Audio triage, editing ethos, or 15 easy steps to sound design for a narrative podcast
Whether you want to call it audio triage, your editing ethos, or your order of operations, the idea is the same: to develop an intentional approach for how we approach audio editing. This involves two parts: 1) our personal idea of what “good” or “done” sounds like, and then 2) how close we can get to that ideal with the time, energy, and money we have.
I put that caveat in as number two, because as podcasters, whether we are part of a studio team or working independently, we rarely have all the time, energy, or budget that we would like. With any kind of editing, there is almost always a tradeoff between the quality you envision, and the and time/energy you have. So we need to decide which are the must-haves for audio editing, and which are the nice-to-haves.
So here’s my goal or audio editing philosophy: presenting the best possible version of myself (realistic but not true-to-life) in an immersive soundscape
To explain, “best possible version of myself” means my voice sounds recognizable and natural, like I’m just talking in an animated and interesting way — but not true to life in that there are no coughs, sniffles, breaths, or mouth clicks. None of the distractions you get with a real conversation.
Then by “immersive,” I mean a soundscape that pulls the listener in and keeps them engaged, with effectively-chosen and timed background music, and strategic use of silence. And, equally important, “immersive” means nothing takes the listener out of the experience by distracting them.
Some general notes:
In our audio editing and sound design workshop, we talk about the acronym HARC (hierarchy, alignment, repetition, and contrast), which applies to multiple forms of design, whether you’re talking about sound, fashion, or visuals. It’s a parallel I observed based on my advertising background, and informs a lot of what I do here.
Good audio editing means listening all the way through at several points in the process (time permitting, I listen to my initial take of narration, then again after I’ve cleaned it up, then as many times as I need to with the rough mix with music.)
Good audio editing also means taking notes for yourself as you listen through (I often tab-switch on my phone between my podcast player and speaking notes to Siri on my phone). Continually evaluating your own work is mandatory for refining your editorial approach, and improving the next time.
Just like photography, you can manipulate a lot on the computer — there are plugins for many things like reducing plosives, de-essing, de-verb, etc.) — but the best way to get good audio at the end is to start with good audio. (Link to home recording setup page)
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Screenshot of my Hindenburg Pro audio editor for “Show your sparkle.” Listen here.
So, enough with the preamble, right? Here is my audio editing triage list, or audio editing order of operations, which then leads into sound design as well.
Asking myself “is this take usable?” One time I didn’t realize I had the gain on my microphone turned up too high, so the whole track had a slight background whine in it. So after listening through, I decided to just go back and re-record. Or sometimes I’ll record just to be able to listen and evaluate the script, but know I’m not in my best voice.
Noise reduction. With the SM7b, I get a slight background hiss from the microphone, which needs to go away. But I only turn the noise reduction to about a 4/10 on the scale, because the higher it goes, the muddier it sounds. More on our recording setups here.
Minimize mistakes. One episode (link) I bumped the mic a few times, so I put those segments on a separate track from the rest of the narration, and used a high pass filter (link) to make the bumps less noticeable. Another time I was a little too close, and a few plosives were brutal, so I just cut those and put them on a separate track and lowered the volume.
Remove stumbles and repeats. I mark these on the waveform with a double tongue click, which makes two distinct little spikes that are easy to spot. (Trying different ways to deliver parts of your script is essential to improving as a narrator, so plan on building in this time to evaluate your different options and remove the less successful ones after. Those are the big sections in the “breaths and goofs” track.)
Cutting out the big pauses. I’ll pause during recording to sip on my hot pineapple or lemon water, take a big breath, or whatever, but of course a meaningless pause will distract the listener so those have to go.
Doing script editing in my DAW (Hindenburg pro; get a free one-month trial, or four months free if you join our course.): this is another key point where evaluating your own work by listening thoughtfully comes in. Sometimes I will listen to a rough cut of narration, and realize there are words, phrases, or even whole sentences that I don’t really need, because I find I was boring myself! By the time I record, I have already revised my script multiple times, but hearing your own rough cut can sometimes reveal where you need some final tweaks.
Cutting breaths and mouth clicks! This is the most tedious and persnickety step of my audio editing (the “breaths & goofs” track in the screenshot). Often I use Command-X and then paste that bit into Breaths & Goofs when I want it to tighten up (Hindenburg moves the track over when you do that), then sometimes I just use the Delete key when I want to keep that space but remove the noise. And yes, it would be possible just to turn up the noise reduction really high, but again, too much noise reduction makes the whole recording sound muffled. This is definitely a subjective step (you’ll hear plenty of big-time podcasts where they leave the breaths in); getting rid of breath and mouth click is not necessary for the majority of listeners who will be in their cars, walking the dog, at the gym, or washing dishes. But coming back to my goal, I want the quality to be good enough to be immersive for those few people listening on their studio headphones or in a quiet environment. This step also relates to my episodes being under ten minutes: it probably wouldn’t be feasible if my episodes were an hour long; but it’s a manageable chore for a 5-9 minute piece. I usually spend about an hour cutting 50-100 breaths and mouth clicks per episode.
