1. PODCAST TRACK: Manage an enhanced podcast's artwork and Web links here.
2. LOOP LIBRARY: Click the eye icon to load your loops.
3. TRACK EDITOR: Flips into Chapter Manager mode when the Podcast Track is present.
4. ART-ANNOTATED CHAPTER MARKERS: Spice up your audio podcast.
5. MUSICAL TYPING: Play your Mac's keyboard like a piano.
6. MEDIA BROWSER: All of your other iLife stuff is right here.
7. DUCKING CONTROLS: Twiddle the arrows to set which tracks cause others to duck in volume.

 

WHAT YOU NEED
> Mac OS 10.3.9 or later
> GarageBand 3 or later ($79, part of iLife '06, www.apple.com)
> Microphone (optional)

 

GarageBand's Podcasting Studio makes it easier than ever to crank out a righteously professional-sounding podcast, complete with sound effects, atmospheric background music, snappy intro and outro jingles - even chapters, artwork, and Web links. With this awesome power at your disposal, it'd be a crime to make a boring, plain-Blaine podcast - here's how to avoid that.<

 

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Step 1: Enter the Podcasting Studio

 

Launching GarageBand presents you with some options for making a new project. Select New Podcast Episode, and give your project a name in the dialog that follows. The new podcasting project comes preloaded with a Podcast Track, Male Voice and Female Voice tracks, and tracks for Jingles and Radio Sounds. If you're creating a one-person show and you're in a hurry, just click either of the voice tracks, click the red Record button, and have at it. When you're done speaking, click Record again to stop.

 

Start with a New Podcast Episode-starting a regular project and adding a Podcast Track later isn't the same.

 

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Step 2: Record It in iChat

 

If you're making a one-person podcast, proceed to the next step. In this step, you'll record an iChat conversation to spice up your podcast with a compelling guest interview. Or you can use it for some private blackmail fodder-whatever suits your fancy. To record the chat, simply set up GarageBand as in the previous step, but before pressing Record, fire up iChat and initiate a chat with your victim - er, "guest" - by double-clicking the phone or camera icon by his or her name in your Buddy List. Alternately, you can highlight the person's name on your Buddy List and select Buddies > Invite To Audio Chat. And FYI, you can't record a chat initiated by someone else-this trick only works if you initiate the chat. Once your chatee accepts the chat (and you disclose that you're recording the conversation), press GarageBand's Record button; GarageBand will alert you that it's detected an audio chat and confirm that you'd like to record. When you're done, click the Record button again; if the playhead keeps moving, press Play to stop it.

 

This is GarageBand's way of saying "Quiet on the set!"

 

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Step 3: Add Effects on the Fly

 

If you're quick on your feet, you can play GarageBand's sound effects while recording your monologue or iChat interview. A piano-style USB keyboard makes this easier, but you can use GarageBand's onscreen keyboard and tickle the ivories with your mouse. Select Window > Keyboard and click the Radio Sounds track to highlight it, which also activates the keyboard. Plink around until you find the sounds you want. To load a different sound-effect kit, double-click the track title in the Track List to open the Track Info window (or choose Track > Show Track Info). Keeping Sound Effects highlighted in the left-side list, switch to Applause And Laughter, Comedy Noises, or Radio Sounds to load podcast-appropriate sounds. When you're ready to really dig in, click the Details triangle and use its check boxes and pull-down menus to create some truly bizarre sounds via the onscreen keyboard.

 

You could spend days tweaking your sound effects here.

 

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Step 4: Master Musical Typing

 

You can play Sound Effects by poking around on GarageBand's onscreen keyboard, but tickling the ivories with your mouse is annoying-so use your Mac's keyboard instead. Select Window > Musical Typing, and highlight the Radio Sounds track or another Software Instrument track. Click the eye icon, navigate to a sound effect or loop you want to use, and drag it from the loop drawer onto the key you want to assign it in the Musical Typing window - sweet! You can assign your own sounds to every key on the board -and cooler yet, if your interview is rife with choice sound-bite fodder, you can isolate a segment by loading its clip into the Track Editor (double-click the clip) or simply highlighting the clip and selecting Edit > Split a couple of times. Drag the segment directly from the timeline to any key in the Musical Typing window.

 

Not only can you type via the QWERTY keyboard, you can assign it your own sounds.

