Okay, here’s my blog post about the “brother recording” experience, written in a casual, personal style:
So, the other day, I started this little project I’m calling “brother recording.” Basically, I wanted to see if I could get some decent audio of my brother playing guitar. He’s pretty good, and I figured it’d be cool to have some recordings, you know?
First thing I did was grab my old Zoom H2n recorder. It’s nothing fancy, but it gets the job done. I remembered I had it stashed away in a box, so I dug it out and made sure it had fresh batteries.
Setting Up
- I found a relatively quiet spot in the house – my brother’s bedroom, actually. Less echo than the living room.
- I placed recorder on a small table, about three feet away from where he’d be sitting.
- I fiddled with the input levels a bit. I didn’t want the recording to clip, you know, when it gets too loud and distorted. So, I had my brother play a few chords, and I adjusted the levels until it looked good on the little screen.
The Recording Process
We did a few takes. He played some of his favorite songs, and I just let the recorder run. It was pretty relaxed, nothing formal. In total, around 3 songs.
Getting the Files Off
After we were done, I took out sd card from Zoom and plugged it into my laptop, I popped open the SD card and dragged the audio files onto my desktop. Easy peasy.
Listening Back
I opened up the files in Audacity (that’s the free audio editor I use). I listened through everything, and honestly, it sounded better than I expected! There was a little bit of background noise, but overall, it was pretty clean.
Next Steps
I’m thinking of doing some basic editing – maybe trimming the silence at the beginning and end of each track. I might even try to EQ it a little, just to see if I can make it sound even better. But even if I don’t, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. It’s a cool little keepsake, and it was fun to do.
It is all I have done for this “brother recording” thing. It’s pretty cool and exciting.
