How I Do the Show

I use some very basic hardware and software to record and produce the radio show podcast. There are plenty of tools available for people to do this kind of thing. You can take a really simple, straightforward approach, or you can get really complicated with it and create a whole radio studio in your house -- whatever approach works best for you.

Since I used to do an actual live radio show on WRCT in college (which is not your average college radio station; they broadcast within a 15 mile radius, reaching over a million people in SWPA) and would like to do a live stream or show again, I want to replicate the live process when I record my show.  Recording the show ahead of time and "broadcasting" on mixcloud is much easier, avoids legal restrictions, and costs nothing. Streaming/broadcasting music live is a much more complicated story, on many levels, so I'm avoiding that for now.

Even though I record, edit, and "produce" the show, I try to only do things that could be done on a live show by myself. For example, adding an echo effect to my voice when I introduce a song is easy to do live, so I feel like I can include that kind of production work in the recorded version. There are two main steps in my process: recording the music part and recording my talking part. I don't do anything with the music in the recorded version that I wouldn't do in a live radio show. I  just play and record the music part (including the promos), then listen to it and record the vocal part (me talking). 

Virtual DJ on the left has a song loaded on each turntable and the promos in the sampler on the bottom. You can see my iTunes playlist on the right, from which I just have to drag the song to VDJ.
The playlist includes valuable information like the artist, album, year, genre, BPM, etc.

My brother got me this
Blue Snowball Microphone.

For the music part, I use iTunes and Virtual DJ (see the picture). First I make a playlist in iTunes, which I'll use as a rough outline of what I want to play on the show. Then I play and record the songs and promos using software called Virtual DJ, which provides 2 turntables with beat matching and looping, a mixer, and a sampler -- and the ability to record the whole thing. You drag a song on to the left deck, then hit record to start recording. Press play on the song on the left and drag a new song to the deck on the right. Get ready to press play when the first song ends. You can use the mixer to fade the volume of each song up and down. Pre-cueing is a key feature. While one song is playing over the speakers, you can listen to the next song in your headphones to get it ready. The software has beat matching and some other great features for quality DJing. I use the sampler to play all the promos: the little snippets that say "You're listening to thirty three and a third cents a pound" in a funny voice or whatever.

Next I use a free audio editing program called Audacity that is pretty common. I load the music part of the show and then record my vocal parts to go along with it. I use a snowball microphone to record my voice, which works great. To make the timing easier, I mark the music track (see picture below) in two ways. 

The music is the top half; my vocal snippets are on the lower half.
You can label different spots in the track, for example where to start talking.

First I mark a good spot to start talking. But the most important thing, in my opinion, is to know exactly when to stop talking -- right before the song really kicks in, or "drops," so to speak. That could be just the beginning of the song, or it might be 30 seconds into it when the vocals start. Maybe there's a gradual build up and then the key melody starts playing. So I try to talk up until that point. This is definitely something I can do live. A good DJ would be familiar with the song and just know when to stop talking. Or I can cheat and mark/label these spots in the song in Virtual DJ.

You can alter the volume if certain parts came out too loud or too quiet, and when it's all done you export it as an .mp3 or .wav file and there you have your podcast ready to upload. I upload mine to mixcloud and then post here on blogger, facebook, twitter, etc.