Dr. Ray Pritchard Christian Blog and Commentary

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Podcasting in a Closet

  • Dr. Ray Pritchard
    Dr. Ray Pritchard is the president of Keep Believing Ministries, an Internet-based ministry serving Christians in 225 countries. He is the author of 29 books, including Stealth Attack, Fire and Rain,… More
  • Updated Sep 14, 2007

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today I’ve been working on recording the introduction and the closing segments for our brand-new Keep Believing podcast. Even though the total recording time is only 30 seconds for the opening and a little over a minute for the closing, it hasn’t gone as smoothly as you might think. 

For one thing, I’ve been recording in a closet in our guest bedroom. Mark set up the recording equipment in that tiny, cramped space because the rug and the jackets hanging behind me absorb the ambient sound so there isn’t any echo. It’s not fancy, but it works, and the digital recorder we’re using is the same one news reporters use when they do stories from the field.

Mark has been a great help all day long. He and I listened to several podcasts from other online sources, trying to pick up phrases we liked and ideas we could use. After we settled on a text, I went in the closet, closed the door, and started to record. It turns out that Mark is an excellent producer. After one take he said I was enunciating too much so my words didn’t sound natural. Just relax, he said, which isn’t easy to do when you’re sitting by yourself in a closet. So I recorded the intro and the closing segments three or four times each. Mark listened to all of it and said the closing was fine but I should redo the intro and maybe try to sound brighter and peppier. Which I will do as soon as I finish this weblog entry.

Once my recording passes muster with Mark, we will email the files to Steve Wilson in Chicago. He’ll take the files and edit them as necessary. Because everything is digital, he can lift a sentence from one recording and drop it into another recording. Then he’ll add the musical background. After that he’ll add the sermon, upload the file, and post the link on iTunes. Then it will be ready for downloading.

Oh, I almost forgot the biggest problem today. Every time I started recording, the dogs would start barking. Usually it was Dudley (he’s got the loudest bark), but sometimes it was Parker, Mark and Vanessa’s little Maltese. He’s small and feisty and can run circles around Dudley and Gary. For quite a while he was teasing them with some sort of toy he was chewing on. When the bassets tried to get it, he would dart under the couch and peek out at them, all the while chewing on the toy, making Dudley bark even louder. So we put them in the back yard. That worked until Dudley started barking because he wanted back in. He barked so loud that I could hear him through the headphones inside the closet in our guest bedroom, the sound passing through a wall, across the living room, and through the door leading to the back yard. When Mark listened to the recording, he started laughing and said, “I could hear Dudley during the whole thing.”

Somewhere along the way I wondered to myself if this was how Billy Graham got started in his media ministry.

We should have the podcast up and running by the weekend. If you hear a dog barking in the background, I hope you’ll understand.

You can reach the author at ray@keepbelieving.com. Click here to sign up for the free weekly email sermon.