Quiet room - no TV, humming fridges, noisy laptops, noisy children or pets.
Soft furnishings to absorb echo (some podcast people hide in a duvet!) so longe or bedroom work better than kitchen and study.
Get comfortable, you may prefer to stand if you usually read standing.
Set up tips
Find your microphone on your device - on a phone or tablet usually at the bottom. For a phone or tablet you need to point the microphone at the person speaking and don’t put your hand or phone case over the microphone.
Get close, but not too close, to your microphone. If you are too close the recording overloads the microphone and distorts the sound making it less intelligible. A quieter clear recording is preferable. If the recording is slightly quiet with not much background noise I can amplify that at the edit stage.
When ready to record get comfortable. Have all the words ready so you don't move the screen, book or paper you are reading from - paper and page turns make a horrible noise on the recording.
Try to keep the same distance from the microphone while recording so the sound level is constant.
Recording suggestions
Leave some silence (5-10s) at the start and end of the recording - I can edit this out.
Read slowly as you would in the church. Pause slightly between verses. Michael's reading in 19 April service gives you a good idea of pace and pauses.
Listen to your recording when you have finished. If happy with it then send it to us. If not, record again. If it is a long reading and all ok bar one or two verses you can just re-record them and I will edit them into the appropriate place which is why it is important to leave a short gap between verses.
If your reading is long and you would like to record in two or three parts that is fine – send me all the files and tell me what you have done in the accompanying email message.