Talking is an art and hosting a podcast is an extension of that art. To make an effective podcast there are some things that you should remember when recording.

One of the most common pitfalls of beginner podcasters is talking too quickly. You should watch how you pace your talk when you do your podcast. Talking at a fast pace usually happens when you’ve done a run through of your material a few times. The familiarity with what you’re going to say may result in you trying to “breeze” through the whole show. Slow down. Give yourself the opportunity to actually take a breath and check how fast you’re going.

You will also have a tendency to speed up when you are tense. The whole podcasting setup with the microphone, headphones and hearing yourself talk is quite a strange experience that not everyone will be immediately used to. Try to do relaxation exercises before recording. Avoid caffeine which can make you more tense. You will also usually get tense when you put such high expectations on your performance. Remember that practice makes perfect and it is the rare person who takes to podcasting like duck to water. Take comfort in the fact that there is also a learning curve here and that you will continually improve as long as you take note of what aspects you should improve on.

One thing that distinguishes a really good podcast from the one that is ho-hum is how smoothly the podcast flows in terms of how the people talk. Nothing’s stilted, there are no awkward pauses, no unsure lulls in the conversation and no grasping for what will happen next.

How do you ensure that what you’ll make a podcast where you sound sure of yourself? Simple. Make the right preparations.

The secret to an effective podcast is preparation. Don’t go recording your podcast with just a general outline in your head. All of the great podcasters prepare notes for their show way before they start recording. The notes give them a roadmap of how the show will go. They can easily look at what topics to discuss and the information they want to impart for each topic. One thing that you should is that being a podcaster will not come naturally to a lot of people. Most of you will really have to work to make yourselves good podcasters and preparation is one tool you can use to improve your performance.

When it comes to notes, a general outline of information is usually better than actually preparing a script. Using a script is a sure way your podcast will sound stiff. You will find it hard to resist just reading the script and because you’re reading it, the natural cadence of speech will be lost.

The interview is a bit more complicated than your normal, personal, off the mill podcast especially if you will be conferencing over the internet or live even, face to face. First, study the set up and get down to planning a few setup’s trying to figure out what works best. For teleconferencing, you can record the questions and answers separately, editing them together with your editing software later. Background noise is a killer so search and silence all noisy stuff, equipment (if you love to use your computer, you’re sure to have more fans that the store bought PC casing so use something else and shut it off, the hum of the fans are louder that you think) More →

Being one of the many contenders for podcasts, Microsoft’s Zune should be a target for your podcasts as well as the all-present iPod. The Zune is a portable digital music player that has an added wireless feature with a whopping 80 GB or memory with a specific and continuously expanding market as the iPod. With the Zune selling as of latest figures, over a million units, the market is truly an enticing target for your podcasts should you want to expand your audience. There are some pre-requisites to setting up Zune to market your podcasts More →

Time for another ‘gear roundup post’. Or perhaps I should categorize this as a ‘getting started post’? Whatever you call it I thought it was time for another one of those. I’ve decided to split it up into two posts. This first one will as the name suggests deal with what you need to start out podcasting if you’re not looking to spend any larger amounts of money. The second part in this serious will deal with more ‘high-end podcasting’ if such a term exists.
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I found an article on podcasting with Linux this morning, and thought I’d share it with you. It’s old, but still worth a read. The core of the article deals with Audacity and recording interviews with Skype, which of course can be of interest to non-Linux users as well!

The article claims that you will need a second computer for recording both the voices from Skype. I definitely don’t see the need for this. I don’t know if Skype has the proper recording features now (as I said, the article is old), or if something like Audio Hijack isn’t available on Linux, in either way it could be solved with some creative routing with a proper audio interface.

Article from Linux.com

So you got your recording done, all is dandy, until you discover cracks, pops and hums all over the piece! What to do? Don’t fear, if there is in one advantage that digital has over analog, it’s in the cleanness field.
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