give us your sounds!

A. Sound Journal

Before you start recording, start listening in detail to your everyday environment. Keep notes of what you hear. Find things you observe that you want to record, and start to figure out the best time of day to do what you want. Think up 3 or 4 options. Think of contrasting spaces with different social uses. Think of boundaries that sound crosses. Think of the transitions from Medford or Boston to the campus. Close your eyes and listen.

B. Sound Mapping

1. materials you will need: H4 recorder (check it out of the music library) notebook, pen, headphones (best ones you can manage) camera (s) video optional
2. get your recording posse-how many people to bring? 2-4 is a good group, with 2-3 cameras and one H2 recorder. Advanced users may want to synchronize 2 recorders.
3. Record at least 2 contrasting sound zones, one quiet, one loud, one busy one lonely, one you like, one you hate, one large, one small.
4. Think also about recording pathways, so that you walk past a series of environments. (if you do this, get someone to put their camera on movie, and follow you through the changes.
5. Images. Each recording needs at the least 5-10 images. More is better. Make a photo that shows the nature of your recording. How big is the space, what is making the sound, what materials and architecture are reflecting that sound. Feel free to be abstract as you try to take pictures of the sound. Also shoot what influences the sound, bricks, grass, windows, etc. Take pictures of the sound sources, cars, fans, people, footsteps, etc.
   1. name the cameras camera 1 (c1) camera 2 (c2) camera 3 (c3)
6. The person with the audio has to run the session. Start to record and say the name your recording (your 3 letter initials, and verbally add what location it is, for instance paa01, paa02, then give a breif site name, "library roof" for instance or "path to cafeteria".. If you are doing more than one take, say take 2, take 3 etc.
7. write the name of the recording on a piece of paper, and take a picture of it (this will identify the stream of images in the camera when you upload to us)
8. think about the possibility of making a sync recording with a camera on "movie" function, or with another audio recorder.
   1. a. turn on all the recorders, make an obvious clap that can be seen in thecamera making a movie, and heard on the audio recorder. these can be matched up later
   2. b. if you are taking a pathway on your audio recording its cool to have even a low res movie shot on a camera to accompany your journey. also get detailed photos in stills and perhaps have another camera shoot stills while one does a movie.

How to Use the H2

The H2 is a nice recorder with a clumsy user interface so here are instructions for recording that make it a bit easier.

* make sure you get the rechargeable batteries from the library personnel when you get the H2

1. Power on
2. press menu
3. use the jog wheel to select "Recording format" It both rotates, and presses, you will get used to it. I did.
   
   
4. use the jog wheel to set the options to wave/48 khz sampling rate/24 bit depth. that looks like this the picture to the right
   
5. press menu again to return home
6. press the menu button again to see the recording screen
7. press "input menu"
8. jog to rec. level, press jog wheel
9. press jog wheel again
10. now you can turn the wheel to adjust the record level from 1 to 127. your record levels want to be fairly high like this:
    
    
11. there is a coarse level control on the side it says MIC L/M/H and that sets you up for low,medium, high use low for a rock concert and high to record bird feathers, use the level adjust above to fine tune. a clue, for delicate environmental recordings indoors, I had to put the mic gain on H or high, and put the LEVEL all the way up to 126 to record soft footsteps in the music building!
12. Press REC 1x the REC light will blink saying it is ready
13. Press REC again and you are recording!
14. Press REC again and you are stopped.
15. To listen to what you did, press menu 2x, then hit the play button. (flip the menu button north or up)
16. Hitting the menu button r and l toggles through your files to select which to play back.
17. Suggestions for getting good sounds:
    • Use headphones, really listen, go slow, listen back and see if you got what you wanted. The recording will sound different than your ears! so try it more than once.
    • Watch out for wind, this machine has no low cut for wind noise, make sure to use the foam pop filter. Listen for wind in the headphones, use buildings and your body to block the
      wind.
    • If the gain is up high, watch out for the sound your hand makes on the recorder, it sounds plastic and dumb.
    • Practice on a few places, this will stir your imagination to new attempts.
    • Mundane spots sound great with fresh ears, headphones, and concentration.
    • Try different times of day and night.
      
      

Preparing Files for Upload

1. Transfer everybody's recordings to your computer. Do it right away.
2. Make a new folder on your desktop, name it your 3 letter initials and 01 (for your first location) (Mine will be mbo01)
3. Use the card reader that comes with the H2. This will work for many cameras as well.
4. Drag your sound to the folder. Rename it the same as your folder. (mine will be mbo01.wav) Do not use spaces in file names please.
5. Drag the images in the same way from your camera, or perhaps you need a different card reader for camera or phone pictures.
6. Rename the images simply by adding c1 to the front of the files of camera 1- c2 to the front of camera 2's images, etc. (so that for instance a file named IMG4566.jpg will be renamed c1IMG5466.jpg)
7. If any of these are synchronized to the main audio recording, put a $ in front to indicate this. For instance if camera 2 made a movie that the camera named IMG0745.mov you would add $c2 to the front making it $c2IMG0745.mov
8. Make sure all your files are in your folder.
9. ZIP or ARCHIVE your folder. Mac users, Command-click on your folder, then select "create archive" or, in newer Macs, it should say "Compress <folder name>." PC users,right-click on the folder and select "send to" -> "compressed zip folder." This makes a zip file and now you are ready to upload.

Go to Upload!