Tips & How-To

An Easy Guide to Audio Recording:

1. Choose a style of recording

-Ambient Sound Recording: Use a recorder to capture the sounds of the environment around you. Both cities and greener landscapes have their own rhythms and intonations. Visit a local market and record the atmosphere or take in a street performance. What about the sounds of a monsoon or the buzz of mosquitoes? These will help you tell your story and remember its tunes.
-Interview/Conversations: Traveling is the best time for talking. When you are experiencing a new place you want to learn about it by engaging its people. Ask your taxi driver what he thinks about his government or your host parents how they feel about the United States. Record in another language. If someone’s story needs to be told and you are there to help him tell it, document this exchange. But as a global citizen, document carefully and with good intention.
- Record yourself: Read some of your journal entries or creative pieces out loud or do some free talks where you process what you are experiencing. You’ll find a new angle on your writing when you hear its voice.
-Group discussions: Engage your friends in discussion about their lives and contexts. People talk when they are being recorded. Pressure is an element that helps them to articulate what they think and believe. Again, be a responsible and conscientious listener and documentarian.
-Spend time in bookstores and read local authors. Try reading some texts, especially foreign language texts out loud, bringing voice to what you are reading while abroad. This will help you connect to the text in a different way. Watch a video interpretation of a Seamus Heaney poem

2. Record your Audio Piece

There are many types of devices that you can use to record sound. The easiest devices are one that can be converted to sound files by plugging the appliance into your computer.

Examples are:
Griffin iTalk for iPod
a mp3 recorder – example: Olympus WS-300M 256 Digital Voice Recorder and Music Player
a video camera
a video camera with an external microphone: example: Audio-Technica AT804- Microphone
a digital camera
or iMic and your computer to record voiceovers and interviews
Check out Media Storm’s Audio Kit:

Another option is to carry around a traditional tape recorder and when you get back to your colleges and universities the IT department will most likely have the equipment to help you convert your recording into a mp3 file.

Look at these online guides and experiment and practice before you go:
Vermont Folk Life Center's Guide to Audio Recordings
Gathering Audio by Media Storm:
What Is a Podcast?
Yahoo’s Guide to Podcasts
Learning Center on Audio:
The Legal Guide to Podcasting
How to Podcast
Podcasts and Education
Create Your Own Podcast for Free
Make Your Own Podcast, a Step-by-Step Tutorial
Capture Voices Online:

3. Upload your audio file from the sound device onto your computer

Make your sound clips part of your ITunes Library by using iTalkpodcast
Once you click on the icon the application will download directly in your iTunes

4. Embed your sound file onto a website or weblog
Burn into onto a DVD
Use your audio file in a larger project like a digital story or video short