Things You'll Need:
- A microphone
- A Macintosh computer
- If you want to have a high quality podcast, you'll need a condenser microphone and an audio interface.
- The most popular powered audio interfaces are made by M-Audio and Digidesign.
- You can buy an audio interface online suitable for podcasting for $100-$200 dollars.
- A condenser microphone suitable for podcasting costs about $100.
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Step 1
Open GarageBand. After it starts, a pop-up screen presents you with choices for the type of project you want to create. Click on the button that says New Podcast Episode.
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Step 2
You are then given a chance to name and save your podcast episode.
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Step 3
Once you have named the podcast episode, a new window appears in GarageBand. There are five recording tracks in the window.
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Step 4
The top track is an information track. Double click on the area that says Podcast Track and an information bar will slide out on the right of the screen. Here you can click to add a parental rating or details to your podcast track. These will be viewable on an iPod or iPhone. To add artwork to the Podcast Track, drag an image from the media browser.
The media browser accessed by the button on the bottom right of the GarageBand screen that has a tiny filmstrip, a slide and a musical note on it.
You can also drag artwork straight from your desktop or an open folder onto the drag artwork here area. -
Step 5
If you are not a condenser microphone and an audio recording box and not a computer microphone and the built in Apple sound management software, you will need to change the audio inputs and outputs.
Go to GarageBand Preferences, under the GarageBand menu bar. Click Audio/Midi in the preferences pane. Click on the tab that says Audio Input: Built In and change the settings to recognize your device. Next click on the tab that says Audio Output: Built in and change the settings to recognize your device. -
Step 6
To record audio, click on the track that says Male or Female Voice. There are five buttons on each recordable track. Click the round button once so it turns red. This has enable the track for recording.
If you have headphones and want to hear yourself talk as you record (known as monitoring) click on the small button with the graphic of an "i" in a circle on the bottom right of the GarageBand window. In the side pane that appears, click the button that says Monitor: Off and change it to Monitor: On. Now sound will come out of your headphones.
Because microphones don't typically record in stereo, change the Input: Channels 1 & 2 to Input: Channel 1. This records less redundant data for you podcast.
If it still isn't coming out of your headphones while you are recording, click on the tiny icon of headphones located on the track you want to hear. -
Step 7
Okay, you've done all that. To finally record, make sure your track is record-enabled. (The red dot on the track is selected.) Then hit that big Red record button on the bottom left of the screen. Your track will start marching forward and this is how you know you are recording.
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Step 8
You can add jingles and radio sounds to your podcast. The bottom two tracks are for this purpose.
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Step 9
To export your podcast into mp3 format, click on the Menu Bar in GarageBand that says "Share." Select send your podcast to iTunes. The podcast will be mixed down into aiff format. In order to share it on the web, use the convert selection to mp3 function from the iTunes menu bar. This will create an mp3 copy of your podcast.
