny at podcasting for coaches.com or reach out to me via the contact form on my website, or just go to facebook.com forward slash podcasting for coaches. And reach out to me on that page as well. Thank you so much for joining me and I will see you back here next week. And that wraps up another episode of podcasting for coaches. If you're wondering if now is the right time to start a podcast for your coaching or consulting business, head on over to podcasting for coaches comm where you can either take a free quiz or schedule a one on one consultation with yours truly, thank you so much for joining me today and I will see you back here for the next episode.