Today I broke down and finally bought a miniDisc recorder. I’ve been enamoured ever since pfly did the stereo walk-around recordings at Burning Man 98, but the desire increased after my Dad died and I realized I had no good recordings of him.
Since my grandpa is 94 (although doing quite well), the urgency has increased each time I go home to record him telling some of his excellent stories. I had an ill-fated attempt at purchase and use last year with dbauler, because I didn’t do my research. I left Iowa bummed and left Best Buy with an open-package MD that didn’t have a mic input. No more! After reading up online, I know I am completely in over my head. MD has some seriously geeky followers as well as hardcore broadcasters with their $600 mics. I still need to go to an audio store locally to figure out what (lower-end) mic to get, and then read the stupidly complicated and unhelpful MD manual. Then I’m off next week to get some midwestern goodness on tape. Er, disc.
And after that, recordings of rusty train noises!
bug | 19-Aug-04 at 4:05 pm | Permalink
Yay for new ways to document people!
You have probably read everything they have on transom.org, but this article comes to mind: http://transom.org/tools/recording_interviewing/200106.microphones.jtowne.html
I also have a number of semi-useful and mostly cheap mics you are more than welcome to have/borrow-long-term.
narrator | 19-Aug-04 at 4:28 pm | Permalink
Yes, I read a lot at transom, including some of their mic info. Thanks for the mic offer, I may take you up on it. I’m suffering from gadget-sticker-shock.
Kia | 19-Aug-04 at 6:32 pm | Permalink
We have a cheapie little sony stereo mic that works just fine for our MD recorder, which we got from Fry’s for I think around 40 or 50 bucks. I don’t think for your purposes you need anything super incredible amazing expensive.
It’s so neat you’re doing recordings of your Grandpa. I wish I’d have done that with mine before he lost his ability to speak well enough to tell a story.
narrator | 20-Aug-04 at 11:21 am | Permalink
Yeah, that’s the route I’m thinking of, the ~$50 stereo jobbie. It’s inspiring reading about the broadcasters and indie radio people, but one project at a time, eh?