How to Improve your Podcast with More Thoughtful Sound Design

I’ve heard a fair few definitions of what sound design actually means in podcasting, but a lot of people now use it to describe the simple act of putting music under speech.

This is… fine.

Putting a little music under a speaker can set the tone and be evocative, but calling this sound design feels like a very grandiose way of describing the least interesting possible version of a thing.

*In order to do good sound design you are going to have to think of yourself as Lydia Tár. I’m afraid there is no other way.*

I want to talk about what podcast sound design can be, and I think that boils down to musicality.

Music employs elements like texture, timbre, rhythm, tempo, melody, and harmony to engage a listener and create an effect, and a lot of these concepts apply to sound design too.

So, here are some things to think about that should bring more musicality to your sound design, and make your audio more interesting.

(Be warned, in the ‘Humour and Irony’ section there are sexual references some people might not want to read. I.e. this blog acknowledges the existence of [slightly unusual] sex).

Pay Attention to Rhythm and Tempo

As Maya Angelou said in a 1973 interview with Intellectual Digest, “Everything in the universe has rhythm,” and your podcast is no exception.

Actual footage of me interviewing Sesame Street’s Sonia Manzano. Probably the only time I’ve been starstruck.

The music you’re using will obviously have rhythm, but so will your guests’ speech, your archive and sound effects, and the way you fit them all together. If you pay attention while editing, you can often hear when a speaker or sound is hitting the beat – it just feels right – and when I’m sound designing I’ll often tap out the rhythm on my desk to make sure I’m nailing it.

I paid a lot of attention to rhythm in this sequence from Behind the Scenes on Sesame Street, a feature I produced and presented for the BBC World Service (and probably the highlight of my career – I’m a HUGE Sesame Street fan):

Listen to the full episode on BBC Sounds.

Here you’ve got the fantastic Sonia Manzano telling us about the show’s conception over a gospel rendition of the Alphabet Song by Patti LaBelle. So, yes, I have put some speech over some music here, but notice how the speakers’ cadences complement the music’s rhythm, how it speeds up and slows down to give shape to the story being told. It’s a subtle thing, but paying attention to rhythm and tempo can make your pieces more deliberate and effective.

Of course, you can also create interesting effects by upsetting the rhythm. Check out this extract from Akenfield Now, which I produced for Archive on 4 (presented by the brilliant Anna Davies – who was just 18 at the time!) Notice how one rhythm builds up only to be deliberately broken by a different one.

Listen to the full episode on BBC Sounds.

Play with Pitch and Harmony

We perceive every sound we hear as having a pitch. When you put two or more of those pitches together, that’s harmony, and it’s something that can have a real impact on your sound design.

I made Dostoevsky and the Russian Soul, a documentary for BBC Radio 4, during the darkest days of the pandemic. That meant relying a lot on music, sound effects, and voice actors, and I tried to make things more interesting by paying extra attention to pitch and harmony, especially in this section about Dostoevsky’s story The Peasant Marey.

Listen to the full episode on BBC Sounds.

One technique I used was retuning the sounds of brawling men at the start of the section so that, when it swooshes into the music, the pitches complement each other. The two pieces of music that follow, both by Rachmaninov, are in the same key, and along with the high-pitched chirruping of insects in the background, they contrast nicely with the low-pitched crunching of hooves, the actor playing Dostoyevsky, and of course the brilliant, bassy voice of Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, who presented the show.

Think About Melody, Structure, and Dynamics

It’s a bit strange to talk about “melody” when not discussing music, but I mean this in the most basic sense: a sequence of sounds. And when you’re putting the various elements of your piece together – speech, archive, actuality, effects, music – this is exactly what you’re making: a sequence of sounds, a melody.

Melodies are about change. You have one sound followed by another, then another, and the differences between them create an effect. I wrote about this at length in another post: Dynamic Range: One of the keys to a compelling podcast.

Of course, there are some melodies that work well with very little change in them (Like the two-note theme from Jaws, the chorus of Taylor Swifts Out of the Woods, or Antônio Carlos Jobim’s One Note Samba), and occasionally you might want to do something similar in your sound design, but it’s always good to have a strong idea why you’re doing it.

