ANYONE CAN CREATE A PODCAST. BUT COMING UP WITH A UNIQUE IDEA FOR A NEW SHOW IS HARDER – DALLAS TAYLOR FROM 20,000 HERTZ EXPLAINS.
“It seemed like there was a gap in the market,” says Taylor, host and creator of the Twenty Thousand Hertz podcast. “There were podcasts about movies, podcasts about food, podcasts about books, but nothing about sound. And sound is all around us.”
With his background as a sound designer and his pas- sion for aural culture, Dallas reckoned he was the perfect person to create a podcast on this topic. He was soon proved right: launched in 2016, Twenty Thousand Hertz now attracts 100,000-plus listeners per episode and has won two Webbys (the podcasting Oscars) and a People’s Voice Award.
So picking the right topic – one you are passionate about – is critical, but you’ve also got to give yourself room to maneuver.
“At first I thought it would just be about sound design,” recalls Dallas. “But I very quickly realized there are all kinds of offshoots in the sound world, and now the show has become a celebration of all things to do with sound. So, picking a title that wasn’t too specific gave us room to grow, which was really important.”
As for the sound of the podcast itself, Dallas has some simple advice: set it and forget it.
“As long as you understand the basics of EQ, compression and the signal path, that’s 90 percent of the pro- cess,” he says. “Those things really are the salt and pep- per. And once you’ve set them up for your microphone and your studio, you can really just set it and forget it.”
WEB: www.20k.org
LISTEN TO DALLAS TAYLOR ON POCAST SOUND DESIGN:
