Apple's GarageBand recording software comes free with every Mac/iPad and has everything you need to make pro-sounding podcasts. We show you how...

It doesn't take much to make a podcast these days. Only a few years ago, the software side of things alone would have set you back hundreds, and you'd have had to spend at least the same again to get a good–quality microphone and an audio interface. Nowadays you can get an excellent-quality USB microphone for very little money (see our USB mic round-up elsewhere in this issue), and if you've got a Mac, you already own the software you need. Apple's GarageBand comes free with every Apple computer and iPad tablet, and is essentially a lighter and much easier to use version of Apple's premium Logic Pro X package, providing an easy and inexpensive way for Mac users to create podcasts as well as music.

Most podcasts comprise one or more voices, sound effects/cues, and some music for the intro and outro. You can of course compose your own music and stings, but if you can't or don't want to, don't worry as GarageBand comes with a large Apple Loops library that includes stings and short musical phrases that you can use without worrying about copyright issues. Tip: don't use commercial music without permission as copyright violations can be expensive!

The Basics

Before getting stuck in, a word about microphone placement and the surroundings in which you plan to record. It's usually best to set up the mic around 200 to 300 mm from your mouth, and always place a mesh pop screen between the mic and the mouth — around 30 to 50 mm from the mic is ideal. Without this your mic will probably produce popping sounds whenever you pronounce a 'B' or 'P' sound (known as 'plosives').

Unless your room is really dead-sounding, the mic will invariably pick up a bit of boxy room reverb too, which can spoil the otherwise professional presentation of your podcast. A simple and cheap way to improve things is to hang up a thick duvet behind you, and if you are really serious, hang up a couple more at the sides too. These will soak up sound that would otherwise reflect from walls back into the microphone, leaving you with a much more studio-like sound. Don't worry too much about the back of the microphone, as most podcasting mics have a unidirectional or cardioid pickup pattern, which means they are not very sensitive to sounds coming at them from the rear. Having said that, if the room is particularly problematic, you can put another duvet, pillow or commercial screen behind the mic. And if you're doing video podcasts or vlogs, why not get a green duvet cover so you can use the backdrop as a 'green screen'?

Back At The Mac

If your mic or interface requires drivers, install them first. If you are using a USB mic, as many podcasters do, you probably won't need to, as they tend not to require additional software drivers so you can just plug in and get started.

When you're all set to go, open GarageBand and you'll be greeted by a largely empty screen in which you'll find an icon labelled Empty Project. This will start a new, blank project — but first, set your mic or interface as the active audio device in GarageBand's Audio Preferences, by clicking on the GarageBand menu at the top of the screen, and going to Preferences, then to the Audio/MIDI tab at the top of the window. Select your interface or USB mic for both the Input and Output device. For those USB mics that don't have a headphone output built in, select the mic as the Input and the Mac's Built-In Output as the Output. If using a capacitor microphone plugged into an audio interface, switch on the phantom power on the interface.

In that same window where you see the Empty Project button, you'll find a folder at the bottom called Project Templates, and though none of these are ideally suited to podcasting, you might still find them useful. For now, we'll make our own. Templates are great because they can hold everything you need to start work — tracks, plug‑ins and any music beds you use a lot — without you having to go back to set up a new song or project from scratch. GarageBand doesn't have a dedicated feature for storing user templates in the way that Logic Pro X does, but you can get around this by setting up a project with all the necessary tracks, plug‑ins and music beds in place, then saving it, and simply opening that project whenever you want to start a podcast.

Once you've got your 'template' set up and saved, drag that session file into the Dock where you can find it easily, and then as soon as you open it, use the Save As... command before going any further so that you don't overwrite the original.

Once you've clicked on Empty Project, a dialogue box appears to allow you to create tracks on which to record. If you're using pre-recorded audio for music and a mic for your voice, then select the Microphone icon as this creates an audio track. You can also select the recording input source (if you have more than one) from this page. If you have two voices to record simultaneously then create two tracks and set the source for each accordingly. The default audio track has a compressor plug‑in and an EQ already inserted, which is useful in tweaking the tone (EQ) and helping you keep your voice level nice and even (compressor). From the panel at the bottom of the screen you can select between Controls (which has both Compressor and simplified EQ controls on one panel) and EQ if you need more forensic tonal correction.