Use Interesting and Relevant Texture and Timbre

If you were composing for an orchestra, you might create an effect or bring out a theme by giving some parts to the string section and others to the brass, and you can think in the same way about sound design.

If your subject is technology, for example, the obvious choice would be to use sharp, metallic-sounding music. That’s what I did in Automation Nation, a three-part series about automation and the future of work I made for the BBC World Service. Four Tet’s Parallel Jalebi was a strong choice for the theme music because it’s got a rhythmic, robotic feel, but even better because later it introduces a beautifully sampled female vocal. These two sides—artificial and human—nicely sum the themes of the story.

But music isn’t everything. You can also select sound effects, archive and actuality that complement the texture you’re creating. In fact, there’s little I like more than a nice, grainy recording to give a sense of another era, like in this sequence from the third episode of Automation Nation. I love the texture of the archive from a 1944 informational film about Youngstown Ohio, which I interweaved with interviews and music while paying special attention to the rhythm of the various clips.

Listen to the full episode (and series) on BBC Sounds.

Have Fun with Quoting, Humour, and Irony

This is where things get really fun…

You’ll want to be sparing with how much you use them, but there are often opportunties to be playful and creative with your sound designs. Here a couple of things I like to bring to mine when I hear the chance:

Quoting (one for the nerds)

*Sexy Bill Gates, never letting me have any fun.*

If you’re a jazz fan you might already be familiar with the concept of quoting, where a player borrows part of the melody from another tune during a solo. Take this 1948 recording of Charlie Parker playing White Christmas, for instance, where he quotes Jingle Bells as part of his solo. A good quote is an immensely satisfying thing – a little knowing nod to your audience to let them know how smart they are – and you can do it in your sound design too.

I tried using a quote recently in a piece for the Guardian’s Today in Focus. It was a moment in a story about cyber security where the hero meets a major setback, and I sampled the classic Windows XP error sound in the music. For knowing listeners, this would have been a fun little addition, but sadly I ended up having to take it out because I was afraid Microsoft might sue me.

Humour and Irony

I’ve written a lot here about when you might use sound design that fits with your project’s theme, but what if you didn’t do that? What kind of effects could you create by making choices for ironic or comic effect?

For Kink!, a six-part series I produced for Audible about… well… Kink, we set up a hotline where people could tell us about their various proclivities.

After a week or so we got a call from a woman in New York who has a fetish for receiving oral sex while on her period. Then, amazingly, we heard from a man in London who loves to give it! I know… it’s like this century’s Sleepless in Seattle.

Now, some people might not like the idea of this, but it’s also undeniably quite nice: Two strangers, thousands of miles apart, serendipitously calling in to the same show with the same fetish. So, I decided to play up that contrast by using the most tropey, romantic music I could find find. Take a listen:

Listen to the full episode (and series) on Audible.

The engineer for the project and I both loved this, but the editor didn’t get the joke (The note, I think, was “Why is there Black Beauty music under this!?”). Thankfully, after convincing him to share it with some colleagues for a second opinion, we got to keep it in. The result, I think, is at once funny, sweet, and… well… pretty nasty. What’s not to like?

There all kinds of ways you can break the rules to create fresh effects in your sound design, but you need to make it clear that you’re being intentional. If you don’t, you might end up with one of the issues from this post: Make Your Podcast Sound Better by Listening out for these Four Common Issues.

Final Thoughts

I wrote this because I’d love to hear more creativity and musicality in the podcasts I listen to, and hopefully this can serve as inspiration for producers looking to do something a bit more interesting in their work.

More actual footage of me working hard to make you a really good podcast. :)

Sound design for podcasts doesn’t just have to be about dropping some music under a voiceover. There are a tonne of fun ways to make things sound more interesting, engaging, or just plain weird, and I encourage you to try them.

If you’re a business looking to commission a podcast, hire a producer, or get help making your sound design more interesting, you can also get in touch.