I've done a bit of sound editing in FL Studio and GarageBand and a limited amount in Audacity, but as far as actually recording my own sounds with an external recorder, I'm kind of a newbie. I've conducted a few interviews on my analogue recorder for stories before, and the sound quality wasn't always that stellar. The tapes weren't exactly hi-fi quality either.
So of course, going into this one I figured I'd make the Official Rookie Mistake and flood the recording with uh-huhs, oh yeah?-s and mhmms. Listening back to my older recordings, I did just that. Oh, and I also had the microphone too far away from the speakers so their voices were a little more faint than I would have liked. Good thing I didn't need them for anything more than fancy (and kinda lazy) note taking. I think I succeeded in avoiding the whole "ruining my recording because my fat mouth wouldn't stop blabbering." Sure, there's a thing or two that squeaked by, but it's largely clear of them, and I even held the recorder close enough too. Hooray!
My interview was only about 14 minutes or so, but it was enough for what I needed. I stupidly turned off my recorder at what I thought was the end of the interview, and as I was getting up to say goodbye and leave, my interviewee started telling some good anecdotes that he hadn't mentioned earlier (although I'll admit that if I were better at conducting interviews then I should have gotten them during the main part anyway). It took me a few seconds to realize that I should probably turn on the recorder again if I wanted any chance of capturing the stories. I got one, but the first one was lost. Yeah, I should have asked him to repeat it probably, but that would fall under the whole being-a-better-interviewer bit.
As I mentioned before, the majority of the sound I captured wasn't the interview. I as at a drum circle at the Waysmeet Center and so I spent most of the time sitting with my hand up holding the recorder and pointing it at various drummers. I have tons of that stuff, so I'm gonna try to piece together something interesting from it.
Audacity isn't too scary. The big wavelengths make it seem scarier than it actually is, but hey, it's just sound. I'll manage.
3 comments:
You are doing a terrific job with both the blog and the audio project. I'm really impressed. Is there a significance to the guy with the microphone or is it just a cool photo?
I just Google Image'd sound recording. He tickles my funny bone.
Excellent idea with that drum circle - this is the perfect project for that story. I can completely empathize with you on the being-a-better-interviewer struggles, but good job catching the second story at least. I lost a bunch of my first interviews and didn't try to redo them. Next time. Anyway, good job and see you in class!
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