My First Podcast, Fixing Poor-Quality Audio and a Blue Yeti (Foundation Episode 02)

[00:06] It's easy to think that producing a great quality podcast is only about the tech. There is much more to it. An idea, some audio troubleshooting, and acknowledging my unique path were the ways that I became

[00:19] a podcaster. And once I had laid the groundwork, I could realize my podcasting goals and become the podcast producer and editor I am today. This is the second foundational episode that will give you an introduction to me, Matthew Bliss, as the host of Rethinking Podcasting,

[00:39] through sharing with you my career, a bit of my life, and how my thinking has changed on my podcasting journey so far. In this episode, you'll hear how I started my first podcast, how my background in mediation and debating helped, and why the journey to creating great

[01:03] sounding audio can be a long and frustrating one. I don't think audio engineering or podcasting was really on the roadmap for me until 2020 when I started exploring it.

[01:15] I was aware of podcasts for a while and I was aware also that I don't like hearing certain vocal tics that people have. And these are the common ones that get talked about in podcasting all the time, like mouth

[01:29] clicks, sharp breaths, the very weird kind of lip opening mouth, getting ready to talk noise, which is like kind of thing. I didn't like them, but you know, you kind of helplessly succumb to social convention

[01:45] when you realize you can't fix them, at least in the people you're talking to. But in 2020, during the pandemic, I decided to tackle a podcast for myself, like explore how to do it. And fortunately the workplace that I was working for, also we should frame this properly that it was the pandemic.

[02:04] I had a government job at the time. I never became a teacher, got a government job and government was the first one to work from home at the opportunity where it was required. So there was some time in the office, some time at home.

[02:18] In Melbourne, we had five or six lockdowns across three years. I think it totaled like 186 days or something like that. So, you know, lots of time to explore new things. And I think a lot of people discovered podcasts in the pandemic. I'd been listening to them for a while and I knew I

[02:34] had the technology acumen to kind of get going. So I did it. I had work buy me a Blue Yeti streamer pack, which was a microphone arm with a Blue Yeti. I had them buy me a copy of Adobe Audition

[02:49] because they had Adobe Creative Cloud available to people in the organization. And I got going. So the audio engineering component of that was me listening to my voice, heard through the microphone and recorded through the microphone

[03:02] and trying to fix it, hearing all the problems. But there's an unusual, well, not unusual, I guess it's an annoying problem where the more problems you fix, the more problems you find, especially with audio.

[03:17] When you're doing it to your own voice, the job is never done. There's always something that you can change, always something that you can fix. So that was probably a year and a half of doing that. I had a few of my own personal podcasts that I did, and I mostly had to do that because

[03:33] the reason I got them to buy me the microphone in the government department I worked in was because I was pitching them to do podcasts. I'm learning how to do the editing, the audio improvement, the interviewing.

[03:46] I can help you do a podcast. True to form, what the marketing area did was decide to do a podcast, started a board, started a project, hired someone in who was an ABC news journalist who had done podcasts in the

[04:01] past. She was experienced there, but I couldn't even work in with this person. I didn't have any direct contact. And the whole idea, I think, came about because I had said I'd like to do a podcast for

[04:15] you guys. But there's a whole nature of how government and large organizations work that we probably don't need to go into there. But suffice to say, I was frustrated and rebellious enough that I just went out and did some for myself. The first personal podcast I did was

[04:31] called The Teaching Culture Cast, and you can still listen to it today. It was my attempt to keep my teaching education relevant because the reason I had the government job is because I got it very quickly after I finished my master's of

[04:47] teaching. I started the podcast and it came with guardrails because I knew in the system at the time that teachers would probably want to be anonymous, that they had to anonymize their school, they couldn't talk about students. But I wanted to talk to the teachers that I knew and that I could

[05:03] connect with through forums online and stuff about the things they did incredibly well. So that was the first real podcast series that I did with full intention that was entirely my own. The one that I don't count is, and I don't know why, because it was actually great fun, with my cousin and our old

[05:21] housemate, we created the Lad Banter podcast, which you can imagine is like cookie cutter kind of podcast someone starts with. You get your mates on a call with mics and you record whatever you talk about,

[05:37] and it's going to be great and people will love it. We had a great time. We did like 17 episodes, I think. And yeah, people ran out of time. One of them had started a job and remotely working for

[05:48] that job during the pandemic was a bit difficult, particularly because it was for Vision Australia and he had to help people remotely to do things that they can't see on screen kind of thing. The other person worked for Yamaha in Australia, which

[06:04] largely meant he was doing 12 hour days and finding time with them both was just too hard. But it's very hard to bring other people on board when you're trying to learn a practice for yourself. So for me, it was, hey guys, just come on for a chat.

