I recently got a new Android phone and used it to record a phone interview with a state senator for a quick piece about the state’s sales tax holiday.

I almost always record interviews if the subject is cool with it, because it isn’t much extra effort, ensures the accuracy of [...]]]>

I recently got a new Android phone and used it to record a phone interview with a state senator for a quick piece about the state’s sales tax holiday.

I almost always record interviews if the subject is cool with it, because it isn’t much extra effort, ensures the accuracy of their quotes and leaves me open to do something with the audio later.

Also, it’s insurance against libel suits. That’s always nice.

But since I’ve been getting more and more into playing with sound in storytelling, I’m revisiting how I go about recording stuff. I often sing the praises of my clunky little Zoom H2 recorder, and that’s what I used to snag this sound.

Basically, I pipe an 1/8th inch stereo cable (which I made myself!) into the phone’s auxiliary headphone jack and into the line in on the Zoom. With my old phone, this only picked up the subject’s answers, and not my questions, which could get a little confusing after the fact when dealing with longer interviews. But my new phone, a Droid X, picks up both of us, so I figured I could edit the interview into a quick-and-dirty podcast.

In this case, the levels coming from the Fine Senator from Barre were a little hot, and I was barely audible. But with some basic tweaking in Final Cut, plus a little low pass filter, I got us right around the same place. It’s not a masterpiece, and there’s still a fair amount of editing: I shaved it down from eight minutes to under two, and pulled out a lot of ums and ahs — both his and mine. But given the story, and the turnover, I think it adds a lot of value to the piece.

That said, without infringing on Apple’s trademark, there’s got to be an app for this. So I asked around. Turns out Google Voice, which I already use for call forwarding and voicemail, has a recording feature. Just hit ’4′ and it announces to both parties that it’s about to begin recording — that’s OK by me, because Massachusetts is a two-party consent state anyways, and I always ask.

When you’re done recording, Google automagically e-mails you an MP3. I’ll have to try it out next time and see how it stacks up against recording to .WAV files on my Zoom.

I spent the past week visiting my girlfriend and some friends in London, taking well over a thousand photos and collecting a little bit of sound.

I figured that rather than subject friends and family to my voluminous photo collection of Oliver Cromwell’s death [...]]]>

I spent the past week visiting my girlfriend and some friends in London, taking well over a thousand photos and collecting a little bit of sound.

I figured that rather than subject friends and family to my voluminous photo collection of Oliver Cromwell’s death mask and creepy dead things plundered collected from other countries, I’d distill my photos into a quick slideshow.

This slideshow is a variation on my 12 Hours in Photos Series, bringing roughly 700 photos – many of them taken in burst sequences – together with some natural sound from a St. Patrick’s Day parade near Trafalgar Square, street noise on Edgware Road and the sound of Big Ben just after midnight.

It’s not the best slideshow I’ve ever produced – but hey, I was on vacation. Feel free to browse some select shots over at my Flickr page.

All photos were shot with a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSI using the kit EF-S 18-55mm and EF 50mm f/1.8 lenses. Sound recorded with a Zoom H2 Handy Recorder.

The result was the best panorama I’ve put together so far (click to enlarge) and a mediocre Soundslides project.

I took advantage of the nice weather today to study for my French exam shoot some photos and collect some sound at the Wentworth Farm Conservation Area near my house in Amherst, Mass.

The result was the best panorama I’ve put together so far (click to enlarge) and a mediocre Soundslides project.

The panorama is a roughly-150-degree view of the pond near Wentworth Farm. In between shooting photos I grabbed a bunch of natural sound – nothing too interesting: footsteps on grass and mud, a plane overhead, the sound of rushing water – and compiled it into this slideshow.

I must say I don’t like the way Soundslides displays photo sequences taken on the burst setting as much as I have with similar slideshows I’ve made with iMovie, but for stories that really make use of captions and feature the standard three-minute, 18 frame formula, Soundslides is still far superior.

I added a Zoom H2 Handy Recorder to my arsenal recently, and I’ve been bothering my two engineering-major roommates, Sean and James, about how to use it effectively.

For the unfamiliar, the Zoom offers me the chance to produce radio packages and audio slideshows rich in natural sound, like the [...]]]>

Click to play - James tuning Ted's Guitar.

I added a Zoom H2 Handy Recorder to my arsenal recently, and I’ve been bothering my two engineering-major roommates, Sean and James, about how to use it effectively.

For the unfamiliar, the Zoom offers me the chance to produce radio packages and audio slideshows rich in natural sound, like the one I produced during my stint at Poynter:

[For the record, this piece was produced with a superior Marantz recorder, but you get the idea]

I’ve been reading up on sound reporting and getting some training at WMUA Amherst, so hopefully in the near future I’ll be able to produce some packages where sound really drives the story. I’ll be posting stuff as I play around with the recorder; In the meantime, enjoy the clip of James playing guitar.

As a side note, if anyone could tell me why my WPaudio plug-in that used to auto-generate an mp3 player isn’t working, that’d be cool.