DO YOU HAVE ANY ADVICE FOR BEGINNERS?
Question - Zara Camp.
What would you do if someone wanted to start a podcast that's only audio?
What advice would you give them in that respect?
Answer – Keith Keller
This is actually a really great question.
I would think there's two things you can do.
One is go into a quiet room.
You won't believe the amount of people that think it's okay to do a podcast when the television is on you.
We can laugh at that now, because it sounds ridiculous to us, but the other people say, I can't hear the television.
I'm I just filtered it out.
You filtered it out because your brain doesn't hear it.
You're used to the fact that it's on every day, the average person and a mic sitting in the in a neutral position will pick up everything in the surrounding area.
So the first thing, lot of things, for podcasters, can be free.
So have a quiet room with maybe carpet on the floor or curtains on the wall or a comfy chair, and just get yourself really settled into a quiet place.
That's the first thing.
The second thing I personally recommend, and you'll be able to do this when you go to the shops, is get a dynamic mic, not a condenser mic, a dynamic mic.
I'll demonstrate this right now.
A dynamic mic is really good for what we call the proximity effect.
When it's close to my mouth.
It's deeper, which makes me sound more authoritative.
If I move it just 10 centimeters from my mouth, you can hardly hear me.
Hardly hear me.
I've got a shout, right?
What that means is, if someone's mowing their lawn, all the kids are screaming, or, you know, wife is at home cooking dinner, then this, this type of mic which is not very much more than a normal mic.
They call it a dynamic mic.
They are purpose built to cut out background noise.
Now, once when you start a podcast, you won't you might, may not know this initially, but you'll notice things you never noticed before.
You know what? I never noticed?
The guy does his lawn every Monday morning.
I never noticed that before, every Monday morning, 930 this guy mows his lawn.
It's starting to really annoy me, but I didn't notice that before.
You tell me I'm wrong.
So you start to notice things, right?
Which is good, because you've started to notice them.
But whether or not you notice them, they come out on the tape.
The recording using the tape, because I'm an 80s guy, we had reel to reel when I was doing radio.
So you know, it comes out on the tape.
Whether or not you hear it or not is not up to the machine.
The machine records everything.
So have a nice quiet room, get yourself really in the zone, and then build the tech up as you can.
Yeah, don't. You don't have to buy lots of stuff straight away.
There's a, there's a really cool phrase.
I don't know if you've heard this phrase.
It's called podfade.
Yes, it's a phenomenon.
People like this, they go, man, I'm going to do a podcast.
I'm going to do a podcast every week for a year.
Promise, promise. I'm doing it.
I'm going to buy all this equipment.
I'm going to do a podcast every week for a year, and then after about three weeks ago, oh, look, it's a bit hard, you know, not enjoying it anymore.
I don't know if I want to do it.
You've only done three it's really hard.
Yeah, well, you know, it is hard, but so don't buy everything all at once.
Buy something, maybe a nice pair of headphones or a nice mic, and then, then get in the zone and they can go further.