Note that GarageBand doesn't have a separate mixer page — horizontal faders and pan pots are located in the track header section, though if you drag the right–hand edge of this section to the left to save space, the faders will eventually disappear from view. Also, unlike Logic Pro X, GarageBand doesn't include any operations that make permanent changes to the recorded audio files, such as normalising levels or adding fades. This isn't a serious shortcoming when creating podcasts, as there are other ways to manage both levels and fades.

Adding Music

A '+' button just above your newly created track lets you add another, so if you're only working with one voice let's add a second Audio track for our theme music. This is the simplest podcast setup — one track for your voice and another for the music and stings. Click the Loop Browser icon in the control bar near the top right of the screen (Loop Browser is the middle button of the three) and you'll see a selection of Apple Loops, though the first time you do this you will have to wait a while until GarageBand has indexed the loops for you.

Once it has done that, you can audition loops in the browser by clicking on them, then drag the ones you want into the track area to the right of the Audio 2 track header. You can play this using the transport controls at the top of the screen, but you might also hear a metronome clicking away in the background. Turn it off by clicking the metronome logo to the right of the bar/beat display. To hide the Loops menu, just click its icon again. Unlike music, podcasts are measured in 'normal' time units rather than beats and bars, so click that little arrow to the right of the bar/beat display and then select Time instead. Now the window will read elapsed time, which will be more useful for editing.

The music in the Apple Loops section sounds pretty polished as it is so you can switch off the compressor and EQ on that track, either by using the switches on the plug‑in windows or by going to the bottom left of your screen and clicking the arrow next to the subhead Plug‑ins. This causes a sub-screen to drop down where active plug‑ins are shown in blue and inactive ones in grey. A power button icon to the left of each plug‑in slot allows the plug‑ins to be turned on or off.

GarageBand comes with a large Apple Loops library that includes stings and short musical phrases that you can use without worrying about copyright issues.

If you'd like to add something more esoteric like reverb or delay, you can click in the empty space below the existing plug‑ins and a menu will take you to a list of GarageBand plug‑ins that you can use, as well as a No Plug‑in option for if you want to clear a slot. To change an existing plug‑in, move the mouse pointer to the right–hand end of the name slot and two small arrows appear. If you click on these you get the same menu of alternative plug‑ins. Note that the plug‑ins you see relate to the currently selected track: switch to a different track and you may see the same two plug‑in types as they are installed by default, but these are totally independent of those on other channels so you can add to them, turn them off or swap them for other plug‑ins without affecting other tracks.

Level Automation

And now for something very useful and important — Level Automation. Go to Mix at the very top of the screen and from the menu that appears, select Show Automation. Alternatively, click the Automation icon at the top of the track header section so that it turns blue — it's the one that looks like three lines joined by two dots. You can automate just about anything, but for now let's stick with automating volume, as it's something you'll need to use if you are to prepare a professionally balanced podcast. Note that when you turn automation on, a similar icon appears in the track header. This allows the automation to be turned on or off for individual tracks. When active it is highlighted in blue.

With Show Automation on and the Track Automation button showing blue, you'll see a thin horizontal line passing through the audio waveform on the track. Click on the line and a handle or point will appear and the line will turn yellow. You can add as many handles as you like and drag any of them up or down in level. Click on a handle again to remove it. On the voice track, this can be used to even out obvious level changes, but for the intro music track in our example, I just used it to add a fade to the music. When moving or editing tracks you'll want to turn the automation view off again or you'll find yourself making unwanted changes to the automation.

Use the return-to-zero button in the transport section then hit play and you'll hear your music play from the start, then it will gradually fade out, ready for you to start your dissertation on broccoli farming in the Andes. As the project records or plays, the playhead moves across the screen. If you don't want to start from zero every time, you can grab the handle at the top of the playhead cursor and drag it to any time position you like.

Start Recording

Now we're ready to start recording! Select your vocal track and check the Recording Settings panel next to the plug‑in window to make sure that your audio device is selected as the source.

To record your voice, set the mic level on the interface (or on the microphone if it has a record level control) so that during normal speech the green level meter in the track header peaks at around three quarters of the way up — that should leave enough of a safety margin, or 'headroom', that you never hit the top of the meter, which could result in audible distortion. If the mic doesn't have a record level control, just check that you're getting at least half a bar of level showing on GarageBand's meters and adjust your mic distance accordingly if the level isn't right.

