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Welcome to Up an Octave, a podcast by Sonivia. I'm your host, Rue Spence, founder of Sonivia, the podcast management agency that helps women and non binary people take up space in podcasting. Up an Octave is here to support you in your podcasting journey. From how to market yourself, how to sound great, how to edit for your specific voice, and how to make your podcast feel like magic.
Thanks for tuning in. Let's get into it.
Thank you so much for tuning in to this week's episode of Up an Octave. Before we dive in, I want to say thank you so much to all the people who have reached out since last week's launch and shared feedback or words of encouragement or shared the episode. That meant so much to me and I'm so excited to be back in your ears this week.
Today I'm talking about editing because of how near and dear the topic is to my heart. When I started my first podcast with a friend, I was quick to take on editing despite not knowing what I was doing. I spent the weeks running up to our launch pouring over tutorials, and those early episodes, they're pretty rough.
Now slowly I did get better and better, And then eventually this transferred into Sonevia where I felt comfortable and felt like I had the experience and the know how to start taking clients to help their shows get better and better and better. And now I even get to teach people how to edit their own shows, which is one of my favorite parts of what I do.
I love empowering people to edit, especially because that's really more on that tech side where I feel like as women and as non binary people, We're not encouraged to take up space in that way as often. So I love the ability to help people tackle tech because I think it's just kind of badass when you can say, Oh, yeah, I'm an editor.
Uh, you know, whatever that title looks like for you. I think it's kind of badass to be able to claim that. Now the recording portion of podcasts absolutely should not be overlooked, but to me the real magic happens in post production. Editing is a gift that you give yourself. It's a chance to slow down and collect your thoughts and start again when you realize you've lost your train of thought.
To repeat yourself when a motorcycle has decided that right now is the exact appropriate time to zoom down the street. I truly don't believe that a show is complete until it's been edited in some capacity. What that looks like totally depends on your show, but in my opinion, a raw recording will never be upload ready.
Whether that's balancing sound or trimming long pauses, to me, editing takes your show from just being a voice memo to being bingeable content. I think that when you upload a show that's just completely untouched, it sounds unprofessional and not like in a business suit sort of way, but in a way that it's just not a podcast.
I think even if being like a voice memo style podcast, you know, if that's your brand, if you want it to sound like you're in the group chat. And you're recording your podcast while you're stalking the aisles of Trader Joe's, okay. I definitely think that that can work, even if that was what I was doing, I would still edit though.
And we're going to talk a little bit about what the different types of editing can look like, and how you can make even a show that is more on the fly. You know, if your thing is talking to your audience while you're driving, okay, your audio is going to sound a certain way, but there's still a way that you can polish that.
To make it sound like a podcast. But then how much editing is too much? How much is not enough? And how much should it matter to you? This isn't a perfect equation. There's not a formula to solve for that tells you What the right amount of editing is, and even if there was, I probably couldn't solve it because I'm not very good at math.
That's why I do podcasts. Hey, but I think that the approach that you take to editing should go back to the three models that we talked about last week. If you haven't listened to those episodes, definitely check them out because we're just going to keep building on them as we go on with the show. P. S.
For the sake of this episode, I just Sneezed and you didn't hear it. That's the magic of editing and that's why I think every show needs to be edited because sometimes you have allergies So going back to that fun model of podcasting I think that these need a very light touch if you're doing too much editing on a fun podcast And the purpose of that podcast is not to teach you the skills to start a different model of podcast.
I think that that is a waste of time. I think that they need a very light touch where you fix them up just a little bit and then you send them on their merry way. If you're a fandom podcast, that's the podcast model where you are the brand, you are the product. I think that those need to be incredibly listenable.
I think that they need to be really well mixed. To me, that is almost always the finer point on that. And they also need to be realistic for your audience. I think that me and my friends are some of the funniest people I've ever met. That's why I'm friends with them. I, however, don't think that you would necessarily think that so if I was going to do a podcast with my girlfriends, if we were bringing the group chat into the podcast sphere, I would still heavily edit that because there are callbacks that we are making that are so self referential.
