Adding music to a show is one of the simplest things you can do to add professionalism to your show. However, it is also the most likely element to go disastrously wrong in post-production. For example, you could inadvertantly create a show where an intro is playing at the same time as the content of your show is playing.
The first step is the most time consuming: find music. There are many podsafe resources which have been discussed on the PPP podcast as well as listed in our resources for podcasters.
The next couple of steps are post-producing your show’s content and adding the music. The order of these steps is debatable as both offer advantages. If you do show notes for the Pagan Podcast Index then adding music first where needed helps keep your timestamps correct if you do show notes during post-production. Adding music later makes keeping show notes matched to their proper timestamps much more complicated but helps you focus on post-production first before making it pretty with nice music. Neither technique is wrong, so it is best thought of as a personal preference.
In most music programs, the actual process is very straightforward. Usually you can just drag and drop the music file into the program. The trick is to drag and drop your audio such that content does not
unnecessarily overlap music you do not want to have overlap your content.
A mistake to watch for is when you have stereo tracks to ensure both channels are dragged, not just the left channel or right channel. For this reason, I often make spoken audio into a mono track to avoid these mistakes. Failure to double check for this can result in very bad audio.
If you have any questions, feel welcome to post a comment to get feedback from fellow podcasters.
