Podcasting ain’t always as easy as it sounds. All you have to do is open up a microphone, record something, upload it, and update an associated RSS feed. But wouldn’t you rather do it well?
I’ve heard a lot of monotone in podcasts lately — that problem when a speaker’s voice contains no inflection and lays flat on the floor throughout the entire podcast. It most often comes from someone who’s afraid of the microphone, or is reading off a script by themselves.
Having a co-host or two has its advantages. It gives you someone to work off of. It makes it easier to make your show sound conversational and more natural. It fills those awkward gaps. It gives you the opportunity to record a longer show without one person having to say everything. Trust me, I know that problem — after fifteen minutes of talking straight and you need to cough, drink, or take a deep, cleansing breath. It’s not something that comes naturally. You have to work at it. You develop defenses and mechanisms to make it work, but it’s not an entirely natural thing to do. It must be learned.
So what can you, as a podcaster (solo or otherwise), do to relieve the monotony of your sound? I have ten tips.
1. Pretend like you’re the obnoxious local morning radio DJ host guy. You know him. He’s the guy who screams a lot, who does silly voices, who drives you up a wall. Say what you will about him, but he doesn’t have any troubles with monotony.
Do this seriously. Don’t just try to do a wacky parody of a wacky human being. The funny thing is that it’s human nature not to go to extremes. So you likely won’t be as obnoxious as That Guy, but trying to be will pull you out of the monotone that you might be stuck in.
2. Know your material before you open the microphone. If you know what you’re saying, you can concentrate more on your voice. If you have to keep referring to your notes, or if you’re unsure of where the podcast is going, that will show up in your voice as well. You’ll play it safe. You won’t modulate your tones.
Also, don’t read off a script. If you’re concentrating on only saying the next word, you’ll never bother listening to yourself to hear how each word sounds. You’re too distracted by the script.
3. Listen back to your shows to hear how you did. Don’t pay attention to the content. Pay attention to how it sounds. Don’t worry if you said something awkward or if you flat out got something wrong. For the purposes of this exercise, you just want to listen to your voice, what it does and where it goes. Do you ever hear yourself whispering or screaming? If not, you might just be monotone.
4. Does it sound like you’re singing? This one might be harder to explain, but it’s some thing I’ve heard on my own shows. It’s when everything I say — even though I never read from a script — has the same rhythm, the same cadence. The voice goes up and down and up and down. It’s almost sing-song. You have to break yourself of that in podcasting, just as you’d try to break yourself of repeating rhythms in writing. Writers are sure to vary their sentence structure and presentation. It might be natural for them, but take a close look at any good piece of writing and you’ll see this. You won’t read “Jane climbed up the stairs. She opened the door. She walked into the room. She looked around. She called for help. She was killed by the monster in the dark.”
Forget for a moment the passive tense of the verb in the climactic sentence. Notice how all the sentences are the same structure. They all start with the subject. They’re all no more than five words — subject, verb, object, more or less. You can see the rhythm and the pattern there. In a way, it works because the final sentence — the climactic shocker — breaks the rhythm. But unless you’re aiming to create such a pattern to jostle the reader — or the listener — out of complacency later on, you’re in a bad monotone.
5. Believe what you’re saying. The nice part about an opinion show instead of a straight-up news show is that you’re trying to convince someone of something. That kind of emotion and energy is easiest to transfer to your own voice. Passion rules. If this is a straight-laced newsy type of show, then see my second point above.
6. Don’t be afraid to go on a tangent. The very act of breaking out of the main trunk of a show will lead you to vary your tone. As the subject changes, so will your voice. Probably. This one isn’t 100%, but it’s a neat little trick.
7. It’s more than volume that needs to change. Tone doesn’t refer to volume. It refers to pitch. Deepening your voice has one effect. Speaking higher has another. Think of the way Jerry Seinfeld acts when his voice gets all squeaky. That’s usually where the jokes are, right?
8. Edit your podcast. If you need to take a break, cough, get a drink, or what-have-you, there’s no reason you can’t. Stop the recording, handle your business, and come back. The problem with this, though, is that you’ll often find a noticeable change in your voice when you come back. I can’t explain it. It’s just the way things work out, and your audience will hear it.
You can, however, repeat something you just said if you want to say it better. Going back afterwards and deleting the first take is easy enough. I used to do this all the time when I first started podcasting. Now that I don’t have the patience for all that editing and I find myself more comfortable with the format of my show and its contents, I don’t have to do it. But repeating something in the same session is a whole lot easier and more reliable than stopping the show and coming back to it later, whether as a patch or as a continuation of the same session.
9. Do little things. Take a slightly exaggerated pause. Raise or lower the volume or speed of your voice here and there. Even if neither of those things is exactly a change in tone, the brief difference in your speaking might imitate one. And when your voice returns to “normal,” perhaps it’ll be a little different to the listener’s ears. It’s fakery, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Nothing’s worse than listening to one person drone on and on. It’s the easiest way to lose an audience member.
10. I’m not a trained professional voice guy. I’m talking out of my butt. But if you’ve read this far, perhaps you’ve picked up on some things that I’ve learned from doing college radio, local radio, and podcasting for the last 12 years.
Yes, this is more a disclaimer than a point, but people tend to like lists of ten things, not nine. If you need a serious tenth, then go back to the top of this entry and go with “Have a co-host.”
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That hooks into the compressor, which helps to even out the sound. It’s the magic box that brings low noises up and high noises down. (I wish I could get it to ignore my breathing sounds. ::sigh:: ) I picked up a well-respected and easy-to-use one off eBay that’s made by FMR Audio: 