Behind The Show: Gareth Davies

Hello podcasting people and welcome to Behind the Show where I chat to you podcasters to find out more about you and what you're using to make your podcasts. I'm Gareth and this community is something I've built for all of us. I'm not going to try and sell courses, I'm not going to tell you what you should or shouldn't be doing with your own shows. To me the word community is about all of us.

As much as I want to get to know you and your podcasts and hopefully give you some tips via my shows and other posts, I want you to be there for each other because that is what community means in my humble opinion. So here we are, on the very first Behind

the Show. I thought it would be a fun idea to do a kind of show and tell podcast, the behind the scenes where we get to know more about the people who make the shows, sharing what tools we're using to get a podcast made and published, and the experiences guests have with these tools. Uh, and as this is the first episode, I thought I would share my background with you and some of the hardware and software I use to make podcasting people.

This show, uh, a couple of other shows, and other client podcasts I'm involved in helping out on. Whether it's fixing audio or editing dialogue or other things. Right then, are we ready to get into it? Let's call this section. It's all about you.

Hello, me again. So in this section of Behind the Show, I'll usually have a guest to chat with. But like I say, as it's the first one, I thought I'd properly introduce myself and what I do. After this, I won't be talking much about me. In fact, that's my mantra in podcasting. It's not about me. And I reckon that's a good way to think when devising guest interviews. So this feels a little bit counter to that.

Anyway, so, uh, I live in Shepperton in the UK, which you may have heard of because of the famous studios, uh, with my wife, Dani, and our little Jack Russell Flash Gordon, Who is happily snoozing under my studio desk as I record this. Up until 2011, I was a primary school teacher, which was pretty intense, but very rewarding. Um, I've been a musician and songwriter all my life, and so, uh, coinciding with the house move, I took a leap of faith and became a professional composer for media.

I was lucky enough around a year later to write the music for an animated series for TV which kick started a career in writing music for TV.

I'll pop a link in the show notes to my composer page if you want to read and listen to more of my work on the music side further. Uh, then in 2019, I started a podcast with a friend and we wrote an imagined drama soundtrack and podcasted along the way, which was really fun, but very, very terrifying. We had guests on from all sorts of roles in TV and film production. And we ended up doing two limited seasons of that show.

And then in lockdown, I created and produced a show called Creative Cuppa, which was, it was my window to the outside world during the pandemic. And I loved chatting with people doing creative jobs and finding the common threads in that creativity. Fast forward to 2022, and I wanted to start a show about music, or more importantly about the people who make the music. That's called The Music Room, it's still going. And this continues to be a motivation for me, the humanising of an industry.

And the music industry, and indeed the podcast industry, can feel a bit faceless and isolating, can't it? Especially for us creators. And I just love the idea that, We can learn from each other and keep each other going. I started a Facebook group for the Music Room listeners. And honestly, the magic I saw and still see happening in that group, the support, the motivation, the collaboration that happened. It's amazing to see it happen.

And knowing I've facilitated people's friendships and helped them in their careers is just the best feeling.

I started the Podcasting People podcast as a bite-size show featuring tips from podcast industry figures, uh, in the autumn of last year, 2023, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I'd gained a couple of podcast clients where I fix audio, edit dialogue, and in one client's case, repurpose video audio for podcast, and by that I mean audio podcast. Oh That's a whole subject I'm sure we'll get into at some point. Anyway, I felt like I was now working in the podcast industry and knew no one in it.

Plus, as you're probably aware, there are roughly a hundred bazillion, that's a real number, self appointed podcast gurus out there who believe if you buy their course, you'll be a millionaire by the end of the week. So it's also a good marker of how not to run a podcast community, so rest assured. so what better way to get to know people in an industry than to start a podcast about that industry. And it's working. I've learned so much.

And I guess by extension, this community is doing the same thing for me personally. And I hope it does the same for you. So that's a bit about me.

Let's get into my podcaster toolkit. So this part of the show is all about peeking inside the toolkits of guests to see how they make their shows. In this episode, I'll be talking a little bit about my setup, the hardware and software that I use, and I'll add the list to the show notes. So don't worry about finding a pen, it's all good. So I've been through some different setups in the last few years.

As a composer, I already had a lot of equipment, but I found, as I spend more and more time podcasting, that I've really refined what I use to work for me. And that's really the most important thing here. What I'll share works for me, but might not for you, but it might make you think about your setup and how you can improve certain things for yourself. So I'm not saying these are the best tools, just that they're not. They're the best for me, at the moment. Uh, maybe I should time stamp it.

Captain's Log, April 2024. There you go. Right, I'll start with the hardware, I think. I use a 2020 M1 MacBook Pro. I like being mobile. If I have to be somewhere and I'm mid job, or something comes in, it's reassuring to have my computer to hand. In the home studio, I plug it into a docking station that then goes into a monitor. The docking station is made by CalDigit, and the audio goes through an audio interface, which means the audio is hitting the in the best possible state.

Mine's a Volt 2 by Universal Audio and compared to previous interfaces I've had, it sounds great. Uh, and into that I plug my Shure SM7B microphone via something called a cloud lifter, which boosts the signal. Uh, and you'll find that if you have a dynamic mic, uh, and a dynamic mic is where it captures what's right in front of it, not the whole room. So if you have one of those and it sounds really quiet, get yourself a cloud lifter and it transforms the signal going in.

