Today, I am going to work with you on some basic audio editing techniques. As you will remember from class, we could use any number of programs to edit, such as GarageBand or Audacity. Since we all have a free subscription to Adobe Audition, I am going to demonstrate with it.
While the techniques that I am showing you today look different in different programs, all audio editing programs have the functionality that I am demonstrating.
Read MoreWe’ve finally gotten to microphones. A quality microphone might be the most important factor in creating a good recording rather than a bad recording.
I have already talked about onboard microphones a bit in the first entry in this series on recording devices. That’s pretty much all I have to say about built-in mics. They’re fine for getting the job done—if content is more important than quality.
For many public history applications, we would much prefer to have great content and a quality recording. To do this, we need good microphones that are set up so that they record what we want them to record and ignore what we want them to ignore.
Read MoreIn this second installment for “Digital Audio for Public Historians,” I want to have a look at one of the basic recording options available on mid-range recorders: the option to have a mono or stereo recording. We will use sample recordings from the 1960s to illustrate a few key principals, including recordings of James Baldwin, The Beach Boys, and The Beatles.
Read MoreAs we discussed in yesterday’s class, public historians might use audio recordings for a number of different projects: oral histories, podcasts, audio clips for exhibitions, documentaries, among other things.
We were able to play a bit with different recording devices—from smartphones, to computers, to low and and high end voice recorders.
It became obvious very quickly that both the equipment we used and the recording conditions had a huge effect on the quality of our recordings.
Over my next several posts, I am going to review some of the things that we discussed in class as well as go into a little bit more detail about how to use the hardware and software for public history applications.
Today, I want to talk a little bit about recording devices.
Read MoreAn infographic explaining how podcasts work.
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