Our audience wouldn't know about them. Now, getting your audience in on the joke. That's a different story. But I would still edit because, you know, having that Comedians Type 5 is definitely better than a saggy Roundabout 20. Presenting your listeners with something that's more engaging and more digestible is always gonna read better as a fandom podcast than just, hey, me and my friends are so funny.
Now with a funnel podcast, you know, your brand reputation is on the line. And I think that the way that you show up in your podcast kind of reflects the way that you show up in your brand. I don't say this to say that you need to have a million dollars set up, but it does change the way that you should be editing.
For example, for me, I do podcasts. The way that Ken does Beach, I do podcasts. And so for me, you know, I want to sound polished. I want to sound professional. But I'm sitting here talking into a 100 mic, and I'm not in a particularly sound treated room. I'm in my big, echoey, guest bedroom turned office. I don't have soundproofing on the walls, because we're getting ready to move in a couple months.
And so, that is not how I choose to spend my time. But the difference is that I know what I'm hoping to get out of my show, and I'm editing for that. To me, the biggest reason that editing is so crucial is because of how much content is available. If a show feels slapped together, it's easy to overlook. If I don't think that you're taking your podcast seriously, I'm not gonna take it seriously.
And again, this is why fun podcasts don't see success in the way that the other models see success. If I'm going to invest my time, which is maybe the biggest investment of all, into listening to a show, I want it to feel I don't want to feel like I care more about a show than the people who are creating it do.
There are really two different elements of editing, and how they're employed depends on the podcast in question. So there's editing for quality, and that's going to be improving background noise, equalizing, setting the audio luffs, compression, leveling, those kind of things that are really treating the quality of the audio.
Then there's also editing for content. That's going to be removing false starts, filler words, random tangents, those kind of edits are editing for content. There are two branches on the tree that are unique, but both are crucial. I also just took a drink of water that you couldn't hear. See, these are the little things that when you're editing, you are free to do.
And I, I often have people who, Oh, Just try and blaze right through it. Their phone rang, their cat was making a noise, and they just try and just truck on through, or they apologize. Sorry guys, this is going on. Guys, this is another word that we're gonna tackle later, but that's neither here nor there. If you catch a noise, or you want to take a minute and have a drink, or someone outside is doing something, give yourself the gift of editing.
Do what you got to do. And then get back to it. No one ever needs to know that you're taking a drink of water while you're recording. I think that using both quality editing and content editing are important to make a great show. In a more educational show like this, you're going to want the content to feel tight.
People are not here to have fun and kick back. You are here because you want to learn something. You want to take away something that is actionable, that's going to make your podcast better today. I'm not here to be your bestie. I'm not here to be somebody that you want to buy a t shirt about. I am here to make your podcast better.
I know you're busy. I know you want to get back to it. And I know you want to go listen to your favorite fandom podcast after this one. So I'm working to keep my content tight. So more editing is beneficial here, especially content editing. So when I'm trying to get you in and get you out, I don't want to have wandering meandering tangents.
I'm not here to tell you about the cute thing that my baby did while we were on vacation over the weekend. I am here to get you in, get you a service, and get you out the door and send you on your way so you can go make a dope podcast. If I was a more conversational show, I would typically need a little bit less of that content editing.
But to me, if you have multiple voices on your show, editing for quality becomes extremely important. So if I had a co host, I would probably tell them about the cute thing that my daughter did on vacation. And we would talk about, oh she's so cute, no isn't it great, blah blah blah blah blah. But, I would have a lot more work to do in making sure that our voices were clear, that if we cross talked, where we were both talking at the same time, that we didn't lose the intelligibility of being able to hear both of our voices.
