Think of an issue that might encourage other students to voice their opinions in a podcast. Maybe you could ask students about choices in the lunch menu, options for recess and after-school clubs, ideas for running student government, and so on. Choose a topic that you think other students would be interested in talking about and that encourages them to give an in-depth answer to a question about the topic. Design a short question that will allow students to air their opinion about the topic. Make sure your question encourages students to talk and is not answerable with a simple “yes” or “no” response. For example, you might ask, “What do you think the benefits might be of having healthier options to choose from in the daily lunch menu?” rather than “Do you like eating ice cream for lunch?”

Write down your question on notepaper, with space underneath for students to write down their answers. Copy the page enough times that you can give it out to six other students.

Choose six volunteers that you know will be able to answer the questions well. Tell them you’re creating a podcast for the school news program, and you would like to record their answer to a short question for the broadcast. Give them each one of the question sheets and allow them some time to write down their responses. Collect the responses when they’re ready.

Read through the responses for each question. If any of the volunteers has written something that you cannot include in the podcast, ask the student to rewrite his or her answer. Tell the volunteer you would very much like to feature his or her answer (that’s why you asked in the first place) and give the student more time to come up with a new answer to the question. Do not reject any person you chose—give the volunteer another chance. You will only cause resentment if the student does not get represented in the podcast.

Create a schedule of when the volunteers can come to the Music Tech classroom/lab to record their interview answers. You will probably need about 15 minutes for each recording. If you can record everybody in one 90-minute session, that would be best, but if you have to schedule multiple sessions, that’s okay, too. You’ll just have to set up your microphone and audio interface for each session (and also tidy up afterward!).

On the day you record, set up your recording session 10 or 15 minutes before the first recording session is scheduled to start. Launch Mixcraft and select the top option (Record Yourself or Your Band) from the New Project screen.

Mixcraft will give you eight Audio tracks—exactly the number you will need for this project.

Connect a microphone to the audio interface. Change the names of Tracks 1 through 6 to the names of each of the people you’re interviewing, in the order in which you are recording them. You can do this by double-clicking on each track name in the left pane of each track. Change the name of Track 7 to your own name. Change the name of Track 8 to “jingle.” Save your work so far.

Mute all the tracks by clicking the Mute button under the track names. Check to make sure you are getting a signal from your microphone by arming one of the tracks and testing the mic. Disarm the track again after the test.

When the first volunteer arrives, make sure the correct source is selected in the drop-down menu beside the Arm button and then arm the track. Have the volunteer speak into the microphone to check the level. If you have selected the Monitor Incoming Audio option, you can unmute Track 1 and monitor the recording in the headphones as the volunteer speaks.

Find the sheet of notepaper that has the answer the volunteer wrote and place it somewhere where he or she can read it. When everything is ready, press Record and record the student reading the answer to the question. (You do not need to record the question.) Press Stop after the answer. (If you need to re-record the answer, you can press Ctrl+Z and Rewind to Beginning and then redo the recording.)

Disarm the track. Select the clip by clicking on its name bar and then click Sound > Trim Silence or use the shortcut key combination Ctrl+I. Listen back to the recording to make sure everything is good. If Mixcraft has trimmed a little too much at each end of the recording, you can drag the sides of the region out slightly to fix it.

Mute the track. Save your work. You might even consider saving to a flash drive or a network drive as well, so you have a backup copy. (You do not want to have to ask your volunteers to come back again if you lose or damage the file on which you are working.) Thank your volunteer for giving up his or her time to record.

Repeat Step 7 for each volunteer, until you have six recordings in the six tracks. You will be recording each student on consecutive tracks, so make sure you arm and unmute the correct tracks. You will be glad you named the tracks earlier.

Write a script to introduce and link your interview answers. You do not need to present the answers in the order they were recorded. Make sure you introduce the question you asked. For example, you could write, “Do you think we should have healthier choices on the lunch menu? I asked six students from our school this exact question, and here are their responses.” Make sure you also write segments in which you introduce each student by name before each recorded answer. Include a section where you summarize the volunteers’ opinions and thank your listeners for listening to your podcast.