 

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Step 5: Proper Post-Production

At least half the fun of podcasting comes from adding all the rockin' radio-style jingles, zany zingers, and stupid sound effects. Of course, you'll want way more of them than you can cram in while recording the live vocal track(s) - and that's where post-production comes in. To pepper your podcast with wackiness, highlight the Jingles track, and if your loops aren't loaded, click the eye icon to open the Loop Browser; then press the podcast icon to load the Jingles, Stingers, and Sound Effects. For the standard talk-radio format, drop matching Jingles at the beginning and end of the show, before and after any commercial breaks (hey, it could happen), and anywhere else you need a little pause in the action. The real fun is in the Stingers and Sound Effects; insert sound effects at will by dragging them into position on the Jingles track or another Software Instrument track (click the plus-sign icon to add another).

 

You can have all kinds of fun with podcast sound effects

 

BONUS TIP: Raise the Bar
If your podcast has a perfect fade-out ending, GarageBand might cut off the tail end. To prevent fadeus interruptus, click the Cycle Region button to activate the orange Cycle bar in the timeline, and then click and drag the end of the Cycle bar out a few measures past the end of the project.

 

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Step 6: Don't Forget to Duck!

 

Mixing spoken content with sound effects requires ducking-dropping the volume of the background to ensure the important stuff gets heard. How low you duck your background music is up to you, but we can tell you how to set it: If you started GarageBand with a new podcast or movie-score project, you'll see the ducking controls on each audio track-otherwise, select Control > Ducking. Click the up arrow on lead tracks and the down arrow on tracks you want to duck out of the way. The track-volume slider only controls the track's regular volume; to fine-tune your ducking, open the Track Info pane (press Command-I or select Track > Show Track Info) and select Master Track. Find the Ducking Amount slider near the bottom of the window, and slide it up toward 100 to increase the amount of ducking-remember, the higher you set the ducking, the quieter the sound effects get when you talk.

 

Define your duck: You specify how low the background sounds duck to avoid the vocals.

 

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Step 7: Enhance Your 'Cast

Now that you've got the audio portion of your podcast squared away, click the Podcast Track to add enhancements such as chapter markers, Web links, and episode artwork. Remember, if you recorded an iChat AV interview, all of the participants' chat icons (or iSight snapshots) get automatically added to the Podcast Track each time the participants speak.

 

In Podcast mode, GarageBand's Track Editor magically sprouts a Chapter Marker manager; click the Media Browser icon to load your iPhoto library. Drag a photo from the Media Browser directly into the timeline or Chapter Marker manager, or click the Add Marker button and drag in your artwork later. Click the placeholder text fields (Add Title Here, URL Title, URL) to add chapter titles and Web links. You can later rearrange the order of the Chapter Markers by dragging the regions (each Chapter Marker designates the beginning of a new region) around in the timeline, or by altering the numerical value in the Time column. Don't try dragging Chapter Markers around in the Track Editor - that only moves the art, not the marker itself. And don't forget to drag an image into the Episode Artwork pane - this is the equivalent of album-cover art, so make sure it looks good.

 

You can even embed Web links into your podcast - so where's that wireless Web-browsing iPod?

 

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Step 8: Stop, Drop, and Crop

Shrinking photos you want to use as podcast art down to iPod-friendly postage-stamp size doesn't require launching iPhoto. Just double-click any piece of artwork in the Track Editor (including the Episode Artwork and Podcast Preview images) to load that image into GarageBand's Artwork Editor; use the slider to scale the image, and then drag the image to adjust what appears in the visible center of the crop frame.

 

 

Who says that size doesn't matter?

 

BONUS TIP: No iLife? No Problem!
GarageBand is the easiest way to crank out a killer podcast, but 79 bucks is 79 bucks. These Web sites offer tools, tips, and even online hosting for your podcasting pursuits-and the basic services are free with registration.
GarageBand.com's Podcast Studio (www.garageband.com/podcast) seems like it's wearing a target for Apple's lawyers.

> podOmatic (www.podomatic.com) provides a selection of canned George W. Bush answers for your fake-interview pleasure.
> Odeo.com (www.odeo.com) can pipe your podcast directly to the iTunes Music Store's Podcast directory.
> ClickCaster (www.clickcaster.com) currently a free beta, promotes your own on-demand radio show.