It lifts it, funnily enough. One thing I like about the Shure SM7B is that it has a built in pop shield, so that's nice. Holding the microphone in place is the Rode PSA1 Swivel Mount Studio Microphone Boom Arm. It's a mouthful. And that's great for saving a bit of space as it can clamp to just about anything. I mentioned about the MacBook and being mobile. Uh, well, I have a Zoom H6, my trusty field recorder. I use that for music as well, which is fantastic.

Um, and, but it's great for podcasting. If you have multiple people, it's got lots of inputs. So that's really good as well. And a recent addition I've purchased is a Rode Lavalier Go, which is a lapel mic that works with the H6, and pretty much anything with phantom power. And I got that to hopefully capture some conversations at the podcast show London next month. And incidentally, the RODE Lavalier Go is the subject of my first review, which will be up next week.

Or if it's after next week, it's already up or something like that. So that's the hardware I use. Uh, I hope that's not too confusing.

Um, on to software. Uh, so I thought I'd go through as I would my production process. So hopefully this will make sense. First up, in order to book guests and give them the smoothest onboarding I possibly can, I use something called Calendly, which you may have heard of. Which is a scheduling software. And what's great about Calendly is that you can set up bespoke emails to remind the guest, to thank the guest.

You can include the link to your recording software, and there's a lot more that I haven't used, but to me it's saved so much time, it's well worth the money. For planning, scripting, and all that jazz, I use something that was sitting under my nose for ages. Apple Notes is great and it's free. And I use that in conjunction with the Apple Reminders app and Apple Calendar, and I'm covered. In fact, I pretty much run my whole life with those three things. I've tried Trello, Notion.

Uh, what are the others? ClickUp, Evernote. But honestly, on reflection, even a spreadsheet is good. I guess the important thing is to be organized, and those built in free Apple apps work for me. So once Calendly has automatically added the meeting to my calendar, and yes it does that too, and recording day appears, I meet the guests and record via Squadcast, which is a remote recording tool. A while ago it was bought by Descript, which I'll come on to.

So there's a subscription saving there, which is great, But I also like the fact it has what it calls progressive upload, which means it's recording each person separately and at the source. So it usually ends up with a top quality recording. I mentioned Descript there. Once I have the recording, I can import into Descript, which is like a multi track audio editor. As easy as a doc, they claim. It does so much more than that. It does video as well. But I tend to stick to audio.

Great face for radio, you see. Uh, so the time saver here for me is that I can edit the transcribed text and it does the heavy lifting of splicing the audio for me. Which is great. It's non destructive so you can restore things easily and just edit the audio if you'd prefer that. Um, it has a studio sound feature that can be a bit hit and miss but you know, if you're lucky, it will make recording sound even better.

But there are so many tools out there to make your audio sound better, and actually that's a service I offer as an audio professional as well. Some tools I use are EQs, compressors, limiters, iZotope RX is great for sorting out background noise, um, and And, you know, bumps and pops and things. Something called Clear I've been using, uh, for really quick clear ups. It uses AI, I think, to quickly remove ambience.

Um, but usually it's a judgment call for me about how to approach improving the audio. It's certainly not one thing, one size fits all. Sometimes I bring the audio into Logic Pro, if there's serious work to be done. But if you can get the recording sounding good at the source, uh, on the day of recording, hopefully you won't get caught out when you're trying to edit.

And at the publishing end of things, I've tried a few podcast hosts, and as I produce multiple podcasts, the most cost effective for me has been Captivate. You can find them at Captivate. fm. A big plus for them is that they keep adding useful features, which is very nice and their customer support is really good.

So what's my star of the show? The one tool that stands out to me as being the most useful. Well, I think for me it's Calendly. Calendly has saved me so much time. It's really paid for itself multiple times over. It's not cheap at around £80 per year for the basic tier, but it's really intuitive. It's not just a scheduler that talks to your calendar. You can automate everything to do with onboarding guests, avoiding going back and forth really, which, let's face it, can be a real time suck.

So when I send a message or an email to a guest once they've agreed to appear, they'll see a calendar with available dates and times, as well as all the information I want the guest to see about the recording.

The link to Squadcast, advice about the recording, things to consider, etc. Once they've booked, it goes straight into my calendar with a link, a confirmation is emailed to me and the guest, an email I can tailor by the way, uh, and then I have an option to send out a reminder, which can be an amount of time before, whether that's an hour or a day, uh, an hour after the recording, a thank you email is sent out, with links to the website, socials, etc. Plus, you can also tailor what your working

hours are. You can set up payments if you're using it for something that requires payments like consultancy or coaching. And there's also a phone app so I can use it on there too. Altogether, it's a wonderful piece of software that can help make your onboarding a whole lot easier for both you and the guest. And for me, making the guest as comfortable as possible is the key to making a great interview possible.

So there we go. I hope you found that useful. Do let me know in if you're curious about any of the things I've talked about. And also, do you use any of those things? How are you getting on with them? Let me know. Thanks for joining me for this, the first episode of Behind the Show. See you later.