Check to make sure Tracks 1 through 6 are muted. Arm Track 7 and record each section of your script. Press Stop after every segment you record, so that each part of the script has its own region in Track 7. If you need to re-record any section as you go, press Ctrl+Z to undo what you recorded and then record it again. Select each region in Track 7 by clicking on its name bar and then click Sound > Trim Silence or use the shortcut key combination Ctrl+I. Mute Track 7. Remember to save your work.

Use the loop Library to find a loop you could use as a jingle to introduce and finish your podcast. Find something that will grab the listener’s attention—trumpets, horns, loud guitars, and so on would work much better than drum beats. Drag the loop into Track 8. If Mixcraft asks you whether you would like to change the project tempo to match the loop, select No.

Unmute all tracks. Move the jingle to the beginning of Track 8 if it is not already there. Move the first region in Track 7 so that it starts just as the jingle ends, but keep it in Track 7. Work through the whole script, aligning each part of the podcast so that each region begins just as the previous one ends. Do not drag the clips out of their original tracks, or Mixcraft will try to cross-fade them where they overlap. Listen to the podcast as you assemble it to make sure there are no times when there are long periods of silence (dead air) and no periods where two voices are speaking at the same time (cross talk). Copy the jingle clip from the beginning of the podcast to the end.

In the Mixer tab, pan each of the volunteers’ voices to different positions either side of center (three on the left, three on the right). Leave your own voice (Track 7) in the center pan position. Try to represent how it would sound if you had everybody sitting at one side of a table, with yourself in the middle and the microphone in the center of the table.

Check the levels of each voice through the whole podcast so that there is a smooth transition between each recording. Some voices may be louder (or quieter) than others because they were closer to (or farther away from) the microphone, and you will have to compensate for that with your volume faders.

If your recording sounds very dry, add a reverb to the FX section of the Master Mix fader. Make sure it is subtle enough that nobody would notice that you inserted the reverb unit. A golden rule of recording is that if people can hear an effect that you have inserted, you have inserted too much of that effect. Mix down your podcast by selecting File > Mix Down To > MP3. Ask your school principal if he or she will listen to your podcast and consider letting you play it on the school news.

Find an album to review. You probably will need to ask musical friends or relatives whether they will let you have a CD of their band or musical group to review. Do not choose a commercially released album unless you have already been given permission to review the album. See the section about copyright earlier in this chapter.

Listen to the album all the way through several times to familiarize yourself with the songs. Read through the lyrics. You may find them in the CD liner notes or on the band’s website, or you can ask the musicians to let you see a copy of the lyrics. Choose carefully, and make sure the album you select for this project is appropriate for school. There should be no profanity, no racism or sexism, and no lyrics that denigrate people because of their religion, beliefs, politics, or sexuality. If you are unsure about whether an album is acceptable, it probably is not. If there is something in the lyrics that you think might offend, it more than likely will. You may want to double-check with an adult—perhaps a teacher or a parent.

If you have the album on CD, rip the files onto the computer using iTunes, Windows Media Player, or other CD-ripping software. Make sure you know where the files are stored on the computer once they are ripped. If you have the files on a flash drive, transfer them to the computer you are using for this project. No matter whether you rip the songs from the CD or transfer them from a flash drive, you will need to keep them in a folder you can easily access on the computer desktop. Create a folder on the desktop by right-clicking the desktop and selecting New > Folder, name the folder, and copy the audio files to the folder. Move the folder to a corner of the desktop where you can access it easily.

Write a review of your chosen album as a podcast script. You should probably use notepaper and a pen or pencil to write your script. If you try to use a program on the computer to do this, you’ll find yourself running out of screen real estate when you start working in Mixcraft. It is also a good idea not to have other programs open when you are working in Mixcraft, so it would be counter productive for you to have word processing or text programs open as you are assembling your podcast.

You might like to start writing your podcast by finding out some information about the band or the musician. Find some time to talk to the people who recorded the music. Collect some information that people would find interesting and begin your podcast script with a section where you talk briefly about the musicians. Write a couple of sentences where you focus on the album itself—maybe some information about when and how it was recorded or what the artists wanted to achieve in recording the album. Then focus on the individual tracks. Write a couple of short sentences for each track, describing it or giving your listeners something to observe in each song on the album. Write a conclusion encouraging your listeners to buy the album and listen to it or to go see this band or musician play live. You might include details of the band’s next concert.

