Every Breath You Take

Should you remove breaths from your Podcast?  I have noticed on the forums a heated discussion about removing mouth noises and the breathing of your Podcast host or guest breathing.  It is a thing that often happens on commercials or voice work, mainly because an advertiser crams in so many words into a commercial, there is, frankly, no time to take a breath. 

I would almost, never remove a single breath, you are a human being you also breathe and to cut out the breath... well doesn't that rip the humanity out of your guest or host?  I say almost because sometimes a breath can be intrusive, a nervous gasp, those breaths can be edited out.  But also a breath can be 'a sharp intake of breath' that reveals something to the listener.

One of the Podcasts I work on is Zestology with Tony Wrighton.  He is really keen to make his Podcast real and human, we leave in breaths, if he slightly stumbles, that stays in.. obviously bigger mistakes get taken out.  He often records his Podcasts out and about and the background noise becomes part of the fabric of the Podcast.

I worked with an American radio host here in London called Doug Urbanski - we were in a tiny studio I had built in Denmark Street, a famous London Street and the building boasted the fact that the Beatles had rehearsed in the basement and Elton John had written Daniel on the flat roof behind the little studio I had built.

It was a hot summers night and the aircon was a noisy portable unit.  Doug told me to turn it off and open the windows.  I remember saying to him that everyone listening to his coast to coast show would hear all the noise of London in the background...   "Yeah, that's what I want them to hear." - the penny dropped.

So don't rip too much of the humanity out of your Podcast, let it breathe, let there be the odd dog barking, you are not PBS or the BBC, you are something quite different and special .. keep it that way. 

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