Can You Hear Me Now..........?

I cannot believe how fast this summer is going by and that I am into the recording stage of my audio tour. Last week Mike, my supervisor and Executive Director at the New Castle Historical Society, and I made some final edits to the test script for the audio tour.

While the final version of the tour will be more complex and with a variety of narrators, Mike and I decided that recording a test version would be best for a number of reasons.

1. I really want to see as much of the process of creating an audio tour as possible, which encompasses: research, writing the script, recording, trying the tour with a test group, editing/ reformatting the tour as necessary, and then re-recording.

2. It's summertime, and it will be difficult to schedule the different people in the time that remains for my internship, so me recording just myself is much faster.

3. Having a test version is invaluable so that the test group can really get the feel of an audio tour, which is much different than fact-checking the script. Using this version we can check the directions, determine if there is a lull in the tour, and where to cut out information.

So for this week, the kitchen table of my apartment has been turned into a makeshift recording studio. I chose my apartment because it is a quiet environment and essentially an isolated location in which to work. We could have set up in one of the rooms at the historical society, but I knew it could be more difficult to get work done, since there is always an interesting distraction going on or people moving in and out of the museum.

Podcasting Station

In terms of equipment I am using the software Audacity, which is an open source editing and recording software. While there are many different kinds of software, I am familiar with Audacity and its usability and Free nature makes it and ideal tool. In terms of other equipment, I am using a Behringer Podcast Studio which is essentially an a full recording studio in a box, with a microphone, headphones, and mixer (which lets you control the recording levels). These sets are relatively inexpensive, but I was able to borrow the equipment from University of Delaware's History Media Center. Don't let the equipment intimidate you though, the possibilities are endless for this type of project, and recording can really be done with any sort of microphone or tape recorder.

Screen Shots of Audacity Software

So what is the recording experience like? A LOT of work!! Even though the finished product will probably be under 2 hours (we know we need to cut out some information, but cannot decide what!), recording and editing takes much longer. Once you get used to talking to yourself in an empty room to a computer screen, you have to keep in mind varying your voice, talking at a relatively slow speed and not tripping over your own words. You find that some of your elaborate and fact filled sentences look great on paper, but result in complete tongue-tied-ness when speaking out loud. I have also discovered that the human voice, or at least mine can only handle about a half day of continuous speaking before it gets tired, so I try to balance out recording and editing. Editing is a fun process, but can also be time consuming, depending on how long the section or how many mistakes I have to edit out.

With fingers crossed, my goal is to have all of the tracks recorded, edited, and exported in an MP3 format by the end of the week so that next week we can have people start testing it. I am finding that this is an ambitious deadline, but I want it to be available to test as soon as possible, so I have a few long days in store this week.

If you would like to be involved in testing, get in touch with us at the Historical Society, we would love to have as many people as possible!!

Photo Credits: Jesse Gagnon