Listen to each track on the album again and find a section of each song that you can play in your podcast to illustrate the points you are making in the script. Make note of the times of each excerpt. Each excerpt you choose should be short. It is a good idea to use excerpts that are less than 20 seconds.

Launch Mixcraft and select the top option (Record Yourself or Your Band) from the New Project screen. Mixcraft will give you eight Audio tracks. You might need to add Audio tracks for this project, as you will need one track for each of the songs on the album, one track for voice recording, and one track for podcast assembly. So, if your album has eight tracks, you will need 10 Audio tracks in Mixcraft for this project. Use Track > Add Track > Audio Track or the shortcut key combination Ctrl+G to add the tracks you need.

Alter the size of the Mixcraft window so you can see the folder of audio files you placed on the desktop earlier. Open the desktop folder, select the first track, and drag it into the first track in Mixcraft. Trim the audio file to the excerpt you need by holding and dragging the sides of the audio region. Leave a couple of seconds on each side of the excerpt for fade-in and fade-out. You can use the Zoom function (+/– keys on the number pad or the mouse scroll wheel) to help you zoom in on the excerpt so you can edit more precisely.

When you move the sides of the region, you are not deleting anything—you are just letting Mixcraft know what part of the excerpt to play. You can keep moving the ends of the region left and right until you get the precise excerpt you want. After you have completed all the editing on the first track, mute it. Then drag the second album track into the second track in Mixcraft and edit it. Mute it when you have completed the editing. Keep repeating this process until you have added all the tracks from the album into their own tracks in Mixcraft and you have edited them. Maximize the Mixcraft window again.

Change the name of the next track in Mixcraft to “Voice Recording.” Connect your microphone to the audio interface, check your input source, arm the track, and check your recording level. When everything is set up, record your script. Record it in sections, pressing Stop after every section and leaving a gap before recording the next one. You can undo recordings and rerecord by pressing Ctrl+Z to undo. When you have finished recording the whole script, select every region of your recorded script individually by clicking on its title bar and select Sound > Trim Silence. You need to do this for each audio region in your podcast.

Listen to the voice recording the whole way through to make sure everything is good. Rerecord if necessary. Click the FX button in the left pane of the track and add an EQ, a compressor, and a reverb to the track. Choose presets for the effects modules or tweak the preset settings to create a good, strong sound for your voice.

You now need to print the voice recording to a new track—you cannot add these effects in the Master Fader or the Podcast Assembly track, or you will alter the sound of the musical excerpts. Select everything in the Voice Recording track by first selecting one region and then choosing Edit > Select All or using the shortcut key combination Ctrl+A. Select Track > Mix to New Audio Track. Mixcraft will now add a new track to the Sequencer window with your effects added into the sound. Mixcraft will also mute your original voice track for you.

Listen to the new track. Even though there are no effects units on this new track (the FX button is not selected), you can hear the effects you added in the original track! You can delete the original voice track if you want, though it may be best to keep it in case you want to redo the effects later.

Change the name of the last track to “Podcast Assembly.” Drag the first part of the recorded script into the track and align it with the beginning of the timeline. Assemble the podcast in the track in the order you want the excerpts to appear. When you drag a musical excerpt in, you can overlap it with the spoken section before it to create an automatic cross-fade—the music will fade in as the voice fades out. Then when you drag in the next spoken section, you can overlap again so the music fades out as the voice fades in.

Sometimes the cross-fade might not be exactly what you’re looking for, as the voice may get lost as the music fades in. An alternative way to create fades is to drag the mouse over the first few seconds of the excerpt, select Sound > Fade In, and choose a fade speed. You can create fade-outs with the Sound > Fade Out selection. Experiment with the fade speeds and with overlapping regions to get the effect you want.

Make sure all tracks are muted except for the Podcast Assembly track. Listen to the whole podcast and check to make sure the Master Mix fader does not peak into the red. Mix down your podcast by selecting File > Mix Down To > MP3. Play your podcast for the band members or the musicians who gave you their music. Ask your music teacher whether he or she will let you play your podcast for the other students in your music class. If you asked a friend or a relative outside of school to help you find an album, make sure you let that person hear your podcast—he or she will doubtless be interested to hear your review.