Podcasting for Dummies®, 2nd Edition

Chapter 6. So What Are You Waiting For? Record, Already!

In This Chapter

• Setting your levels and parameters

• Focusing on volume and projection

• Capturing ambient sound

• Pacing and clock management

• Going off on tangents

• Recording

Okay, you've most likely gone through the hardware and software gadgets from Chapters 2 and 3. In this chapter, we make the bold assumption that you've made your purchasing selections, hooked up all the hardware according to the supplied documentation (you did read the documentation, right?), chosen your software, and gotten everything ready to record. This is it! You have a microphone pointing in the direction of your mouth, just waiting anxiously for you to begin podcasting.

So what's stopping you? Perhaps you have no clue how you sound to your recording equipment, or perhaps you're still trying to understand why your smooth and sultry voice sounds like you just finished a dozen espressos. The problem could be in your audio application's sound settings. Too much pep in the voice, and you sound like Rob Zombie crooning a goth's delight. Too little amplification, and you'd be better off if you just went out to your front porch and shouted your podcast's content.

So before the podcast itself comes setting levels and parameters — a fancy-schmancy way to say fiddling with knobs and sliders on your mixing board or your audio-editing software to ensure that the signal you're sending through the microphone is loud and clear. And once the technical side is running smoothly, ...