If my co host was coughing or sneezing during my speech, I would want to eliminate that. I would want to make sure that we were both equalized to make our individual voices sound great. So even though I would have a little bit more of a wandering tone with that co host, I would want it to be really, really sharp and listenable.
One thing that immediately turns me off of a podcast is if it's too quiet to comfortably listen to. When exporting your file, make sure that you set it to minus 16 LUFS. That's L U F S. This is the loudness unit's full scale. It's a way of measuring sound. And, minus 16 is the industry standard for podcasting, and it makes listening a comfortable experience across all devices.
I know that you have heard the shows that you have to crank up to all the way loud. There are also then shows that are way too loud. And it's frustrating to me when I have, you know, Spotify will just continue playing stuff in your queue. So if I'm listening to a show that's really, really, really quiet, and I have to turn it all the way up, and then the next show is like so loud, and it jars you, and you know.
So, the best way to keep everything smooth, keep everything feeling well mixed, is to set that minus 16 LUFS, L U F S. So this is a super easy thing to do on Audacity. It's under Effects, Volume and Compression, Loudness Normalization. You'll highlight that entire track, minus 16, boom, you're out the door in just a couple seconds.
That is, if you take nothing away from today, please take away that. That is so important to giving your audience a comfortable listening experience. I personally am always on the hunt for new shows. I do my What I'm Listening To Fridays, and that's the quickest thing that makes me turn off a show. I can listen through almost everything else.
If your show is at an uncomfortable volume to listen to, I'm out the door right away. Now, something that I often hear from new podcasters is that they don't want to edit because they don't want their podcast to sound sterile. They like how quote, real it sounds. To me, this is kind of like when women say that they're afraid to lift heavy weights at the gym because they don't want to get bulky.
I'm somebody who has spent years intermittently in the gym trying to put on muscle. I like that jacked look, and I promise it doesn't happen by accident. It Now I'm going to hop off my gym soapbox and hop back onto my podcasting soapbox. Give me a minute. Okay, I'm back. Now, if you are someone who doesn't want your podcast to sound sterile, you still want it to sound you, you still want it to have that flavor, good, that's perfect, I don't want a sterile podcast either, but I promise your podcast is not going to sound sterile by accident, and a little bit of equalization and compression is not going to make your podcast sound sterile.
If your recordings are vulnerable and authentic, using that compressor and taking out 8 second gaps where you've lost your train of thought, or your neighbor decided it was time to vacuum and bang on the walls, is not going to take away your authenticity. Your authenticity and your you ness comes from you.
That's on mic stuff, that's not your audio quality. In fact, if you have better audio quality, it allows your you ness to shine through more. If I can't hear your you and your personality through your humming HVAC system that you didn't take out, I'm not hearing you because I'm so annoyed that I probably turned it off.
So let your you ness shine through having bangin audio quality. Conversely, I think that audio recordings can become sterile when you strip the humanity out entirely. Having a filler word here or there, especially when someone is being interviewed, is natural and human. Breathing is natural and human. You likely don't need every single um, or uh, or breath, or in my case, so.
I'm a huge user of the word so. But in leaving some of those fillers in, you remind listeners that you are an actual real person talking to actual real people. This is somewhere that you're going to have to finesse it a little bit and find out what works for your show. When editing for clients, I typically find that leaving in about 20 percent of filler words And usually these are essential fillers.
That's what works best in most cases. Now, I want to touch on what essential fillers are, and that's where it doesn't sound right to take them out, where they make the rest of the speech sound broken or disjointed. You'll typically see this when someone's trying to think of a response and they say, um, yes, and it's all kind of connected, where if I tried to cut that out, even if I really faded it and finessed it, it would still sound like, yes, you can't completely take them apart if they're connected.
It just doesn't sound right. You know it when you hear it. That if someone says, um, yes, I actually d d d d d, but if it's um, yes, then taking that out just makes it sound weird and clunky. So I'd rather have a little bit of those fillers that still make you sound like a person than to not have them at all.
