Hi, my name is Will Lyons. I'm a podcast editor and today I'm going to give you a tip about reflecting on your edits. So I primarily work as an editor on the Tape Notes podcast, which is a long form music based podcast, where artists and producers reunite and talk through their process of bringing an album together. And they'll often dig into tracks, uh, from early ideas to final sessions, uh, pulling parts out along the way. So it's really exciting.
We've got bits of music kind of dropped in there. And usually interviews can go up to two hours. So that's bringing those kind of things down into our regular format. Um, my job description is as an editor, but I do a whole range of things on the podcast. Obviously the main audio side of things, which is the pre processing, mixing, cleaning up the audio, uh, and then cutting the interview into the podcast format. But I also write copy.
So researching, writing guest biographies, general scripts, and all that. I also do affiliate marketing and lots of the backend of those kinds of things. So uploading, scheduling with adverts. Um, and over the last year, I've been involved a lot more with recording and producing episodes as well, which has been a lot of fun. How did I get into podcasting? So I guess aside from being an avid listener of podcasts, uh, tape notes was really my first job in the world of podcasting.
I used to work in TV production, sort of BBC music, BBC events on shows like Later with Jules and Strictly Come Dancing, uh, Trooping the Colour, which was good fun, and I was also a researcher on the Glastonbury coverage. Which involves me writing guest biographies for every single artist that was going to be filmed on TV, for the presenters to have, you know, someone needs to say something off the cuff.
But I ended up meeting the guys that run Tape Notes and I mentioned what I did and started writing the guest biographies for the podcast. And then I think. I'm not sure how long into it. I just before COVID they brought me on full time, taught me the ropes of putting the podcast together, editing, mixing, and using the software and everything behind it. So lots of learning on the job. So one of the things I love about podcasting is that it's so varied.
There really aren't kind of rules as to what a podcast can be. When I was a teenager, I would listen to the Chris Moyles show breakfast podcast where they just chop out the best bits from the, the morning show. And now I can go and listen to music podcasts, get inspired by anything.
Uh, but if you just want something funny or kind of inspiring or mind opening, you can literally have anything you want or even just to keep up to date with things, whether it's for short form, long form, just something for a walk, a car journey or to have in the background. But it's so open. There are so many people involved in creating all sorts of amazing things, that you can really have anything or access to anything that you like. So my big tip.
As an editor is to take time to go back and listen to your edits. I find it so easy to get caught up in the tiny little edits, especially going round and round and round and round. Um, you know, bringing things a little bit closer together, trying to make those perfect little bits work, especially if you're giving yourself only a second of lead time. You can get it to sound great and it may sound great with that second.
But if you go back, listen for a minute or 30 seconds or whatever, and get out of that zone and just kind of get back into what the podcast actually is and what the conversation's about, you can really hear if that works and if that helps the conversation flow naturally. you can find me at my website, which is will lions music.co uk. Uh, I'm on Instagram, which is Will Lyons one two. And you can also find me on LinkedIn.
You can see all of my links in the show notes thank you for listening to podcasting people.