[06:19] I'll edit it, you know, do a bit of prep. We'll talk about some new subjects or whatever. And yeah, it'll be a great time. But you can't get people on board for every new project you want to do. The other one I'd forgotten that I did with my cousin and one of his best mates that I

[06:38] knew very well from when we lived together, we did restart games where every week we'd play an old game each and come back and talk about our experience with it and how funny or hilarious or weird it was.

[06:49] I always went for the super weird ones because I was that kind of weird guy. It was one of the ones that I brought was like somebody's something something sausage roll, which was a puzzle game where you had to rotate and roll a sausage across a flat environment of squares, and you had to toast each side of the

[07:12] sausage appropriately on the grills that were available in the level. But you couldn't toast it twice because then the sausage gets burned. And every level was some harder or different puzzle that involved movement and not burning the sausage. So it wasn't a sausage roll,

[07:30] it was a sausage rolling. There is a lot of weird games out there that you can get access to. But yeah, so Restart Games, that was great. That ran for like 10 or 11 episodes and we kind of had to stop because people got busy. And that was my cousin doing two podcasts with me almost at the

[07:48] same time. And that was a lot of his time. So doing a podcast on your own or with interviewing guests and stuff made sense because you make the time for yourself and you do things in your own time. For me, the interview is a strength and why the podcast I'm doing right now

[08:02] has shifted from solo episodes to interviewing people. Being introverted, not wanting to talk in front of people in high school, my year 10 English teacher pushed me to do inter-class debating. I was pushed to do debating, did quite well, got up some of that muster I needed to stand

[08:19] in front of people and talk and prepare and research to do that kind of thing. So then I did inter-school debating in year 10, 11, and 12, but I also did a, I'm not sure if it even exists today, an inter-school mediation competition that

[08:35] they called SCRAM, Schools Conflict Resolution and Mediation, where a group of students, usually six with a couple in reserve in case one of them got sick, there would be two parties of two people, the affirmative and the negative, and there would be two mediators. They had to play

[08:52] out the scenario in which the mediators guided a discussion where they arrive at a resolution after a conflict. So it could be sharing of land between two houses that have old plans that need

[09:05] to agree on where the fence line will sit when they rebuild it. I can't even imagine what kind of scenarios we got at the time. It's all completely left my brain, but I was a mediator in that. Now, not only does being a mediator in a scenario like that require you to

[09:21] listen and retain what everybody says, the challenge there being that they won't stick to a script. It's not scripted. You have a bunch of facts, but they kind of play out in their own scenario as they argue or whatever. And as the mediator, you have to retain what's going on,

[09:38] guide the discussion to a resolution and show the audience or the judges that are judging it that you recognize the facts. So you kind of have to unpack what has been said, reiterate it to everybody,

[09:53] but do it in a way that resolves the conflict. Did that in year 11 and year 12, I think, or year 10 and 11 until the competition took a pause or stopped for some reason. And I think that's what largely led me to a strong interviewer, I think, at least from a podcasting

[10:12] context. It means that I can kind of redirect, reiterate, guide a discussion a little bit. I hope you enjoyed that insight into my background, my career, and how podcasting has changed my life. If you'd like to find out more about this podcast, check the show notes

[10:33] or head to RethinkingPodcasting.com. You'll also find the ways that you can support the show, including affiliate links to any products I use in my daily podcast production. If you've got a podcast revelation to share or would like to respond to anything I've

[10:48] mentioned on the podcast, send an email to business at mbpod.com or head to speakpipe.com forward slash RTP and record a voice message. Thank you for listening and I look forward to seeing you in the next one.

[11:13] You might be wondering what compelled me to create this series of introductory episodes. The truth is, I couldn't do it on my own. Debate Your Podcast is a service I offer with Peter Daly-Dixon and Rob Drummond, where we help you launch your podcast with a marketable set of five introductory episodes

[11:29] built from a 90-minute conversation with a conversation partner. These five activation episodes will help you get started on your podcast, give you a foundation to build your marketing from, and the provided transcripts will give you a strong base to kickstart

[11:42] your introductory email automation sequences. We'll even host and distribute the podcast for you. Not only that, but as the head of podcast engineering, I'll be editing your episodes together with the highest production value on offer.

[11:57] And if you love our process, you can choose to continue with the service ongoing for your podcast. It's basically done-for-you marketing with everything included. All you need to do is have a conversation. If you're interested, head to activateyourpodcast.com to schedule an introductory call,

[12:15] and make sure to mention Rethinking Podcasting when you get there.