Emotion and identity
The third layer gives a podcast emotion and the three elements, together, make the sound of a podcast, he said.
“So, it’s not just music,” he said. “These three elements move together during the narration.”
The goal is to combine music and sound effects to create a “rhythm of narration.” After an important word, he might create a pause and in it increase the music. After that, come sound effects.
Caminero wanted to know what Micheli considers when creating music to give a podcast emotion and identity. Micheli said that an important part of the process is to re-listen to what you have done to try to create consistent sound.
“It’s very important because we spend a lot of time on the timeline,” he said. “We work a lot in depth on the details, but at a certain point you have to change your position and change your mind and you have to become not a creator, you have to become a listener.”
You don’t always need to create original music for your podcast soundtrack. Micheli suggests combining original music with music you can find in a sound library, but note that it isn’t easy. “It is quite a job to find the right music, right sound in this gigantic archive and match together original music and other music,” he said. “I think it’s the best way for creating the sound for a podcast.”
Creating original music makes the most sense for podcasts that are documentaries or fiction, Micheli said. But most important is that the podcast must have a good story and script first.
Questions to consider:
1. What does Micheli mean by a “rhythm of narration”?
2. How can you add great sound to a podcast if you can’t compose music yourself?
3. If you were to create a podcast series what would it be about and what kind of sound would you use?