How to Broadcast a Radio Show from Your Wardrobe

Today, one of my students from The Under Priced Awesomely Made Radio DJ Training Course describes how he broadcasts a live radio show from his wardrobe. Over to you Neil.

Background to the Show: Hard Rock Hallelujah
I've always loved radio, especially radio comedies (my true love) and BBC Radio 4 type output. However, when it comes to music, rock is where my predominate taste has been since the heady days of the late 80’s ‘Hair Metal’ and 90’s Grunge and Alt-Rock.

Podcasting captured my attention when I started a job in London and had a 2.5hr commute to deal with. Quickly getting bored of the same old things I had in my collection I quickly found a large number of podcasts to fill my time with. Comedies, quiz shows, music shows, plenty of tech and even dare I say it, The Archers, which I still listen to daily now. Don’t judge me!

I have always wanted to do something with radio but my life took me down the heady path of working in IT. So the more I listened to podcasts the more I wanted in. It seemed the best way to satisfy that itch for creating radio type content.

I quickly decided I wanted to create a show that was presented "as live." I didn't want to just record it and then edit it together later. I researched and ordered a load of kit. To be honest, I didn't truly understand it all. I also didn't understand how a lot of the kit worked. I mean how hard could it be? Well, it took a good few iterations of software, hardware and work-flows until I managed to produce what I thought was a fun hour or so of music.

To The Show
Performed under the guise of ‘International Beige’ it's a rock show lasting between one and two hours. It's full of power ballads, hair metal moments, cover versions, metal mash-ups and so on.

I broadcast live to the Internet during recording at http://internationalbeige.com and I put it out as a podcast with the RSS feed available at http://tiny.cc/HRH.

I currently record the show in my small walk-in wardrobe (nicknamed the Boom Closet. Those of you old enough to remember early children’s BBC should hopefully get the pun.) I use the drawers as a standing-desk for the equipment.

Equipment

Download the PDF

• Computer: 2013 MacBook Pro running playout. Also runs Twitter, chatroom client and live broadcast & master recording software.
• Cart Machine: iPad mini running iJingle pro.
• Mixer: USB link back to computer to record.
• Microphone: Dynamic mic with a pop filter and a stand.
• Skype interface: A guitar interface for iOS iRig that I plug into an iPhone for a mix-minus call.
  

Software

• Playout software: MegaSeg

Cart Machine: iJingle Pro

Broadcast & Recording: Nicecast

Audio Editor: Fission

Web Broadcast Host: www.internet-radio.com
Podcast Host: JustCast
Link shortener: tiny.cc

How I Produce The Show
Before studying The Under Priced Awesomely Made Radio DJ Course, my workflow when producing the show was fairly haphazard. After putting together a huge selection of music, I’d then quickly check that it sounded good in the playout software. Next, I’d grab a few beers, hit play and then wing it through each presenter link (getting slowly more sozzled during each song!) I wasn’t aiming to be professional, to me it was just a hobby; however, after studying Ashley’s course, I now wanted to make everything better. Ashley’s course has definitely shown me the way.

My workflow to produce the show since taking the course is as follows:
1.    Find some music.
2.    Load it into a playlist in MegaSeg. Organise the playlist into features and things I like.
3.    Rename and change the colours as necessary. Add in the breaks for my presenter links.
4.    Play the playlist through and check my track intro/outros. Add in ramp times and check if the music order works, changing as necessary.
5.    Fill in my running order spreadsheet with the music times, jingle times etc. Check to see how much time I’ve left to chat. Dropbox link to running order spreadsheets.
6.    Script the introduction, the ending, and each link in between the songs.
7.    Get an idea of how long it will take to read all my links. Check to see if it fits in the talking time allowed.
8.    Edit the script ruthlessly, cutting out all the waffle.
9.    Perform the show as live and see how close to the time I can keep it. (For my first show I was still 3 minutes over my target of 1 hour.)
10. Put the recording of the show through an audio editor to clean up the start and the ending. Run a normalisation across the MP3.
11. Export the MP3 at a slightly lower quality to reduce the file size.
12. Upload the file to my podcasting host, which auto-generates the RSS feed.

How To Listen to HRH
If you want, you can give the last three shows of HRH a listen. At the moment, the show isn’t available via iTunes so you’ll need to add the following URL to your podcatcher manually: http://tiny.cc/HRH.
You can also listen to the last three shows directly here at Dropbox

Contact Me
If you want to know more about my set up and show, then you can find me on Twitter at @intlbeige, or on email at [email protected]

Thanks and rock on!

Neil!

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