I also take this philosophy with breaths. I prefer to fade them as opposed to removing them entirely. Now the natural thing that I will always remove is the click that sometimes occurs when someone starts a new segment of speech. This is something that we all do, all the time. But microphones almost always suck at picking this up and do it in a way that is incredibly annoying.
So many people are turned off by mouth sounds, and this click is not barred from that mouth sound cringe. Like I said, it's a totally natural thing and it has to do with the tongue becoming active in the mouth again after being at rest and popping off of the alveolar ridge that's, you know, the bony part behind your teeth.
It's totally normal, but I definitely recommend picking it out because that click is really not cute on a microphone. Something else that makes sense to pay attention to is the feedback that you're getting from your audience. If there is a comment that you keep receiving about your editing style, it may be that that's not something that's working for your audience.
Different markets respond very differently to editing styles. If you have multiple shows, you may have a different approach to edit each one. There are audiences that don't need as much editing. They will take you as you are, they're cool with it, And there are shows that if you have even a slight tangent, they're going to be like, oh my god, so boring, get to it.
Talk about what you're here to talk about. I'm here to listen to this, not your blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So knowing how your market is responding to your editing style should mold your editing style over time. As you discover what the people who are listening to you want to hear from you, you can kind of taper and pivot as you need to.
So maybe you're asking, okay, what does over editing sound like Rue? To me, a show is over edited when every single filler word is removed. This is what I mentioned above, and it's a key marker that I see when a show is being edited with AI. It strips that human aspect of podcasts that makes them so engaging and makes them feel so intimate.
I can also sub in AI with just a very new editor, uh, who hasn't kind of found that middle ground yet. But to me, having those little ums and uhs as people are thinking and really coming up with thoughtful answers is such a critical mark of humanity. I don't like hearing where I can so clearly tell that a filler was removed.
If you can remove it naturally, that's great. And that's where kind of that 20 percent is to me. Timing, I feel like is also a tricky thing to learn with editing. You want to find the balance between natural pauses and elongated pauses. I see this sometimes when people are just truncating silence instead of manually editing silences.
So, for example, if someone is taking a breath, treat the sound and then very sparingly shorten that silence. Listeners know that people need to breathe when speaking, so that little pause makes it sound more like a natural conversation, even if we're not hearing the breath. If you think that the sound of breath is really annoying, especially if your mic is picking it up in a way that's really annoying, Definitely feel free to take it out or at least fade it out like I was talking about earlier.
But if you just have this long stream of consciousness with no pauses, it's gonna sound really inhuman. So give that, that little break, that little pause, that little silence where we know that you're breathing. To me I always think of Chocolate Rain by Taze On Day. Shout out to the YouTube OGs. Where he would always do the, he had the little caption at the bottom, it was like, I lean away from the mic to breathe, and you could watch him just go like, Huuuuhhh.
And then he would come back to the mic, Chocolate, right? Anyways, I think that even if you have those silences, it lets people know, this is a person. Now, conversely, under editing, to me, sounds like there's still these wild tangents that end up with, I'm sorry, Never apologize. If it's something that you feel the need to apologize for, just take it out.
I think it's under edited. If I hear your phone going off, I think it's under edited. If there's still a lot of street noise and room sound, if there's no use of compression, and when you laugh, it's like very clipped and hard to listen to, but then if you're really quiet, it's also like really hard to listen to.
Having awkward silences, having filler words galore. There are some people who, especially if they're being interviewed, are very nervous and It's um, and uh, and um, and uh, just constantly. To me, that is under edited. You want people to sound their best, yourself included. Editing is the gift you give yourself as a podcaster.
If I have to check my phone to see if I've lost connection and that the episode is buffering, your pause is too long. That's what I mean by an awkward silence. I have had shows that have like a straight up eight second pause. I'm not always sure what's going on there. I think sometimes they're checking their notes.
