PoducateMe: Practical Solutions for Podcasting in Education
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Figure 65: The Levelator makes audio adjustments a breeze.
Following the “levelating” of your audio, import the file back into Audacity to add intros,
outros, voiceovers and whatnot.
I recently recorded a meeting in a conference room in which speakers were at varying
distances from the microphone. Consequently, some speakers were softer than others in
the recording. After running the audio file through The Levelator, the voices were closely
matched in volume. This is a very useful tool to add to your audio arsenal.
Intros, Outros, Voiceovers and Whatnot
Most podcasts feature brief introduction and wrap-up segments that serve as bookends
to the main content. These intros and outros help brand the podcast and may include
music, sound effects, credits, copyright information, etc.
Because our intro and outro contain music, we applied the compression and
normalization to the voice track before adding these elements. This will allow us to retain
the dynamic range of the music, which has presumably already been adjusted by its
creator.
CareerChat’s intro and outro segments are pretty basic—we have a few seconds of
music we created in GarageBand (thus avoiding copyright issues), over which the phrase
“CareerChat is brought to you by Miami University’s Office of Career Services” is said.
Then, as the music fades out, Leslie begins introducing herself, the topic and the guest.
At the end of the interview, the music fades back in as Leslie thanks the guest, and then
the music fades back out, signaling the end of the episode. Not terribly sophisticated, but
it certainly gets the job done.
Intro
Obviously, the first thing you need to do before you can add an intro to your podcast is
create one. Luckily, you’ll need to do this only once. While we had originally produced our
intro and outro segments in GarageBand, we use music from a rock band in current
episodes. You can visit a site such as PodsafeAudio.com and download music from
artists who have uploaded material for use under the Creative Commons license. If you
need sound effects, begin your search at SoundSnap.com and FindSounds.com—if you
