With GarageBand 3, Apple introduced a podcasting studio specifically aimed at recording, editing, and polishing podcasts. In Goochland, we also recommend the use of Audio Recorder and Audacity. In this tutorial, we'll look at using the podcast studio.
When you begin a new GarageBand project, choose "New Podcast" in order to get to the studio. You will then find 5 default tracks on the left-hand side of the window: podcast track, male voice, female voice, Jingles, and Radio Sounds. You can remove ones you will not use, or add more.
Notice the yellow and blue arrows next to the track levels controls. These are new to GB 3. They control an automatic leveling feature that causes one track to reduce in volume automatically, when another has content on it. The term for this is ducking.
New to GB 3 are Jingles. These are like loops, but they tend to be more complete. It's a small collection is short songs that you can embed into your podcast as introduction music. You can also download tracks from Freeplay Music to use in your podcasts. Goochland County Public Schools has paid a licensing fee to use their content. Other school districts cannot legally use their music in podcasts without purchasing an educational license.
Also new is the podcast track. This is used for embedding video or pictures to create a video, or enhanced podcast. Enhanced podcasts use chapters and pictures to divide-up a podcast into several sections. These podcasts are cool because when listening, you can jump around to different sections. And each chapter can hold its own title, and its own URL link.
Track info has changed in GB3. Instead of choosing effects and instruments and track definitions in another window, expand the window to the right, where track information appears. The "i" button toggles this on and off.
The Loops area (read: big eyeball) now has different modes. For podcasting, it lists jingles, stingers, sound effects, and favorites.
Making a podcast works like making a composition in GB. Drag and drop content on the tracks, and use the record button to record onto a track. Edit as you like.
What's different, then? Well, exporting your finished product is different. Under the "share" menu, you can export your finished work to either iWeb, iTunes, or just save it to disk.
We will Save to Disk and upload the file to our weblogs as a podcast.
Oh, you'd actually like to see one get made? That's what this movie is for.
So now that you can see editing a podcast is not too bad, perhaps you’d like some lesson ideas to use with students?
Podcasting is great at any age level. Students are greatly motivated to know that content they produce can be shared by others either in the schools, or over the Internet.
Until students become comfortable with speaking and interviewing, which can take many attempts to do well, I recommend using a script where students plan their podcast and fill-in blanks. Many of the examples below do not even require editing—a simple recording using AudioRecorder may be the extent of what’s required to get the podcast project done.
In order to take an audio (or video) file and make it a podcast, you need to use RSS so folks can subscribe to your content, each time it is published. This does not mean they will pay you money. Instead, it means they will use a program to check on the “freshness” of your content, and download new content automatically.
Making RSS feeds is beyond this short tutorial. Apple’s solution is iWeb coupled with their .Mac service. In Goochland, we use Apple’s Blojsom-based weblog server that does all the RSS on the server.
Folks can subscribe to these podcasts using iTunes or any other reader. For enhanced podcasts, on either platform, they will also need Quicktime from Apple.
© 2006 by John G. Hendron.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.