I think sometimes they're nervous. I think sometimes they're not sure which person is supposed to speak next. That is always super awkward to me, and it's a huge turnoff. If I have to open my phone and go, Oh my God, did my Wi Fi just drop out? That's always a big turnoff to me. So figure out that natural timing.
It is something that takes time to really get good at, but I feel like that's critical. Typically in my experience, I find that new shows fall hard on either side of the spectrum. They're either edited within an inch of their lives because the podcaster is. A, trying so, so hard to make it perfect, or B, because they still haven't gotten over the cringe of listening to their own voice, and so they treat it beyond belief to try and make it feel less uncomfortable.
Alternatively, I think that they under edit because either they don't know how to edit, they're intimidated by editing, they think it takes too long, or like I mentioned earlier, they're afraid of losing that authenticity. To me, I think that's It's so worth it and so valuable to take some time and get familiar with your DAW, DAW, or your digital audio workstation.
That's your program like Audacity or Audition or whatever you're using to edit GarageBand. That is such a gift to give yourself because it takes the fear out of editing. Sometimes new shows can also be a terrifying blend of both over and under editing. This was definitely the case when I was starting out.
I was trying so hard to learn how to do everything on the fly, on my own, that I was missing critical components of my workflow, which left my sound, somehow, I had horrible, undesirable sound quality, but also I had audio that was content edited beyond belief. So it sounded like crap, and it also I had, like, so much weird, like, oh, it was bad.
It was bad. But it's something that, you know, we learn. So try to find that balance in your editing style. Some new podcasters find it beneficial to do a few passes of edits, and I'll even still do this if I'm working with incredibly damaged audio. The first pass of editing, try and do it without listening to the content.
Turn off your storytelling ears and listen specifically to the quality of the sounds you're hearing. Can you hear background sounds? Can you hear an echo? Work on improving that audio quality and then, once it's been handled, that's the time to go back through and edit the wandering tangents or the false starts.
I think that when you're trying to do all of your editing in one fell swoop as a new editor, it gets really overwhelming. If you just break it down and you say, I'm not here to listen, I'm just here to hear. I think that that changes how daunting it feels. It does take a little bit longer that way, but that to me is you're taking the time to learn how to edit.
You're taking the time for education. You're taking the time to strengthen that muscle. That's going to make it easier as you go on later on. Now I can already hear you saying, But Rue, I don't want to leave out that tangent because it was really funny, or it was really cute, or it was really impactful somehow.
If it's not adding to this episode, it doesn't belong in this episode. That's not to say it doesn't belong somewhere. Those little tangents can often make for great bonus content. And there's something great to revisit later, so save them in a separate file, export your episode as it is, and use that little snip somewhere else later on.
Nothing ever has to be gone forever, but make sure that you're implementing. in the best way possible for the story that you're telling. And even non fiction podcasts, you should still be implementing storytelling. The best non fiction books have a narrative through line. As always, I recommend Audacity for editing.
That's the DAW or DAW that I personally use and it's what I teach. There's a wealth of information to get yourself comfortable in Audacity on Audacity's own platform. They have great help pages. Reddit has a great community, YouTube, you name it. As you're getting more specific in the tools, that's where I was running into difficulties finding tutorials that sounded good on my voice and voices like mine, i.
e. women, or i. e. voices that we've traditionally ascribed woman ness to. So don't be afraid to experiment. I also teach editing using audacity. So please reach out to me at sonivea. com. If you're interested in learning about those services, I love teaching. I love empowering people like I mentioned earlier, and I would love to help you.
We've talked a lot about crazy wild editing techniques that may feel really out of reach right now. Don't be afraid to start small with editing. As long as you're making consistent efforts to improve your workflow, to improve how you edit and the edits that you're doing, I think that counts for a whole heck of a lot.
