How to re-record audio without it sounding obvious

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Welcome to the PodSchool podcast.

Rachel Corbett: 00:00:10

Hello, welcome to the show. Today I got a great question from Thomas because it's a question that makes me go, oh, you are thinking about the minutia, mate. This is what I like.

He asks what happens if you need to edit to make it more flowing, but then you need to retake certain moments and then it isn't authentic. This is great. Cause we're thinking about some advanced stuff now. So retaking things re recording, we call those pickups in the biz.

And recording pickups, if you are doing it after you have done a record, can be difficult because you might not be in the same space that you recorded things initially. So it can sometimes sound different.

So I'm going to take you through a few tips and a few kind of things that you need to think about when you're in the moment, that when you are recording and you're doing this for the first time, you're probably not going to be thinking about. Let me start by going through some of the reasons why you might need to rerecord something.

You might be in the edit, listening to what happened and think, oh, my gosh, I have rambled and repeated myself. And you might have tried 70 times to edit that section, but you can't edit it properly without it sounding edited.

Sometimes you will find that you're like, oh, I need to cut this bit out. But then I need to let you know it will be quite hard sometimes to edit a spot and you might need to rerecord just a little bit to help you through.

So that could be something. You might have got something wrong and you need to correct it. You've said somebody's name wrong, you've said a fact wrong. You.

You've done something that makes you look like a moron. You're like, I can't have that go out in the episode, but I need it to stay in. So you might need to rerecord that.

You might want to add energy to a section that sounds really flat. You might actually listen back and you're just like, that sucks, actually. And it is not engaging.

And I need to redo that section, but I don't need to do the whole thing again. You might have fluffed a line a bunch of times and you want something that's cleaner because you want it to sound more professional.

All of this is totally normal, like all of this happens. It is not a sign of a lack of professionalism. It is not a sign of you not understanding what you're doing. It happens to the best of us.

You are in the moment. Ideally you are prepped, but you're not reading. So you want to be relying on your brain and your mouth to speak at the right time.

But things happen, you know, you're in the moment, you get tripped up, you get something wrong. This is all totally normal. And it will happen a lot more than once, you know, across your podcasting career.

The problem with re recording something, especially if you are not in the same space that you recorded the audio originally, is it can sound different. It can sound like it is cut in there. And that is almost worse than just keeping what was in there in there in the first place.

So you really need to look at how can I try and make these things sound as seamless as possible? Because there's not a huge amount of things that you can do in the editing if the audio. Audio just sounds totally different.

So here are some of the tips that I would have to re record and have things blend in naturally.

The first thing is if you are going to be recording in a different place than you would normally be in your editing your different space, it's not like you record all the time at home. So if I make stuff up, I'm just gonna be sitting here recording in the exact same spot. If you've gone out into another space, record ambient noise.

Record the noise of that room.

Even if you just run tape before your guest arrives, or before your co host arrives, or before you start recording for like a minute, that will give you some sound of the room that sometimes when you are recording in the space that is where you're editing and it's different from the other space, you can lay that underneath that piece of audio if it's not sounding like it was in the same room. And it can really help you to make it sound like it was in the same room. So that could be really helpful.

One of the things to note is if you can record more rather than less, you do not want 15 seconds of ambient noise that has a bird tweeting in the background. And then you gotta loop that 15 seconds and all you can hear is a bird twinning in the background every 15 seconds.

Cause that will get real annoying real fast.

So try and have as much as you can in the background so that you can just use a big thing almost like as an audio band aid that you just put underneath the bit you'd put a little over, you know, the start of the other side that is still in that area and a little over the other side and then kind of patch it up. Can work really well. Sometimes you'd be really surprised. Just a subtle change.

And even if it's like an air conditioner noise or something, different rooms have different sounds, you would be surprised. So it can really help you if you do that. The second thing I would suggest is to turn on all the original mics.

So I have for my old show, I used to take my zoom recorder out and I would interview people in somewhere and you can actually. It is different if you are talking to somebody and you haven't got another mic open.

So when I would come home and sometimes rerecord stuff, if I just had my mic on, it sounded almost too clean because in the room another mic was picking me up at the same time, just subtly. So just having another mic open on that means basically and kind of position it where your guest was and record that bit of audio with that mic open.

Again, very subtle, but can make a huge amount of difference in just making it sound a little different. Because one of the things that is most obvious about a pickup is, is that they're often way cleaner than the original audio.

So you might hear it sometimes. I hear it sometimes in professional podcasts and I'm like, oh, you step back into the studio for that.

It's like all of a sudden you're just like, oh, it sounds really clean, not like where it was recorded originally. So anything that you can do to make that sound more like the original audio is the way to go.

So open all the mics that you had on and and try and record that sound. The other thing I would say, do not record cold.

And by that I mean if have a section of the sentence which is I went to the beach and that's the bit that you want to record. Don't just sit down behind the mic, sit silently and then go, I went to the beach. You will not.

