Week 7 – Podcast Publishing and RSS Feeds

Finally, it’s podcast publication time!! After tinkering around on the web and researching the various options I decided to go with Podomatic as it seemed the easiest option. So, I completed the meta-data tags on the final mp3 file (I found I could access these using t right-click menu on my mouse), signed up to a free Podomatic account, filled in some personal information, picked a profile picture and attempted my first podcast publication! It was all pretty straightforward and surprisingly quick and easy to do. However, getting it onto my WordPress blog was a whole other issue…

I attempted for ages to embed the player in a blog post but was unable to (… even though I had Googled information that said it was possible?!). After numerous failed attempts I gave up, and sought solace in the FAQ section of the Podomatic website. Finally, I figured out how to link an RSS feed in the sidebar menu of my blog, but it that information was tricky to locate. Shout-out to WordPress and Podomatic: make your ‘help’ information menus more user-friendly and accessible, oh and work on your embedded search box option – your controlled vocabulary appears not to be up to scratch!

Anyway, it’s now up and running on the site (as you can see to the right), and I also double-checked it’s availability in the i-Tunes store, all present and correct. I think chuffed, at this juncture, is an appropriate word for how I feel after that.

In truth, the whole process, from Audacity to Podomatic was relatively painless and easily done. As it was my first time to do this the obstacles lay in my lack of experience and direction. Most issues were related to not knowing where to look for various options within the software. I had one or two problems regarding popping with the intro music but I got it right in the end with a few volume tweaks.  The quality of Podomatic as an application interface is quite slick and impressive also, I uploaded one or two pictures to the profile to compliment the iPhone shutterbuggery theme to boot! And while never giving a project like this much thought before, I think I’m slowly coming around to the idea of doing something similar in my free time. It could be my calling in life! 🙂

Week 6 – Podcasting, Audacity, MultitrackStudio and more

This week I kicked off my podcast adventure in earnest. Unfortunately however, I was experiencing problems with my microphone and could not get a clear recording of my vocal, so instead, I opted to experiment with software known as Speakonia – a text-to-speech package. Basically I typed up my podcast script and pasted it into Speakonia, which in turn allowed me to tweak the volume of speech, type of voice used and speed of reading. Finally, when I was happy with the results I recorded the piece using the in-software recording option and exported the final edit as a  WAV file. I then pasted the WAV file into another piece of software known as FlicFlac, which in turn encoded the audio to a 320kbps mp3 file.

For the introduction music I used a drum-loop (which I got from the Hammerhead free sampler software – see above) and put it on a perpetual loop. Over this, I used an audio interface to record four separate acoustic guitar tracks using a direct line into MultiTrackStudio software, which I’ve discussed in an earlier post. I used in-software settings to add the delayed effects to the harmonics that can be heard. I played around with both reverb and panning until I was happy with the over sound and then recorded the Master track. Again, I exported as a WAV file.

Next, I imported both WAV files into the Audacity software (both the music and the vocal), I then arranged the tracks in various ways below:

I cut a small sample from the music and used it to paste elements at both the start and end of my finished podcast. I then added fade effects to both copies to coincide with the commencement and completion of the vocal track respectively. Using the drag option I was able to position the vocal track (recorded in Speakonia) perfectly between both intro and outro segments of music. I then exported my podcast as an mp3 and voila! Podcast complete and ready for submission to Podomatic for next weeks post.

Useful Links:

From anyone interested in the home-recording aspect in terms of music, below you’ll find links to some interesting free software. While Audacity is excellent for general recording, Reaper is an outstanding piece of software that can compete with commercial packages worth hundreds!!

Reaper Audio Production Workstation

Myna Audio Editor (not bad either!!)

Home Recording Information

Week 5 – Audacity and podcasting techniques

The focus of this week’s lecture was podcasting technique and how to use Audacity to manipulate audio recordings. We were briefed in what is required in making a successful podcast, methods of recording i.e. examples of software available, types of equipment used, from amateur to pro level and so on. We then investigated the various options available within the Audacity software, the ability to overlap multiple tracks, edit out sections of the audio file, stretching out the visual audio track to enable isolation of sections to delete etc. Nial provided examples of this on-the-fly, recording vocal samples and tweaking them by way of modern-day digital wizardry! Other areas touched on were normalization, vol fade-in/fade-out, reverb addition, multi-tracking to name a few.

I feel comfortable regarding the podcasting recording aspect as I have previous experience using MultiTrackStudio, Garage Band (iPad) and various other versions of home recording software, including Cubase and ProTools also. Hopefully,  time permitting, I’d like to record a small musical intro for my podcast, just to give it that extra bit of professional gloss! At this juncture I’m looking at what’s available to record my podcast, as I have an iPhone I was looking at two apps that might do the trick:

Caster

AudioBoo

Both seem pretty good, it’s what comes after the recording of said podcast which I’m stumped about. If all else fails, I’ll stick to Audacity as the guide is available on Blackboard…

So, without further ado, let’s wrap this up and get cracking. Below, you’ll find some useful guides to podcasting that are perfect for the uninitiated. Enjoy.

What is Podcasting?

Creating a Podcast with Audacity

Podcasting Tips