Editing The Voice Over Tracks
Make smooth transitions between takes, tracks, and voices by using the fade function to fade in and out between tracks. These functions are available within the audio editing software. Pacing between words and sentences can be edited too by inserting pauses (dragging the audio away from the previous one) or shortening the distance between the two audio tracks.
Adding soundbites to your audio
Soundbites. After you’ve gotten your interviews recorded and transcribed, having picked out the parts of the responses you like from each interviewee, time to edit the audio clips in!
Softwares: I use Audacity (free) and Logic Pro X (paid) for audio editing
It’s great to include sound bites that aren’t too long. Under a minute, at around 30-40 seconds would be ideal, or at least that’s how we did it. We did make exceptions though, depending on the content. No hard and fast rule.
It helps to not lose your listener or get them wondering if we’re off-topic or forget the central focus of the podcast. But it’s your call. There’s no one way to do things, and everyone has different preferences as well.
If it gets too long or if the interviewee introduces a new concept, cut the soundbite and insert contextualisation on your part within the narration. Write it if you have to, and record it to help transit and make the points clearer for your audience.
Cut away the fillers, long pauses, and ramblings even, if it doesn’t fit. It also helps to make your interviewees sound more articulate, and get the point across faster, reducing your overall run time. Every second and minute counts!
Again, you don’t have to include the same opinions from each interviewee. Just include the ones you liked best or the ones that were explained best. Listeners don’t need 5 people to say the same exact thing. You could, however, have them build upon the same points if that’s what you’d like!
I tried to include as many of the responses from each interviewee as I can. I even had to revisit my outline to include more of what they talked about as I found it interesting and helpful and decided to add or remove sections or subsections to help with that process.
I also revisited my transcriptions to look for anything useful to balance the run time among my interviewees. I didn’t want 3 minutes of one guy and less than 10 seconds from another within the total runtime. But again, your call, and depending on the content and responses.
Revising and making editorial changes can be exhausting and daunting but it often makes the episode a little better for both your interviewees and listeners!
Audio editing takes hours, so please rest often!
Adding music and sound effects to your audio
After adding the soundbites, decide where you’ll want sound effects to enhance the listening experience or emphasise certain points. If you wish to keep things simple, decide on a piece of background music or two that could be used in several ways.
One way is to select a section of the music designated for a specific mood. Whenever that mood comes up, cue the same piece of music. The same section could appear several times, and that’s okay.
It’s a technique called thematic writing in film music. Like when Darth Vader appears on screen, the same piece of music and melody (which I'm sure you can already hear in your head whether as a fan of Star Wars or not) appears as well on the speakers. Same concept. It’s to enhance the mood and emphasise the points you’re talking about in the podcast.
Another way, the most obvious one, is the use of background music. Find something that fits the mood and add that in. Loop it entirely if you need to or lengthen the audio by syncing up a section. It can get technical, so I won't go into it unless you need me to!
Other purposes (optional) for you to use music in your podcasts are to hide bad audio quality (like over Zoom) and to sort of ‘adjust’ or ‘adapt’ to the pacing of the interviewee. For example, if the interviewee speaks slowly, you can either have a piece of medium tempo music to bring up the energy and keep it less ‘draggy’ or have a really slow one to show that it’s intentional and to match the energies.
For my latest episode, I used a unique piece of music for each section, but I had the first and last sections of the episode (introduction and the conclusion) use the same background music.
Or compose the music if you can!
For the use of these audio clips, make sure it’s royalty and copyright free. You wouldn’t wanna get into trouble with licensing or get sued for illegal usage. Some great websites that I love for free audio resources are Pixabay and free sounds for music and sound effects respectively. You may record some sounds on your own if you’re unable to find them online, or if you want something unique and specific. Sometimes, recording on your own is the best way to avoid copyright infringement.
Play through and check your audio, and clean up anything.
You’ve just produced your first podcast episode! Phew, the amount of work. Glad the baby’s out.
But there are just a few more things to do to get it out there. Publication and distribution.