How-To
How'd I do that? How'd they do that? How do you do that? Posts that revolve around that question are answered here.
Preparing Mama to be an Interviewer
What happens the person who’s usually the interviewee borrows your fancy digital recorder and becomes the interviewer? What happens when your Mom goes across the country and will see someone you’ve been wanting to interview for, like forever? Do you say, Okay Mom, please ask these questions. Oh, and would you record it? How do you make using the recorder as simple as possible? Will it work out?
The other week, my Mom went from West Coast to East Coast to attend her 60th high school reunion. I loaned her my easiest-to-use recorder with some very basic instruction. And hoped for the best.
Background: The stories I want to hear
My gradmother worked for the General Electric Company twice—in the 1920s before her children were born, and again from 1941 until she retired in 1966. The person I’ve wanted to interview—a woman whose initials are NF—was mentored by my grandmother. They both worked in an industry where women professionals were A Rare Thing.
Here’s something else that’s important: Grandma lived on the other side of the country.
I only have a few memory snapshots of her, from a visit East when I was a pre-schooler, and from a visit Grandma took west when my younger brother was born (I was 5?).
Grandma died a few months before I turned 8. Other than those few mental snapshots, everything I know about her is second-hand.
I want to hear stories of that time. I want to know a bit more what my grandmother... Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Audio
• Audio: Hardware
• How-To
• Personal
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From Digital Audio Recording to Audio CD: Part 3 - iTunes and CD burning
In the previous two how-to tutorials, we worked in Audacity with a digital audio file. Now we’ll export it from Audacity, import it into iTunes, and burn an audio CD with it.
Part 1: Getting your audio into Audacity, whether by opening a digital audio recording made elsewhere, or using Audacity to record directly to your computer.
Part 2: Making minor edits to increase sound level.
Part 3:(You are here!) Exporting your recording to a file format that iTunes can use and creating an Audio CD.
Part 4: Dividing the audio into sections based on topics of discussion using Audacity’s Label Tracks.
(note: I may expand sections if any one of them gets to be too long. This section will be updated as I go.)
First, we work in Audacity to export the audio file to a WAV file (reminder from the little extra section in Part 1: WAV is an uncompressed file format. We likes that, we does!)
- In Audacity, go to the File menu and choose Export…
A Save dialog box appears. - Choose WAV from the file format pop-up menu at
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Audio
• Audio: Software
• How-To
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From Digital Audio Recording to Audio CD: Part 2 - Basic Audio Edits
The Audacity how-to continues!! This second part of the series involves working in Audacity to edit your audio file.
A major sound edit technique: Changing Amplification (making a quiet recording louder).
This multi-part how-to series focuses on using Audacity and iTunes — two freely available pieces of software — to work with your recording and then create an audio CD.
Part 1: Getting your audio into Audacity, whether by opening a digital audio recording made elsewhere, or using Audacity to record directly to your computer.
Part 2: (You are here!)Making minor edits to increase sound level.
Part 3: Exporting your recording to a file format that iTunes can use and creating an Audio CD.
Part 4: Dividing the audio into sections based on topics of discussion using Audacity’s Label Tracks.
(note: I may expand sections if any one of them gets to be too long. This section will be updated as I go.)
Amplifying audio
Here is a stereo file recorded using my portable-studio-in-an-Otter Box (described here).
(click to enlarge)
Notice that the waveforms are small and don’t take up to the entire vertical space there. The recording quality is clean enough where I can amplify the audio.
(The goal in recording is to create a recording with all those sound... Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Audio
• Audio: Software
• How-To
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From Digital Audio Recording to Audio CD: Part 1 - Audio into Audacity
It starts with the audio recording you made after you said, “Hi Mom, I want to interview you about your memories about Grandma and Grandpa.” It ends with your burned Audio CD.
This multi-part how-to series focuses on using Audacity and iTunes — two freely available pieces of software — to work with your recording and then create an audio CD.
Part 1: (You are here!) Getting your audio into Audacity, whether by opening a digital audio recording made elsewhere, or using Audacity to record directly to your computer.
Part 2: Making minor edits to increase sound level.
Part 3: Exporting your recording to a file format that iTunes can use and creating an Audio CD.
Part 4: Dividing the audio into sections based on topics of discussion using Audacity’s Label Tracks.
(note: I may expand sections if any one of them gets to be too long. This section will be updated as I go.)
Part 1: Audio in Audacity
I love Audacity. It’s open source software (freely available, or volunteer a payment to support the effort). It’s cross-platform; it works on Mac, Windows, and Linux.
Screenshots shown here will be Mac based, but the instructions work for Windows and Linux, too.
Do you need Audacity? Download Audacity from audacity.sourceforge.net. The page... Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Audio
• Audio: Software
• How-To
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Playing with MemoryMiner export
MemoryMiner and exporting. I’m figuring out how to export a library and then transfer that to my laptop, so that I can show you MemoryMiner if you’ll be at the SoCal Genealogical Jamboree (Twitter hashtag #scgs09) this Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The app is available on both Mac and Windows; I’ve got the Mac version, of course/ The export process isn’t the most obvious, so I’m writing about how I will accomplish it.
How I will... notice the future tense. This is still a work in progress.
The photo library dates back some time, and individual photos reside all over the frickin’ place on my computer—some in iPhoto libraries, some in folders each of which representing different scanning session, the most recent of which was an ego-scan session to compile a set of photos of myself for a birthday party invite. The photos themselves are pretty large, if they’re PSD (photoshop) files, because I scan them at fairly high rez. Many photos are over 20MB in file size. The largest, I think, is around 60 MB.
I decided to work with an external disk drive (easy to change from my main desktop computer to my laptop, and there’s extra space on it, too.)
Part 1: The false start (or, what not to do)
Under the file menu of MemoryMiner 1.86 (MacOS), there are a... Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Family History Software
• How-To
• Personal History
• Photographs
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