How To Make A Quality 20 Minute Medical Podcast In 25 Minutes

If you’re a busy medical podcaster, you’ve already experienced the classic production tradeoff, like that mutually exclusive electron thingy from physics.

You can make a quality sounding show, or a so-so quickly done show, but not a quality sounding, quickly done show.

Yet that’s exactly what a busy medpro needs to accomplish. You don’t have an infinite amount of time to correct goofs in your recordings, or splice together the musical interludes and sound effects, etc. If you spend 3 hours of production per 20 minute show, you won’t end up with enough shows to help your practice, or enjoy making them.

Here’s how to get it done efficiently, in 4 steps.

1) Get A Mic Processor And A Padded Room

A mic processor, aka “vocal strip,” is the most important item you can get to make your voice sound “pro.” I recommend either the dbx 286a or the Aphex 230; both will mute background noise, increase the loudness and “closeness” of your voice, remove sibilant “esses,” and optionally clarify or deepen your vocal range. This hardware box will save you gobs of time cleaning up your sound in post production.

THE most important realization for efficient podcasting is that you can and should record everything in one take — just like you do when you talk to patients every day.

On the low tech end, consider recording in a “padded” room, i.e. one with lots of cushy surfaces. Trust me on this if you’re just starting out — if your recording area has lots of flat, hard surfaces, like a glass table, cabinetry, and large windows, your voice will bounce around and sound “less than fully pro,” shall we say.

Put some stuffed animals, pillows, or thick blankets on the surfaces, pull the curtains, or invest in some sound dampening panels. Nix the fluorescent lights and the AC, and don’t even think about trying to record near the fridge.

2) Forget The Tape Recorder; Remember Your Daily Training, Young Jedi

THE most important realization for efficient podcasting is that you can and should record everything in one take — just like you do when you talk to patients every day.

It’s completely natural as a beginner to correct any goofs by re-recording over them, or editing them out later. But that’s a bad habit from a time management standpoint: most of the 200-1000% over your show’s actual length comes from these corrections, and they are almost entirely unnecessary.

When you speak to patients during daily encounters, you don’t stop or apologize if you say “umm” or “uh”; and you certainly don’t step outside and start over if you reach some sticking point. You just keep going and things turn out fine, thanks — even on complicated matters, with family members present, and with minimal prep.

That’s the approach you want to take when bellying-up to the mic. It takes time to wear down that mic-EDIT connection in your brain, so start with your very next show and jess’ do it. You’ll probably have more Umms and pauses than usual, but you’ll find your groove fairly quickly as the shows pass.

You’re aiming for the same casualness with the mic that you have with a Ticonderoga no. 2 pencil; get it “dirty” ASAP, so it can take its place as “just something else” you use to get your shows done.

And remember, you’re already practicing this speaking mode dozens of times a day.

3) Get Thee A Cart Software

Most recording software is multi-track…it’s awesome, super flexible, and totally counterproductive to our needs.

“Cart software” refers to a recording program that lets you play pre-recorded sound bites during the live recording of your voice. This is key, and there are only a few programs I know of that do it affordably (Podcast Station for the PC, and Ubercaster for the Mac).

Most recording software is multi-track, where you record the show elements separately, and pull them all together in post-production, i.e. a separate step after the recordings are all done. It’s awesome, super flexible, and totally counterproductive to our needs.

Remember, the idea is to do everything in ONE single pass. Cart software allows you to do this: you assign your intro music to one button, your outtro music to another button, and 2 or 3 transitional music or sound effects to other buttons. Then you hit RECORD, tap the intro button, and start speaking as the music fades. Time for a transition? Hit one of those buttons, then continue with the new topic. Ready to finish? Hit the outtro button, then STOP when done.

Finito.

4) Now Write The Show Notes And Be Done With It

Time to kick your Frankenstein out of the nest. This is where the other 5 minutes come from (”A quality 20 minute show, done in 25 minutes”): while your computer renders your audio file into its final mp3 form, summarize your still fresh content in a WordPress post.

I use and wholeheartedly recommend the Podpress plugin, which integrates seamlessly with your WordPress writing page, and can attach your mp3 immediately to your post, put a player on your blog site, put all your iTunes settings in one place, and show you previews of your podcasts in the most popular directories.

Next time: Doing it the opposite way, detailed blog post first, and why you might want to consider it.

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