Undercover Songs

It is all rather simple, really. I'm essentially a Mac guy (have been for a few years now) and so is Fred, so the logical way for us to do this is to use what we already have.

But let's start at the beginning:

First off there's the process of choosing the songs themselves. Fred and I each take two songs that we like and we let each other know what they are, lest there be any collision, and then we both do our voice intros for each song.
We record the intros on our laptops (we both have iBooks) and we use nothing but the built-in microphone and software which already comes with the system (Garage Band) to do it. The built-in microphone accounts for the slight echo you hear when we talk, but I don't think it is annoying enough to warrant the purchase of external microphones, not for now at least...

Fred then sends his intros to me (and the mp3 files of the songs if I don't have them) and the editing can begin.

I use Garage Band for editing the shows and I usually do it on my iMac G5. This is a great machine for this purpose, with it's 20' display which allows me to have a great view of the overall show but it is one noisy beast! Of course the sound system I have installed more than makes up for that and I do occasionally use headphones, but this explains why I have to do all of my recording on another computer and even on another room (should the iMac be turned on)!
Sometimes, though, I edit the whole thing right on my laptop --a trusty old iBook G3-- using an older version of Garage Band (G3s don't support the latest version) and it still works great. Of course a 12' display makes me use the mouse a lot more but that's just a minor annoyance.

So then I take a listen to Fred's intros and his chosen songs and I think up and record the intro for the episode itself.
Then I put the whole thing together and export it to an mp3 file and send it to Fred.
Fred listens to it and makes any suggestions he sees fit. If there is still time I will then listen to it on the next day on my commute, under the same conditions I listen to most of my podcasts anyway and I take special notice of the transitions and relative volumes to make sure everything is acceptable.

After all this it's just a matter of exporting the show as an mp3 file into iTunes, making sure the meta information is all in there (editing all the ID3 tags as needed) and finally changing the name of the file itself to conform to the naming convention we chose for the podcast episodes.

Meanwhile there was some other activity going on which started as soon as I knew what the songs would be for the episode: I had to go out and find relevant links for all the "coverers" and the "coverees" and, if I happen to not know much about a particular cover of my own choice, I at least try to find out more about the artist, the song, etc, so that I can maybe mention it in the intro.
I then make a draft of the blog entry that will host the episode.

When the final mp3 file is done, usually while I'm uploading it to the server, I listen to it one more time noting the times that each song starts on and updating the blog entry accordingly and once the upload is finished I just have to post the entry.

Next step: profit!
Oh no, wait... We don't make any money out of this... Oh well... :-)

When it is done properly it is somewhat time consuming, but it is fun and we do love music so it is worth it. But then, when we are in a pinch we can put together an episode in a jiffy (it has happened before).