I think that consistent improvement is better than just staying afraid. Don't be afraid to make those mistakes, to edit badly, to not really be sure how to use the tools that you're using. Explore and allow yourself the grace of being a beginner. You have my full permission to not know what you're doing.
That's why you're learning. As you get more comfortable, that's when you can take off the training wheels. You'll be faster, so you'll have more bandwidth for getting fancy in the editing room. At this point, the little tweaks that you're making, that's a great place to start. Now, I would love to hear about what your learning experience with editing has been, what still trips you up to this day, and what some of your biggest editing wins are.
I am still personally pretty proud of when I'm able to eliminate a dinging phone. This is your reminder to also silence your audio devices, anything that dings, your computer, your tablet, your phone, your watch. If it makes a noise or buzzes, please turn it down or off when you record. So, if you've been able to do something super dope like that, please take this conversation over to Instagram at Sonivia Studios, where you can share that with me, I'd love to hear what you're celebrating.
Hey, don't mind if I do, I'm just cutting in for a minute to share something exciting. Ever thought about making a podcast that doesn't feel overwhelming? If you're listening to the show, then I know you're curious about making the best podcast you can. And that's where SoNivea comes in. I'm your podcast launch specialist, and I'm here to take your show from concept to content.
I've immersed myself in the world of podcasting for years, and I have got the knowledge and industry secrets to help make your show the success that we both know it can be. If you're ready to take the leap and start sharing your voice with the world, head on over to SoNivea. com and snag your free call.
Let's chat. Oh, and by the way, the party's still on. I decided to keep celebrating until Halloween. So mention up an octave when booking your call before October 31st for a cool 50 off of your launch. Let's make some podcasting magic together. Your dream show awaits! Anyway, now back to the good stuff.
Before I wrap this up, I'm answering a question from Rachel at Femmythology. I'm loving that show, so please do go check it out. She asks, what is an efficient way to approach the editing process? This seems incredibly apropos. My approach is to treat the audio first. I run my files through Levelator, I treat room noise, I equalize, I set the luffs, I compress the whole file, and then I do a pass for content.
Then, finally, after that, I place my ancillary audio files, like my intro, outro, ads, anything else that goes into an episode. I find that for me, efficiency comes with both time and experience, both as a podcast recorder and also as a podcast editor. My first ever episode of a podcast, the one that I recorded into a cardboard box using an Xbox headset, that one was almost two hours long and it took me like over 12 hours to edit.
I have since found that if your editing process is taking more than three times the length of the raw recording. There is a disconnect somewhere. In the case of my first episode, the disconnect was that I was an inexperienced editor and I was an inexperienced podcaster. I was so nervous on the mic that I didn't give the editing portion of myself a whole heck of a lot to work with.
So, now that I'm a more seasoned editor, I find that I'm also a much better podcaster. I know when I need to pause. I know when I need to start over. I have better microphone etiquette. I know what I'm doing during recording that's going to make editing easier. The longer you do it, the easier it gets on both sides.
The more confident you're going to feel when you show up on the microphone, and the more efficient you're going to get as an editor. So thank you again so much for your question, Rachel. Again, that show is Femethology. So go give it a listen. All the information is going to be in my show notes. And I got to say her episode on Freya was incredibly illuminating.
If you have a question, please share it with me at ru. sonivia at gmail. com. I can't wait to help you out and boost up your show. So that's all that I've got for today. I will be back next Tuesday with the first episode in my series, Pass the Mic. Where I interview a podcaster about their show and their experiences in podcasting.
For this one, I'm interviewing Irvi Shah from Soul Diaries, so please make sure you tune into that. In the meantime, make sure you're following Up An Octave on your podcatcher of choice, and hey, I'll see you next time. Leave me a rating or review while you're at it. Just like your show, mine needs those to grow.
Stay in touch with me at Sonivia Studios on Instagram. And if this episode helped you out, please share it with a friend, a colleague, or someone who needs to start a podcast. Thank you for being here and for helping me take podcasting up an octave.
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