It took me two years to finally gather the courage and launch my podcast. In the past, I have converted some of my blogs into podcasts, just to test the waters. But even that was a long time ago.

One of my 2022 goals was to launch the podcast – Method to Madness – and the entire process has been, to put it honestly, eye-opening. Abhishek taught me the basics of using the Voice feature of the Garage Band. He even connected a Rode microphone with my laptop just to get me working. I realized my technical illiteracy painfully .

This year, I was told – 2022 is the year of podcasts. So I decided to buckle up and take the plunge.

I wrote ideas, notes and points of the podcast while working from Shillong in April this year. In fact, most of the first episode was written in Lady Hydari Park while overlooking the gorgeous Cedar trees and the green mountains.

The pilot took four hours

I had made a voice demo and sent it to friends most of who gave me a ‘go-ahead’ but not real feedback. It was Rajeev who asked me to listen to BBC Radio in order to perfect my ‘voice modulation’ skills. What an awesome input that was.

So while recording the pilot, I tried to put as many expressions as possible in my voice so to justify the text and situation. Boy that’s easier said than done.

I sat on a Sunday from evening until night, making changes, and re-doing some lines. The one process that I absolutely loved was selecting music.

I like the sound of Ukulele, so I searched Ukulele music all through the sound libraries. I liked only a few of them because most had a peculiar childish lullaby sound. It reminded me of our first Casio keyboard that had a track called – Child’s Play. Aptly named indeed!

I did end up using Ukulele in the intro but it was the simplicity of American country music that elevated my pilot episode.

I then recorded my voice, inserted the music and I was damn happy with my performance. Except that the next day, when I made Abhishek listen to it, he did a number of music edits to make it right. I still have a lot to learn.

Getting the photoshoot done

That week, Abhishek ensured that we shot for the posters. My concept originally was to shoot one picture with unkempt hair and mad look. The other picture would be neater and sophisticated. At the editing table, we were to do split-image effect with the two pictures. This was the result –

There were a number of glitches. The make-up wasn’t right. We had forgotten to mark my face positions while shooting. As a result, the effect was haphazard.

A huge thank you to the students of ZICA, Indore, a group of young boys and girls who did a fabulous job while doing these portraits. Abhishek teaches them digital film making and they are all quite talented. All the errors were on my part, so I am grateful they knew what they were doing.

Creating a decent poster

Only last night did I have the time to work on the final poster. I wanted to keep it minimalistic and self-explanatory. I had posted teaser posters, so the buzz was already around and I felt the pressure mounting.

The entire poster-making took me another three hours. I kept deep-breathing throughout the time, I was so stressed. I came up with five of them. Check them out –

PODCAST COVER 1

PODCAST COVER 2

PODCAST COVER 3

PODCAST COVER 4

PODCAST COVER 5

It was 3.15 am. I called it a day. On Tuesday afternoon, I re-read all of Anchor.fm’s rules about uploading podcasts. Got my various identities verfied, submitted it to Apple, Google, Radiocast and others.

I was mighty impressed that Spotify published it immediately while Anchor’s dashboard allowed me to edit errors. Wow! It was fun indeed.

Do you wish to follow my Podcast?

You can find Method to Madness on Anchor, Spotify and Amazon Music.

It will be available on Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts within 24 hours.

Do tell me how you felt about my ‘voice testing’ in the pilot episode. If you have any ideas for episodes, do share in the comments section.

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