How to make your very own WKCO Heaven podcast:
I have very limited experience myself, but I can offer you some very simple instructions to make a basic show. I read online that Garage Band (for Mac) and Audacity (for PC) are the free-est, simplest ways to go about this.I have yet to make a show on Audacity, but can walk you through making your radio show on Garage Band. To get off to on the right foot, open Garage Band, select“ New Project” and choose the“ Podcast” template:
You will be asked to name your project, which you can do without really messing with any of the other variables.
Your template should open with a few tracks, including“ Male Voice,”“ Female Voice,” and“ Jingles.” The only thing you need to know about these tracks is that male and female voice tracks are calibrated to, in a general way, enhance your voice for the radio on a gender basis.I don’ t know how essential that is, but you might as well record your voice in one of the“ voice” tracks.On the other hand, you could just play with the endless variety of wacky voice-modulating effects and go bonkers.
The only important thing to remember is to be sure to select the track you want to record on before you start to record your voice.Otherwise you’ ll start to record over other content (your songs, probably).You may do this accidentally from time to time but it’ s easy enough to hit undo (by the way, use common sense and safe all the time just in case).
So ideally, you will be recording your voice in one or two tracks and pasting any songs you want to play into separate tracks, to be sure you’ re not erasing what you’ ve already done.
You can collect songs in playlists in iTunes or another media player, and select those playlists for importing within Garage Band…
Or you can just drag-and-drop songs from your hard drive, desk top, music folder, etc. directly into your Garage Band tracks.
Just like when you’ re recording, you want to be sure that you’ ve selected the target track before dragging and dropping.
Otherwise Garage Band may open a new track (which will get messy after a few songs) or place them in some other inconvenient place (over another song or your voice).
When you drop your song onto the track, it will take a few seconds to render and will then appear complete with lovely squiggly lines. Now you can drag the song to any point time or to any other track.As you’ re assembling your show (i.e. arranging the songs in sequence and recording your voice in between), you’ ll probably end up doing a lot of moving and shuffling. That’ s to be expected, and you can always move your songs one way or the other.Just be careful not to let your songs overlap, or pieces may be cut.
And so you’ ll assemble your show, piece by piece, taking whatever creative liberties your mood and fluency in Garage Band will allow.You should familiarize yourselves with the volume controls, since the music tends to be a little louder than the voice.There are master volume controls, plus you can adjust the individual track volume without being a master of mastering.
So once you’ ve done the work and have your show, it’s time to render.You’ ll want to click“ Share” and“ Export to iTunes.” I’ve been rendering my broadcasts as mp3’s, even though Garage Band recommends another format to have full podcast functionality.I just know that mp3 works, and that Idon’t need my file to do anything else but play.
Exporting your file to iTunes will make it into a basic, albeit long mp3 file, which you will be able to find on your hard drive.
At this point, you need to direct your computer to the internet. The best site I’ ve found for posting podcasts to the internet for free is podomatic.com. They will continually offer you an upgrade to“ Pro,” which costs money.So probably don’ t do that.With the free version, you can store up to 500 mb’s of content, which should be about 4-5 shows if they are about 2 hours long. If you’re making shorter shows, more power (and space) to you.So basically, you’ d have to eventually delete your oldest shows.
So, make an account at podomatic.com. You can choose your site name (___________.podomatic.com), and choose from one of 5 or so lame themes for your page.You also upload some photos for your page or any individual broadcasts if you’d like. Once you have a page, you’ ll need to upload your content.You sort of do that separately from the actual creation of the podcast, meaning that you upload anything (your mp3, any photos) you want to include first, then select that material from your “My Media” folder when you’re creating a podcast.
So, select “My Podcast” and then “Upload,” and on that screen uploading your files will be pretty self-explanatory:
Clicking“ My Podcast” and“ Manage Podcast” without choosing anything in the extending menu will bring you to a great home base for your page, with all kinds of needless information about who listens to your show when.
Clicking“ My Podcast,” highlighting“ Manage Podcast” , and clicking“ Settings and Design” will bring you to a page where you can, as you might expect, mess with settings and design.
To make your first podcast, you will click“ My Podcast” and then“ Post and Episode.” This will bring you to the following screen:
Here you can enter your title and description and then move on to“ Audio/Video,” which is the only important part.
Select 1.“ Upload a file” and then 2.“ Select Some files.”
Find the mp3 on your hard drive and upload it.
At this point you should be able to coast through the process until you ultimately select publish.After hitting publish, it will take several (maybe 5?) minutes for the show to process.It will offer you a link to click and refresh to see if your show has updating.Actually clicking this link will make you neurotic.Sit back, pat yourself on the back, have a drink, and wait to get an e-mail saying your show has been published.The e-mail should contain a link to the show.Congrats!
Now that you have a show, it’ s time to share it! If you’ ve made a show, e-mail me at cieplyj@gmail.com , and I can grant you access to be an“ Author” of the blog wkcoheaven.blogspot.com .As an author you can edit the site and make posts.This will enable you to 1.Link your podomatic page to this list of WKCO Heaven DJ’ s and 2.Embed your new shows in on the main page as you make them.
So, in this order:
1. E-mail me and wait a few minutes or hours for me to invite you to be an author.Also you can e-mail me your link, and
I can link you to the site for you.
2. Accept my invitation.
3. Login with your gmail info if you have it.If not, um, we’ ll think of something.
4. Click“ Design”
5. Click“ Edit” in the category“ DJ’ s” :
6. Paste in your link to“ New Site URL,” enter your name to“ New Site Name,” and click“ Save.”
7. To embed your latest show on the main WKCO Heaven site, select“ Permalink” on your podomatic.com site:
8. Then 1. click“ Embed,” 2. choose your color, and 3. copy the entire code from the window at the top.
9. Then, back on the WKCO Heaven page, create a new post:
10. Finally, 1. paste your code into the window 2. give your show a title (maybe your name could be in there?) and 3. click“ Publish Post.
That’s all there is to it.Share the link to your page or the link to the WKCO Heaven page with friends, and spread the word! Thanks for your beautiful contribution!
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