You can't change the recording level with any of GarageBand's own controls, but most USB mics put out a sensible level with normal speech. If you want to hear your voice in your headphones as you speak when setting up, click the Input Monitoring button — the one that looks like an upside-down Wi-Fi symbol — in the track header so that it turns orange. The headphone icon to its left lets you solo a track to hear it in isolation, and the button on the left mutes the track.

Make sure the song position cursor is positioned to the left of where you want to start recording your voice, then press the Record button in the transport section and the selected track will record. If, after recording your voice, it seems to be too quiet compared with the music, you can insert a Gain plug‑in from the Utilities plug‑in sub-menu to boost it.

Tidying Up

If you're anything like me, there will be odd fluffs in the vocal take that need sorting out, and the easiest way I've found is just to keep recording and speak the line again. Completely unusable takes can be deleted using the same backspace key you'd normally use to delete text. A handclap will put a visible spike in the waveform display to act as a navigational aid — a useful technique for finding your way back to those repeated sections. To trim out unwanted sections, select the audio region in the track area (its top colour band will get brighter), position the playhead line where you'd like to make a cut and then use Command+T on your keyboard to make the cut. Clicking and holding inside the region lets you drag it left or right, while placing the cursor in the bottom half of the region at either end will allow you to shorten or lengthen it. As long as you make your cuts during silences between words and take care not to cut mid breath, the joins should be inaudible.

I often end up with dozens of regions that I have to trim and slide about before I'm happy that the voice flows correctly. Be very careful to select only the region you want to move though, otherwise you could end up undoing previous edits. As a rule, start at the beginning and then work through to the end, one region at a time, making sure each edit sounds right before going on to the next one. Once you have it as you want it, select all the regions in the track, then use Command+J to join them back into a single continuous region.

While the compressor preset that came pre-loaded in the audio track will work well on voice, it may still need adjusting, as presets have no way of knowing what your recording level will be. The more gain-reduction LEDs you see, the more your voice is being compressed. In most cases you'll just need to adjust the Compression control so that three or four LEDs light up on the louder sections, but you should ultimately let your ears decide.

If you have stings to add during the programme, you can either drop them into the music track and then use automation to balance their levels, or put them on a track of their own. Then, at the end, as the chat comes to a close you can fade the music back in and then either let it end naturally or fade it out. You don't have to re-import the audio if using the same tune for the outro, as you can simply use Alt–drag to copy the music to a new location.

Finishing Up

To balance your voice against the music background, use the horizontal faders in the track header region. Note, though, that if automation is switched on, the faders will jump to the levels set by the automation line. Once you've got your balance right, go to the Track menu and select Show Master Track. A new track with a mixer icon will appear below the tracks you have already recorded. Select the new track, use the Smart Controls button at the top of the window to open up the plug‑in window at the bottom of the screen, and you'll find you have three tabs at the top of that window offering Effects, Output and EQ. I'd recommend you just use the Output one, which brings up some simple controls for adding compression and EQ to your finished mix. The various sections have their own switches with blue LEDs that show when that section is active. A little more compression might help at this stage but the main thing is to ensure that the meter in the Master Track shows a peak level close to, but not hitting, the top of the meter. If you've played very safe with your levels, you can turn on the Limiter and use its control to increase the overall level. This will also prevent audible clipping if you push the levels a bit too far.

When you are happy with the overall sound and level, go to the Share menu from the top of the screen and from the various options, select Export Song To Disk, which will open a window giving you the option to save the file as AAC, MP3, AIFF or WAV with the choice of 16- or 24-bit options for the WAV format. For uploading to the internet, the MP3 option is probably the most common. The Export menu also includes the option to export directly to SoundCloud or iTunes. You can also select a folder to which you'll save your podcast project, or you can simply export it to a file on your desktop. Click Export and your project will be mixed to a new file running from the first region in the project to the last. If you prefer to set your own mixed file length, you can either select the first and last regions that you want to include or click and then drag (a yellow band appears) in the Cycle Area at the top of the 'ruler' below the transport bar at the top of the screen. This will determine the length of your mixed recording.

And there you are — a finished podcast ready to share with the world!