Rolling Music Writers' Thread

Used Skype a few times now and it has worked very well, recording to computer HD. It's a little scary because it's not as easy to trust as tape, but as long as you see the VU meters going, it's recording. Helps to have a headset, the sound quality is outstanding, much better than any phone. Right after I make a copy of the file on another drive. Recording cell phone conversations sucks, period, and I never figured out how to do it with an iPhone.

I helped someone on my student magazine's staff run an interview last year, and we just put her cell on speaker and recorded the whole thing using GarageBand. It went fine, but there were a lot of ways it could have easily went wrong, and I could totally see why people would feel safer using a tape recorder or something like that.

It's true, cassettes are hardy. But I don't do more than one interview on a digital recorder before ripping it to the computer and my external hard drive. And the convenience of organization, searchability, and space is considerable.

I just archived all my old interviews on cassette into digital format -- but I haven't gotten rid of the tapes because, well, why? Might as well keep the ultimate backup.

still pete, if anything happens from the time you record that interview to the time you get it on your computer...

especially since sometimes you do interviews on the road or at shows and not always at home!

6. Plop a copy of the mp3 in ExpressScribe for transcription. ExpressScribe lets you slow down recordings, but it's still nowhere near as handy or as good-sounding as a manual cassette tape recorder.

The only good thing about digital transcription is fast-forwarding and rewinding, but I have yet to figure out "hot keys" or buy anything like a foot pedal or whatever, which sucks because I'm planning on doing 100s of interviews this year...

not sure if its the same on mac, pete, but on pc the espress scribe hotkeys are f4 for stop, f9/10 to restart, f7 rewind and f8 ffw... lovelovelove that program...

sound quality of digital over analogue is an incredible improvement, tbh, and while my minidisk was scarily unreliable, my cheap mp3 recorder has never let me down yet...

i can't believe we're having a digital vs analogue debate in 2010. even a massive luddite like myself has long gone digital.

still pete, if anything happens from the time you record that interview to the time you get it on your computer...

anything could happen to anything! tapes get chewed up inexplicably! someone could step on them! i could be run over by a bus! digital dictaphone puts my mind to rest re: clarity of recording and relative ease of transcribing. if bad things happen i'll deal.

I use a horse to get to jobs. There's just too much that can go wrong with the combustion engine.

I transcribe my interviews straight from the recorder - don't even import 'em into the computer anymore. And when they're transcribed, I erase the original recording.

Speakerphone + Garageband works a treat for me. Just export to Itunes so it's easier to pause and go back.

tapes get chewed up inexplicably! someone could step on them! i could be run over by a bus!

Yeah, you joke, but seriously digital recordings can just "go away", if a tape gets chewed up or stepped on you can still salvage it.

I remember when U2 recorded their last album. They finished, tried to play it back and it had just 'gone away'. Bummer.

Just make sure to keep those tapes in their cases. Who knows who's out there roving for binders filled with your interviews!!

Yeah, you joke, but seriously digital recordings can just "go away", if a tape gets chewed up or stepped on you can still salvage it.

or maybe you can't. analogue tape is a hella vulnerable medium, and i can ruefully say i've lost interview cassettes on tourbuses, had them doused in liquid and left em in my car on a rilly hot day before, and that's pretty much been the end of that.

is harder to misplace a file on a digital recorder i'd protect with my life anyway.

I love my digital recorder. Done a few interviews in noisy restaurants--seriously, at one point someone started vacuuming in front of our table--and I was shocked to find that the audio was perfectly discernible.

I too just transcribe straight from the recorder - use the playback function where the speed is slowed down a little bit (though it always makes me sound like a pothead) and it works pretty swimmingly.

yeah, i do have to say the one real drawback to my cassette tape system is that the audio is often a lil wonky

Done a few interviews in noisy restaurants--seriously, at one point someone started vacuuming in front of our table--and I was shocked to find that the audio was perfectly discernible.

I interviewed the DJ at a bull riding competition on Friday night while a band was playing in the center of the arena and his voice was perfectly clear.

So what model digital recorders are you all using?

...not a music writer, but have somewhat similar purposes - I use a Sony PCM-D50.

Olympus DM-20.

olympus ws-210s

Olympus WS-100

Sony ICD-UX71 - I really like it. I've also used the Sony ICD-B510F (low end model) which does the job but has a few less features (like background noise reduction and slow playback) that feel essential now that I have the UX71.

I erase the original recording.

I forget what the statute of limitations is on libel, but I'd wait that out. And people might be interested in your actual audio someday (or now!).

olympus vn-3100pc. it works fine but it was a panic purchase from radio shack, when i arrived in LA with two weeks worth of interviews booked, and discovered that my minidisk recorder hadn't survived the flight.

I use Olympus WS210s at work.

tapes get chewed up inexplicably! someone could step on them! i could be run over by a bus!

Yeah, you joke, but seriously digital recordings can just "go away", if a tape gets chewed up or stepped on you can still salvage it.

― ke$nan (Whiney G. Weingarten), Monday, 11 January 2010 14:27

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^this, sadly. Over the weekend my PC arbitrarily decided to "lose" the first 20 minutes of my 40-minute St3phin M3rritt interview. Gutted ain't the half of it - every other interview I've ever conducted has been recorded on cassette and is still in immaculate condition, and the moment I switch to Audacity...

