Building a Fun and Effective Sizzle Compilation

EDM-FTW

Welcome to Sound Bytes, where podcast sound design takes center stage.

I began my career as an audio engineer in TV, earning credits across more than 60 networks before transitioning full-time to podcasting in 2021. With over 1,000 podcast episodes under my belt, I've had the chance to explore creativity in sound within the podcasting world, and I’m excited to share what I've learned.

While the main focus here is sound design, I’ll also cover topics like dialogue editing and music editing—one "sound byte" at a time (yes, I’m embracing the name). My goal is to help you identify where these techniques can enhance your productions and show you how to implement them effectively.

Each newsletter will feature an audio sample, followed by video and text breakdowns.

Today’s Sound Byte

The TL;DR

Group together similar clips that build with the music. Extend and shorten the music loops as needed in each section and drop the beat on punchy lines and/or sound effects.

Video Breakdown

Breakdown Buffet

I like to think of these types of sizzles as stair steps, being able to go up and down dynamically as needed. I generally group similar topics per section. I will spend a bit of time finding and grouping these clips together before even choosing a song. As for song choice, I love dynamics there too and do not pick tracks without stems. And the song needs to be upbeat, it has to really move.

Part 1 (00:00-00:25) - I started by grouping together clips to kick off the theme of this sizzle, namely quantity of the buying, cheap prices and spend spend spend! I try to line up the drop on a good line or sound effect, in this case 'this is insane' felt like a good place to crank it up a notch.

Part 2 (00:25-00:50) - Grouped clips of what are they buying, just stuff, lots and lots of stuff. Dialogue cut fast, adding to the intensity of the sections. Most new lines come in just before the end of the previous line. Again dropped on a good line "go big or go home" song goes up a stair step.

One nice time saving technique is to find long sentences that you can break into pieces. There are 4 lines in this section where I did just that. "picking random stuff on purpose" "whatever it doesn’t matter" "ah there’s so much" "there’s so much in here" are all broken apart from the same section of that video and then alternated between the other influences.

Part 3 (00:50-01:09) - Grouped clips of Stanley cup accessories. Started with the clips that specifically said “Stanley” so the section was clearly defined. The song intensity builds and volume gets louder. I also found this tearing sound in one of the influencer’s videos and used it as a kind of audio wipe to accentuate the waste and take the sizzle up a notch. I used a canned sound effect for the drop at the end of this section of crumpling package material to again accentuate the waste.

Part 4 (01:11-01:31): Crescendo—music intensity builds and gets louder. Grouped influencers asking viewers to subscribe so they can consume more for clicks, hopefully leaving the listener with a bit of disgust at this kind of unboxing content.

Part 5?: The hanging lines at at the end! I do this pretty frequently, leaving a line or two dangling at the end to shine on their own. In this case I was hoping that listeners would be rolling their eyes at these influencers.