It is important for you as a professional to hold a working knowledge of creative multimedia production to aid in and support the design and development of materials meant to convey information clearly and engagingly, as well as be able to think creatively and critically about topics and the technologies that support those topics. Adobe Audition, being one of the industry-standard audio editing products, fits the bill to accomplish both these tasks and, combined with its seamless integration into the Creative Cloud suite, works as an incredibly powerful resource in your multimedia creation toolbox.
Adobe Audition, part of the Creative Cloud suite of design software, is the industry standard for creating production-quality audio. In this project you will be creating a short podcast episode that includes narration, background music, and audio mixing. This may sound intimidating and Audition–like other Adobe CC products–is not necessarily the most beginner-friendly software, but if you walk through the steps to completion one at a time you’ll be surprised just what you can create.
The range of products that can be created using Adobe Audition is wide and isn’t just limited to podcasts. Audition products include actual radio shows, jingles or theme tunes, even real-time voice editing for use in online streaming.
(This is mostly review, as you should already be familiar with Audition from mini-project 1.)
First: download and install the Adobe Creative Cloud. This gives you free access to everything, from Photoshop to Audition to Portfolio to Lightroom(!). Enjoy.
Continue reading and watching the explainers and tutorials on Adobe’s website.
You aren’t required to download and use the sample materials when completing the Getting Started videos but you would greatly benefit from doing so as they’re specifically designed for increasing your proficiency with the software. Again, Audition can be overwhelming for those without much experience in the Adobe suite so take it slow and try to get comfortable with the interface before moving on to attempting professional-sounding audio.
Your goal for this project is to create a short podcast episode. You can listen to one of the episodes of my podcast to get an idea of what flavor this assignment is looking for. This could be a stand-alone audio essay, an interview with a friend or colleague, or you could imagine it as just one episode in a series that you host (or will want to host in the future!).
If the sound of your own voice makes you cringe you’ll just have to grit your teeth and bear it for this assignment (remember the TED Talk?. Check out these materials to help with your audio production (some of which were also shared in the mini-project 1 assignment instructions:
There’s no shortage of materials online to make this assignment easier on you: how-tos and tutorials abound on Youtube, especially. For the sake of this assignment stick to recording your own voice and using music and effects preferably from the links above, otherwise ensuring that they are either public domain or creative commons zero licenses. You can read about the distinction on the Creative Commons FAQ. You do not want to use any files that require compensation or attribution. Be sure to check the resources page for a collection of various audio and visual content for you to browse.\
The topic and meat of this assignment is pretty open: pick something meaningful to you. What are you passionate about? What do you want the world to know more about? Some ideas could be:
Remember, it’s the quality of the audio production and the effort you’re putting in we’re concerned with, not necessarily your skills as an interviewer. No one’s expecting you to suddenly become Terry Gross or Marc Maron. After you’ve found what you think is suitable content, you need to actually begin recording yourself. But first comes the script.
After having read through the CDC Audio Script Writing Guide, you’ll want to begin scripting your own episode. Just like a real podcast, in this episode you have a basic target to shoot for. If you listen to a lot of pods, you’ll notice they’re never exactly X-minutes long every time. It’s usually a general range. That’s what you’re doing in this episode. You’re aiming for an episode that’s between 8 and 13 minutes long. _Note that this is a gateway requirement and your recording must be within this range! More on that below.)
So, with your target range in mind, now you can begin scripting. Of course, this will depend on if you want to go solo or if you have guests. You’ll have to massage it to fit your modality. That said, even if you have guests on, you’ll want to have some bullet/talking points to keep things on track. It might not seem like it, but 8-13 minutes is really not a lot of time! I promise.
The sections of the script you at least need to have to keep you on track are as follows (this is presuming you’re doing a solo episode):
You’ll notice, if you listen to my own podcast, it follows that basic structure. I vary from it occasionally when the content affords that kind of deviation but, generally speaking, that’s it.
Here’s the full script for episode 48, “Owning Your Digital Identity”, of my podcast The New Professor. The episode is just shy of 10 minutes long. The script is just under 1600 words and it’s just me on my own. (This doesn’t include the pre-recorded intro.)
