Finding Your Podcast Voice
Listen. Hosting a podcast is not easy. Whether you’re a new host, or a host looking to brush up on their interviewing skills, we’re here to help you.
Our senior producer Jay Cockburn recently put together a coaching guide for one of our clients, and we thought it was too good to keep to ourselves.
This guide will help podcast hosts sound more natural and really understand their questions.
We also include some practical tips on getting quality audio at the end.
The best hosts make it look effortless, but they didn't get there overnight.
Here’s some homework that you can do to become a legendary interviewer and host.
Exercise 1 - Show Prep
One of the greatest challenges of being a host is sounding natural, aka like yourself and not some alien who just arrived to our (burning) planet yesterday. Wooden, over-rehearsed, or just straight up awkward hosts just need more practice.
We can eliminate some of those challenges during show prep. Here’s how.
Activity 1: Spend 30 to 60 minutes rewriting an interview brief to fit your own style.
Producers typically come up with interview questions that will spark an interesting discussion, but hosts should go through and rewrite them so that they sound more like YOU.
Get comfortable with writing interview questions to suit your personal interview style. This also helps you get familiar with the interview questions and the actual reason why you’re asking that question.
This first step is crucial: it helps you understand your guest, why you’re interviewing them, and what you hope to gain from your interview. We call this an “interview map.” Sounds like a fun adventure to me!
Activity 2: Do some soul searching. What’s your Big Question? What is the point of this episode? How can your guest help you answer it?
A recent Big Question we tackled for the Building Good podcast was: What’s it like to be a woman working in construction? And How do we make construction a more welcoming place for women, transgender and non-binary people?
This Big Question then can be broken into lots of smaller questions.
Think about the answer you want to hear from the interviewee, and then write the question that you think will spark that answer.
What don’t you know? Look for the gaps in your own knowledge and write questions that will help the interviewee fill them.
Prepare several follow up questions, even if you don’t use them.
Think of different ways to phrase each question, in case the guest doesn’t quite understand the first time.
Try and think of how you will get from topic to topic - the interview flow is important.
Think of each interview as a story - it should have a beginning, a middle and an end. When you are preparing your interview map, you should be clear in your own mind about how you begin, what your separate subtopics are… and where you want to end.
End on a laugh or a thought. Come up with a question that might inspire a funny or thoughtful/poignant moment.
Once you do these activities, you should be well-versed on the subject matter, the guest, and solid on why you’re interviewing them in the first place.
Exercise 2 - Voiceover delivery
Challenge: Record a script without sounding like you’re recording a script.
Goal: Your voiceover style will sound more authentic, and more like you.
Step 1: Research
You’re not the first person who needed help hosting. Many have come before you. Which is awesome, because it means there are tons of free resources out there.
NPR has an excellent guide for writing for your voice. Writing for audio stories is different from writing for magazines or print. You need to write for the ear, which means you need to write the way you’d talk. Remember, you’re trying to communicate something (verbally!) to your listeners. How would you tell the story to a friend over a pint of beer? Now do that.
Podcasting Hacks also has a great guide for sounding natural. Among the tips: get out of your head, don’t try to sound like some famous podcaster, and sprinkle in some literary devices. I’m intrigued!
Years ago, Third Coast put together a coaching session where producers get “tracked” in real time by coaches with different styles and approaches to voicing. Like we said, your voice is unique, and everyone has different quirks.
It’s very cool to actually hear the pros get coached. Plus, it reminds the listener that sometimes you need a few takes before you get the golden tape. Among the tips: “Slow down a little bit, and have a little bit more fun.”
Bonus tip I learned working at CBC: Always have a glass of water on hand, and always stand up while voicing. Talk with your hands! Just don’t bump against the mic.
If you feel like doing more research, here’s a bunch of useful links:
“Aerobics for your voice: 3 tips for sounding better on air” by Jessica Hansen (NPR Training)
“poh-TAY-toh, poh-TAH-toh: Guidance on sourcing pronunciation” by Katie Daugert (NPR Training)
“Human vs. Robot: How to track and still sound like your actual self” by Sean Rameswaram (Third Coast Festival)
“Talk the Copy” by Marilyn Pittman (Third Coast Festival)
“Narrating To An Audience” ft. Sam Evans Brown (HowSound)
“Frank Langfitt’s Unusual Voicing Method” ft. Frank Langfitt (HowSound)
Astound — Personal Voice Coach (Apple Store)
“Sounding Like Yourself” ft. Viki Merrick (HowSound)
“The Many Voices of Journalism” by Gisele Regatao (CJR)
“Mastering Effects: Podcasts and the Authoritarian Voice” by Ismail Muhammad (SFMOMA)
Step 2: Rewrite a script to fit your own voice
If you see any words in there that you absolutely would NEVER say, get rid of them!
Step 3: Record the script, without the script
Explain what this podcast episode is about to a friend, coworker, or family member and record yourself doing that. This is a bit of a challenge, but realistically, if you did the exercises above, you should be able to do this no problem.
Step 4: Record the script
It’s not about audio quality here, it’s about your delivery.
Try saying each line multiple times, in different cadences, intonations. You can even put on a silly voice for some lines - just to work out your voice and shake things up a little. Get used to switching your style up.
At CBC, I was told to picture your voice going on a rollercoaster ride. It’s going to go up and down, depending on what you’re saying. Inflection is important. We also read our scripts out loud at our desks and rewrote anything that didn’t sound natural before we ever set foot in the booth. It helped!
Exercise 3 - Sound quality
Challenge: Attune your ears to background noise through a series of recordings.
Goal: You will become hyper aware of your surroundings (and how tiny, insignificant noises in your house will cause your producer great pain while editing.)
Step 1: Take your phone to three different rooms that feel “quiet.” Open the voice recorder/memo app and hit record. Leave it running for 3 minutes in each space. Then, record 20 seconds of yourself speaking in each space.
Step 2: Listen back to these recordings, in full, on good quality headphones with your headphones set as loud as you are comfortable. As you listen, write down what you hear. Everything, the smallest little thing.
Make notes about how your voice sounds. Is it echoey? Boomy? Does your voice sound thinner or fuller?
Some things that have foiled my audio recordings in the past: dogs barking, a loud refrigerator, an air conditioner kicking on, headphones brushing against a necklace, rain pounding against a window, the gentle hum of a computer fan, the rustle of a paper….. You get the point.
(If you’re really serious about hosting and providing excellent sound quality, you can read these tips from Castos about eliminating reverb. Lots of great stuff on setting up a recording station and soundproofing here.)
Now you’ve done that, I want you to find the quietest possible space, with the least amount of reverberations/echo. You will likely have to tailor a space by turning off appliances, drawing curtains, or . Avoiding small glass-walled rooms. Record yourself for 30 seconds or so, and listen back to it. Do you hear a difference? I hope so!
You should be ready to smash your next interview. You got this.
