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Recording Your First Podcast Episode

Even if you don’t have a professional recording studio, you can use the speech enhancement and noise reduction features included with GarageBand to make sure your voice is clear and compelling. You can even give your voice a big radio sound using the built-in audio effects. It’s like having your own radio engineer.

It all starts with a clear original recording. Make some test recordings before you start rolling to ensure you get the perfect sound.



Tips

Use Ducking to make sure the host can be heard

Ducking automatically lowers the volumes of tracks that you decide are the backing tracks. To turn on ducking, choose Control > Ducking. Ducking control arrows appear in each track’s header. Click the arrow pointing up to make a track a lead track, and click the arrow pointing down to make a track a backing track. To change the amount of ducking for a track, choose Track > Show Track Info, and then click the Details triangle. Drag the Ducking Amount slider to adjust the amount of ducking.

Record an audio iChat to make an instant interview

You can record audio from an iChat audio or video conference in GarageBand. GarageBand records the audio of each participant in a separate Real Instrument track. Open iChat and GarageBand and make sure all participants have joined the conference. Click the Record button. A message appears to ask you if you want to record the iChat conference, and reminds you to get permission to record from the other participants. Click OK. When you’re finished, click the Record button again to stop recording. You must have Mac OS X v10.4.4 installed to record audio iChats.

Modify the speech enhancer effect to customize your sound

The Speech Enhancer settings included with GarageBand offer a variety of ways to reduce noise and optimize the sound of your microphone. If you don’t want to use the speech enhancer settings included with GarageBand, you can customize speech enhancer even more. Select the track you’re recording to and then click the Info button. Click the Details triangle and then click Edit button (the pencil icon) next to the speech enhancer that’s selected for that track.

Make test recordings of the people you're interviewing

In addition to making test recordings of yourself before you get rolling, make sure the person you're interviewing is sitting at a comfortable distance from microphone that produces a consistent level. When you're satisfied with the settings for their track, make sure the track is record enabled.

Steps

Record a podcast episode in GarageBand

  1. Open GarageBand and click New Podcast Episode.
  2. Type a name for your podcast episode, choose a location to save it to, and click Create. In the GarageBand window that appears, a Podcast Track, two vocal tracks, a Jingles track, and a Radio Sounds track appear.
  3. Select one of the vocal tracks to record yourself speaking.
  4. Click the Record button to start rolling, and speak clearly into the mic. Click the record button again to stop recording.
  5. Click the Rewind button to go back to the beginning of the song.
  6. Click Play to listen to your recording.