The flow of conversation will not be the same way as if that word was in a or phrase was in a sentence. So you need to say the bit before it. So it was a really hot day and I went to the beach.

Because that will give you the run on of and I went to the beach. It will give you the right tone. Sometimes when you're recording a pick up, you'll come in really hot. Like you'll go, I went to the beach.

And then when you cut it into the edit you go, it was really hot and I went to the beach. And you're like, okay, whoa, whoa, that's a lot.

So you want to be recording the full sentence or part of the sentence before you actually get into that space so that you can keep that natural conversational rhythm and cadence. It will be much easier to edit into that section and for it to sound like it was recorded in that same time. I also use a lot fade in, fade out.

When I'm putting something in, if I'm slotting something in and it needs a little bit of. It's sounding like, oh, it's sounding a little stuck in there. I will often fade very softly the beginning of the first word of that sentence.

Or I might fade out the end, depending. Usually it's mostly a fade in I will use because it's often that that sound is. It seems quite harsh.

Or I'll decrease the volume of that first kind of couple of words so that it's just a little bit smoot. The playing with the audio levels can really help you as well. That can be really, really helpful if you're trying to cover up an edit.

And then I would just say, if you are doing stuff in the moment, be mindful of where you can pick up. If you are doing an interview with somebody, you're very unlikely to stop them every 15 seconds to be like, hang on, let's re record that again.

So it's hardest to do when you are interviewing someone because you want that flow to happen naturally. You want to just keep talking through things. You want to be relaxed, you want to be engaged, you want to be looking at them.

You don't want to be stopping and starting. And for them to kind of say, feel, oh, this a conversation is that this is a show and you're trying to like, produce me.

So ideally, in an interview, it's probably the hardest to do this.

If you have a good relationship and rapport with your co host and you're in a rhythm, it is always best practice if you can make sure that you do it in a way that kind of doesn't stop your flow. If you need to pick up something, stop down and pick it up again. And you don't have to go right back to the beginning of the thought.

If you're doing something, you might just go, I might just go back to literally saying, you don't need to go back to the beginning of the thought. You know, you just kind of go back to just a little bit to redo that bit. And the easiest way to do that is, when you're on your own.

If you do a hosted show and it's just you talking into a microphone, well, you can pick up all day long. And Josh, who helps me with my editing for this podcast, would know that. He listens to me do pickups left, right and center.

Because I'm just like, I'm just here by myself, you know. So if I need to redo something, then I will literally stop and I'll go back a few words or a sentence and I will pick up where I go.

What I try to always do is to include a word that has a consonant in it. Because for me, I find that it is much easier to hide an edit point if you edit at the consonant.

So that means, like, cat, you know, those harsh letters that will give you an easier spot to cut. It's much harder to cut into a, you know, an S word or when you're going, and, and mmm, you know, because there' so much mess in those words.

So if you can go back and think, is there a letter in that? Is there a word in that that has a consonant that I could cut to? I will often think about that as I'm recording.

And ultimately that's just to make the edit easier so that when I get the final product back or when I'm working on an edit, it sounds good. There is nothing worse than getting the raw materials, having to edit it and then going, actually, I just can't make this better.

Like these sections, I don't have the raw materials to actually make this any. So anything that you can do to make sure that the stuff at the end sounds as good as it possibly can is going to be what you want.

And if you're on your own, those pickups are really easy to do. You can stop and start 700 times if you want because you're not going to interrupt anybody except for yourself. So that is my definite tip.

If you can do that in a co hosted, hosted situation, great. I would reserve it just for when you really need it.

Like if you get somebody's name wrong or you say something, you're like, oh, God, I shouldn't have said that. You know, but when you are doing it on your own, you can stop a million times.

Just if you don't want to stumble, you know, you can redo it as many times as you want. So those would be my top tips. You know, editing is not cheating. Doing pickups is not cheating. It is respecting your audience.

It is making sure that your audience has the best quality product at the end of the day. And sometimes you need to do this stuff.

And so anything that you can do in your recording, recording ambient noise, doing pickups in the moment, leading in on a sentence rather than just picking up cold, those kind of things can make the process of you making that end product for your audience so much better. And it's so much simpler to put together and do so. I really hope that has helped you. I love that question. That is right up my alley. Thomas, I'm.

You know, any of that kind of stuff you guys want to ask me, keep it coming, because I love that stuff.

And it's these kind of little tips and tricks and tweaks that you can do that can make a world of difference to your podcast, but that you might not be thinking about when you're so in the moment of like, oh, God, I've just got to get this recorded and get this done. So thanks so much for listening. If you want even more editing and presenting tips and things like that, then head to podschool.com au.

You'll get more information about my online podcasting course there. I would love to see you inside and help you to create your own successful show. And I'll see you next week. That's all for today.