I recorded a little less than a half hour of audio on Audacity about five years back and I thought it was going to blow up. So much can go wrong between pressing record and hitting save without the user even doing anything wrong.

Audacity is an amazing program, but it is buggy freeware-- not something I would trust to record an interview. Plus its real strength is multi-tracking.

Exactly.

i have an olympus 960, which i guess is practically ancient now. (i've had it i think 4 or 5 years.) it works great, i've never had a problem. i'm very aware of the potential to easily erase or lose data, but so far i've avoided that -- which puts it ahead of the various problems i've had in the past with cassettes and microcassettes.

and here's a question on transcription: do most people really transcribe their entire interviews? i almost never do that. i generally know the parts i'm interested in, so i transcribe those first. then if it turns out there's more stuff i think i need i'll go back and pick and choose. the average 60 minutes of conversation has about 5 minutes of really good quotes, maybe 10 minutes if you're talking to somebody especially smart and articulate, and anyway you're only going to have room for a handful of direct quotes as it is.

(the obvious exception is q&a's. which is one reason i really don't like q&a's.)

i usually transcribe "the good parts" and pick and choose from there

ditto, who on earth transcribes the WHOLE THING? the process is distressing enough as it is

man do i hate transcribing

yeah that's the only way that makes sense to me. i've had some friends and colleagues who for whatever reason feel compelled to transcribe everything before actually getting down to writing -- i guess maybe it helps them to hear it all again -- but that's just so time consuming, especially if it's a full-bore feature story where you've talked to a bunch of different people. i keep pretty good notes while i'm interviewing, so that i can use them as sort of an outline of what's on the recording. (plus i'll write down especially good quotes as i go, if possible, as a backup against something happening to the recorder.)

We have this argument all the time in the newsroom – that's why notebooks will never go out of fashion. Better to jot down pithy phrases than to waste time rewinding and fast forwarding.

i do LISTEN to the whole tape again, but certainly dont write anything down

I transcribe everything, or damn close to it, but I use a lot of quotes in my features. I like to let the artist speak for themselves a lot and only throw in bits of narrative and/or interpretation between, rather than unloading some huge personal thesis and scattering a few quotes on top to support what I'm trying to put across.

I do both. Depends on the interviewee.

We have this argument all the time in the newsroom – that's why notebooks will never go out of fashion.

when i was a daily beat reporter, i almost never taped anything. just notepad and pen. when you're writing short news articles you can get everything you need that way, and it's a lot faster. but when i started writing longer-form stuff, especially profiles where you really want to give a sense of a person's voice, how they talk and think, i eventually realized i really needed recordings. and one thing i've found is that no matter how good you are at note-taking, you very rarely get direct quotes accurate at anything past about two sentences. you can get the meaning of them right -- and as long as you do that, almost nobody will complain about being misquoted -- but you're going to lose or change some words. (i guess i should say "i" instead of "you," because some people are probably better at word-for-word recall than me. but i bet most people can't accurately write down more than a few sentences at a time while also conducting an interview.)

That's all true. We've had the other extreme here, though: students walking into offices, plunking down a tape recorder in front of a source, and sitting back, not taking a single note. Tape recorders work best when used as an archive or quasi-database, from which you can pluck information as needed.

i bet most people can't accurately write down more than a few sentences at a time while also conducting an interview

well exactly - i'm sure i'd be capable of it but to get the best interview i pretty much want to be wholly focused on what the interviewee's saying, listening out for interesting hooks or details that i can pick up on, and if half my mind and one of my hands is concerned with transcribing accurately and legibly, that's not going to happen. an interview should be like a conversation, and taking notes during one would be the equivalent of fiddling with your blackberry while talking to a friend.

i mean i already get the whole "fuck's sake why didn't i pick up on that" feeling when listening back enough as it is, can't imagine that being less focused would improve on that

Taping is the only way to get the true flavor of the way somebody speaks, and the amazing thing is that it's never exactly how you remember. I think the little differences matter.

But yeah, for news stories, where what someone says is more important than how they say it, notes are way better, especially, in my case, if it's over the phone and I'm typing. I stopped writing in cursive at a young age and never learned shorthand.

my new year's resolution is to learn how to type :/

I'm one of the psychos that usually transcribes everything -- although more and more I tend to cherrypick out the stuff I know I might use, especially if I'm pressed for time, but if the whole thing is less than one 45-minute side of a tape I like to get it all down, if only to have a complete transcript in my files.

I got a nice digital recorder for my birthday last year and I've been still using my cassette recorder and putting off making the big switch ever since, mainly because I'm a slow learner with new technology and the thing intimidates me. You guys are making me even more scared, but I really do want to start using it still.

x-post -- I am eternally glad for the typing class I took in high school.

Taping is the only way to get the true flavor of the way somebody speaks, and the amazing thing is that it's never exactly how you remember. I think the little differences matter.

this is absolutely positively otm. if I was ever an interviewee and someone sat down in front of me with a notebook and no recording device I'd be totally certain of being misquoted and would instantly lose a lot of faith in the writer.