Owen McFadden & Homewerk Audio Workshop Key Takeaways
In October 2025 we collaborated with Homewerk and radio and audio producer Owen McFadden from WhyFi Productions, who drew on his experience of creating award-winning audio for BBC Radio Ulster, Radio 4 and more, to give insights into the basics of recording, editing, and shaping audio into compelling listening. We learnt so much from this amazing workshop, but here are our key takeaways as well as some brilliant resources Owen shared with us.
01. Listen to and watch stories as much as you can. So you understand what makes a good story and how to tell one yourself.
02. Practice your listening skills for interviews. Being a good listener is vital if you are conducting interviews.
03. Do your research. Thoroughly research any topics you are covering as well as any guests you are interviewsing.
04. Gather all of your content first then put it all together at the end.
05. Use background sounds for atmosphere and to help lift long clips of people talking
06. Don’t be afraid to let conversations breathe by adding in gaps and pauses
07. Start new audio content by setting a theme and grabbing people’s attention
08. Finish audio content by creating cliffhangers and reasons for people to come back and listen to future content
09. Make sure you have permission to use any music you include. Older music out of copyright can sometimes be used free of charge and fair dealing in copyright allows limited use of copyrighted material without permission for specific purposes but make sure you check.
10. Be aware of background sounds. For example air conditioning and traffic. Although it can sometimes be useful for atmosphere, it can be hard to edit out if you decide you don’t want to include it.
11. Focus on your social media. If you are creating your own audio content such as podcasts, focus on your social media presence. You have to find a way to reach your audience and there are so many podcasts available now that this can be challenging.
12. Learn by doing. The only way to improve your skills and learn is by doing. Just start experimenting and playing around with audio content to improve your skills.
Useful Resources
- Transform media – Global tips about recording and audio
- Epidemic sound – a global music-tech platform that provides a direct-license catalog of over 50,000 music tracks and 200,000 sound effects for content creators and businesses
- Sadie software – For decades, SADiE has been a trusted tool for audio professionals, offering precision and reliability in recording, editing, and production. From mastering engineers and classical recordists to podcasters and broadcasters, SADiE has played a vital role in shaping high-quality audio workflows across the industry. SADiE6 is available to everyone, free of charge. This ensures that both long-time users and those discovering SADiE for the first time can continue to experience its powerful capabilities.
- Reaper software – REAPER is a complete digital audio production application for computers, offering a full multitrack audio and MIDI recording, editing, processing, mixing and mastering toolset.
- Adobe Audition – Audition is a comprehensive toolset that includes multitrack, waveform and spectral display for creating, mixing, editing and restoring audio content. This powerful audio workstation is designed to accelerate video production workflows and audio finishing — and deliver a polished mix with pristine sound.
- Trint – AI transcription software turning speech to text isn’t breaking news. But Trint is. Convert video, audio and live conversations to text in 30+ languages.
- Otter – Full AI-powered transcripts with automated summaries. Archived audio and video imports. AI chat, and more.