If you like a more visual take on the script, you might want to try putting it into a table, almost like storyboarding. Here’s an example of that script placed into this format (note that Talent in this case is the person speaking; if it’s just you, you can omit this):
| Part | Time Estimate | Talent | Section | Content |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ~2 min | Ryan | Hook | Doc: So who do we have here? … |
| 2 | ~30 sec | Ryan | Intro | Welcome to… |
| 3 | ~30 sec | - | Music build | (Background music swells and leads into…) |
| 4 | ~2 min | Ryan | Episode lead-in | I was going to do an episode on tips and tricks for getting started in spring semester but it occurs to me that I’ve done one or maybe a couple of those already…. |
There is one gateway requirement and three content requirements for this assignment that the instructor will be actively looking for and assessing. Having said that you might find you want to do much more and that is perfectly acceptable (even encouraged). The three skills/techniques required in your submitted podcast are:
Gateway: submitted final mixed MP3 file is 8-13 minutes long (script this EARLY and write more than you think you’ll need; ~10 minutes is roughly four single-spaced pages of narrative depending on how quickly you speak) and consists of mostly you (and/or your other participants) speaking; it’s a podcast, not a showcase of audio effects.
Content:
Properly processed vocal track
Appropriately leveled and faded background music
Minimum 2 sound effects judiciously used
More on this later in the document. Now, to expand a bit more on what each of these is and the steps to use them:
As you may have noticed–even in video!–properly processed and leveled vocals are crucial to get your point across and not drive people away. I share my steps for vocal processing later in the document but I encourage you first to run through these resources. Adobe’s podcast creation step-by-step is an incredibly useful guide, as is Mike Russell’s podcast workflow (especially good if you want to do an interview; seen below).
A couple tips that will make your recording (and editing) go a lot smoother:
vvvvvvv^vvv^vvvvvvHaving some background music accomplishes a number of things in a podcast, chief amongst them keeping it sounding interesting and covering up little issues in the vocal recording. You’ll want to snag something that sounds appropriate to your content without being distracting. Check out the content in the Brainstorming section above for some background music resources.
One important tip: use Audition’s Remix option to get a seamless and length-appropriate background track. (This is a tutorial for Audition CC 2015 but the process is the same, still.)
In case you don’t know, the sound effects used in film and most audio (like radio plays) are not recorded in situ but are added later (in video production, the person that does this is known as the foley artist; you should remember this from the video in this week’s consumables, Everything you hear on film is a lie). Here’s a really interesting video on just what you’re actually hearing when you hear sound effects.
For this assignment you won’t be recreating the audio to match a visual component, obviously, but it helps to think of the judicious and subtle use of sound effects. Additionally, you’re not expected to (actually, I’m begging you not to) turn your audio into a morning shock-jock radio show that’s peppered with unnecessary sound effects. Instead, think of maybe adding some ambiance to your recording, like the sound of a café or a storm if it fits the content. Remember that the focus here is you and your ideas, not the music or the sound effects.
So you’ve got your audio recorded, you’ve identified your background music, and you’ve got a couple sound effects you want to throw in. Now to do some audio clean-up, editing, and turn it into a single MP3 file.
Here are the steps Dr. Straight goes through (generally speaking) when editing the main vocal tracks in episodes of The New Professor:
APCV-Lastname-File.ext for all files, with File being the assignment or original filename (so P3 for this project) and ext being the file extension.Again, there are both gateway and content requirements for this project:
Submitted final mixed MP3 file with included ID3 tags (you can do this directly in Audition) is 8-13 minutes long (that’s a requirement on the low end and on the upper end – if you end up with 45 minutes of great content, that’s fantastic; it’s just not all going to go in this submissioni!).
Your final mixdown (exported as MP3) should be shared in the audition channel in Microsoft Teams. You also need to submit a zip file with a few different things to the D2L dropbox. These are:
audition channel in Teams)audition channelHere are the targets you should be aiming for with this project.
Vocals: Vocals are clear and processed appropriately. Edits are seamless. Speech errors are removed (if reading a narrative). Volume is good.
Background music: Background music volume is loud enough to enjoy but doesn’t overpower vocals. Flavor of music agrees with content.
Sound effects: Sound effects are appropriately used and not “corny” (unless the content calls for it). Volume is good.
Professionalism: Completed audio is ready to use in a professional capacity (ie, you could publish it). Any assets and materials used are original or licensed for such use.
Originality: Evidence of thoughtfulness in final product. Completed audio sounds and feels totally original.