Adjusting spacing of words, sentences, and scenes. Where do I need longer pauses between sections? I like to put a good 2-4 seconds between sections to allow space for fading in music, and creating a clear transition (It’s easy to spot the big spaces in the “narration v2” track). On the other hand, between a lot of words and sentences, I can convey more energy by tightening things up. With all the breaths and mouth clicks I cut out, my final episodes tend to be a lot shorter than my initial recording, and removing all those spaces makes it sound like I am talking faster, but since my natural delivery is slower, speeding up my narration is good.
Creating “scenes” with background music. My “scenes“ tend to be between 15 seconds and one minute; I switch music whenever the topic shifts, the variety creates a sense of progress and intention. This is another subjective area of course; there’s no one “right” length for how long to use a certain piece of music. However, for me, pretty quick transitions are part of trying to keep a listener engaged, with the principle of contrast at work in sound. Having the music switch regularly, along with short periods of silence to emphasize key points I am making in the narration, helps keep the listener’s attention and creates a sense of energy and motion.
The opposite of course, is a sleep meditation podcast, where the purpose of the full episode is to create a monotone to soothe people to sleep.) It’s not a hard-and-fast rule, but I’m gravitating toward using all tracks from a certain genre (electronic, jazz, blues) for each episode, just using 3-5 tracks per episode, and then cutting tracks and bringing the latter halves back later in the episode to reinforce the same themes. This is another way of demonstrating intention in sound design—the listener can tell things are there on purpose, that they mean something. In this episode, I used bits of four songs, two times (apologies the screenshot is off the final mix — I took this before I remembered to mute Music 2 and drag that early bit up to Music 1).
Strategically punctuating with sound effects. Now this isn’t an audio book, so I don’t use sound effects for every single possible thing. Nor is it a long-form fiction podcast (another subgenera where punctuating scene changes with different sound effects can be a very helpful cue to give listeners a sense of space). But in “Show your sparkle,” I realized a kid playground ambience would be the perfect highlight to introduce (and then reiterate) one of the key ideas. (You can see that on the Ambience track.)
Fading out background music to emphasize key points. In a noisy world, silence stands out. it is evolutionary that we notice a cessation of background noise, because in the wild, prey animals go silent when a predator is nearby. So if the episode has been going on with background music, cutting or fading out that background music is like underlining that section of narration. (But of course, this only works if you have background music or sounds under the rest of your episode.) We also talk about this in our sound design workshop: the power of strategically used silence. You can see above, I chose eight spots to have no music for 5-30 seconds; longer than that and it starts to get boring rather than being an ear-catching technique.
Checking mix levels on earbuds or while driving. I’m doing my audio editing with my Sony MDR-7506 headphones in a quiet space, so I hear details and subtleties — but that’s not how most people listen to podcasts. Most people are listening in situations with some background noise: driving, walking the dog, doing dishes, or exercising. So I want to make sure the most important part of my mix—the voice—still comes through even in those situations. I also click back and forth between my mix and big-studio shows on my podcast app to make sure my basic volume level is comparable.
Tweaking volume levels, fades, and spacing. Pretty much every time I listen to a rough mix, I notice parts where the music is too loud or too soft, a fade is too slow or too quick, or I left too big of a pause between segments (or need to space something out because I didn’t make a big enough pause after a point I want to emphasize. If I’m doing well, it’ll be a v3 or v4 I’ll export for final upload to my feed. Some of my episodes it’s been v8!
Experimenting with different music for scenes. Choosing music is an entire topic onto itself; I usually have a sense of what tone or tempo of music might match a section of script, but when I have time, trying tracks with different vibes than my first instinct can give a scene a fresh and unexpected quality, and also help me not fall into ruts or be too predictable.
Creating different voices for bits on different tracks. Something that is becoming a standard element for me is having a section where I am voicing complaints or self doubts, and I put that section on a separate track so I can make it sound different than my regular narration (the “whiner” and “whiner 2” tracks above). I just use the Apple presets in Hindenburg to change the pitch or add reverb or distortion or something, and again, it’s not too complicated, but is another example where using contrast in sound design shows intention and creates variety for the listener, which makes it more interesting. (In our sound design workshop, we talk about a whole acronym, HARC — hierarchy, alignment, repetition, and contrast — that sums up a lot of what I’ve summarized here.)
Final mix check. Did I accidentally mute a track? Or leave my experiment track Music 2 unmuted so I have multiple things playing at the same time? Drag something to the wrong place? Forget to fix something? These are all things I’ve caught with a final listen. I’m getting pretty sick of the episode at this point, but it’s the only way to avoid those facepalm moments after you publish.
So that’s it — just 15 steps to audio edit and sound design an under-ten-minute episode. Head over to the Storyscaping feed to hear what they sound like. And if you found this helpful and would appreciate more screenshots with commentary, email us!
