The EditEditing is another word that strikes fear into the heart of many a beginner podcaster, so before we get started here, just take a deep breath and relax. Here’s the good news: No one is expecting you to be NPR, so you don’t have to go diving into the weeds and add all sorts of polish. There’s no doubt that good editing can make a good podcast great, but right now, we’re concentrating on just making a good podcast. I’d argue that one of the great things about podcasting — at least in the beginning — was the rip and run nature of it. Some of us became podcasters because it was raw. Something is appealing about recording something quickly, doing a minimal amount of editing to it, and dropping it in the feed so that listeners can hear it literally within minutes. The age of true crime and celebrity and NPR brought the gloss to podcasting, and while it’s nice, it’s silly to hold yourself to that standard.

So, when editing your podcast, I have a few things I want you to address.

Earlier I mentioned making a distinctive noise when I made a mistake. Start by cutting out all the errors from the audio file so that everything in the audio file is all the good takes.

Listen to the file entirely, and make a note of all the filler or crutch words like um, ah, uh, and er. Also, make a note of any sniffles or sharp breaths. I’m not telling you to remove every single one of these, but I am asking you to take them all in context. If removing a particular sound will make you sound like a robot, then leave it in. However, if you can remove one of these elements and not compromise timing or delivery, take it out. This is a skill that you can only learn by becoming familiar with your style of delivery and timing.

In your editing software of choice, amplify the track to -2db peak amplitude.

Save your file.

That is the most basic editing there is. I’m not talking about adding music or making this a multitrack. Of course, you can do that, but let’s crawl before we walk. In the future, I’ll show you to edit in multitrack in both Audacity and Adobe Audition, but that’s for another time.

For now, we’ve edited a podcast using a straightforward method.

BUT WHAT ABOUT MUSIC?Well, like any Facebook relationship… it’s complicated.

Yes, you can use music on your podcast as long as you have the rights to it. For example, I have a subscription to Epidemic Sound, which gives me access to their music library. So if I use their music on my podcast, I have the rights to it. You can also do a Google search for Creative Commons music, but those are widely used, and they may not have the level of license you need to be able to use it.

In short, if you don’t know if you can use that music, the answer is probably no. So I would start with no music until you can afford a subscription to one of the music services.