audio

Got it: an iPad app for transcribing interview recordings

Posted by

0

Excuse me while I do a spot of SEO: interview, interviewee, interviewing, interviewer, journalist, ipad, audio, sound, recording, transcribe, transcription.

There. Hopefully this means the next poor sod searching for this type of app can avoid spending the ENTIRE EVENING on the hunt. Here’s the thing. I have to be away from my office tomorrow but I have a very pressing job where I need to transcribe an interview I recorded some weeks ago. I hate transcribing with the same passion that EVERY SINGLE WRITER EVER does and I just wanted some help.

Specifically, I wanted an iPad version of Transcriptions, a freeware app for Mac that simply lets you play back audio while you type out what you hear. Missed a bit? Tap a keystroke and the audio scrubs back 5, 10, 15, 20 seconds. Nothing in all this land will make transcription fun but this helps. My great regret is that I didn’t discover it until I’d transcribed fully two thirds of the interviews I’d done for a Blake’s 7 book.

Now I just need that on iPad, please. You quickly start throwing your hopes out of the window when you can’t find something so I was reduced to thinking I’d have a notetaking app that just played back audio. A bit. Enough to save me having to skip back and forth between two apps.

It turns out that there are three types of application that get returned when you search for terms like “best ipad audio transcription” or “best iOS apps for journalists”. The first and most common search result is the transcription service. For various prices and with various different trial periods, you can record audio in the app and send it off to a human being somewhere to do your transcription job for you, for a fee.

Fine. Not what I want, but fine.

The second type of app does what I want but only to audio that you record with the app. Nice, fine, but useless to me with my existing recording.

How long has it taken you to read this far? Did you skim? Good for you. The answer is that the best option available is Notability for iPad. It costs £1.99 for iPad and iPhone together. It’s only £1.99 but it’s also a lesson to get good apps when they fall free, even if you don’t want them. I got Notability last May when Apple made it App of the Week. I downloaded it, tried it, saw why people liked it so but felt it wasn’t for me and I deleted it.

Now all these months on, I can just re-download it. And I did so after a couple of hours of trying everything else.

Notability is not perfect. But I can import the audio from Dropbox, I can play it back and there is a 10-second rewind button. I would like a way to skip back 10 seconds from the keyboard as reaching up to tap that button does break the flow of my typing.

But tomorrow I will be sitting in coffee houses alternating between transcribing interviews for a book and writing a script. I could do without the hell that is transcription but otherwise that sounds like a pretty good day to me.

Weekend read – especially for old radio hands

Posted by

0

My heart punched forward a beat at the sight of simply the name. Nagra. I started in BBC Radio and wore a groove into my shoulder carrying a portable Nagra tape recorder around. And I remember being shown the continuity suite in BBC Radio 4 where Nagras were used to play in clips because they were so quiet and moreover they started instantly. No lurching up to speed, just on, bang, go.

I am choked with nostalgia for this stuff and yet I never knew any of its history. Until now:

Stefan Kudelski didn’t set out to make a sound recorder. He was interested in robotics, and in the 1950s, one of the ways to create robotic memory was to use magnetic tape. As a student, working with that tape, he built a machine that doubled as a recorder. Nobody was interested in the robotics aspect of the project, he said later: “But people were very excited about the recorder that I created. So, I became a manufacturer of recorders. That’s how it started.”

This first recorder, the Nagra, was, in Kudelski’s words, “just a gadget.” The second was “very serious equipment.” But the third one, built in 1961, when Kudelski was 27, was “a good machine.”

The Sound Recorder That Changed Film – Sarah Laskownov, The Atlantic (28 November 2014)

Join me in reading the full piece.

I’d need the buttons to stay down

Posted by

0

This looks like a slice of our past and you want it, you want to try this.

Remember what it felt like to press play and record at the same time? Back before streaming and downloading and blogs and YouTube, music meant CDs and Smash Hits and the NME and taping off the radio — and this delightfully retro Raspberry Pi creation recreates that physical connection with music for the 21st century.

Raspberry Pi is the low-cost computing system that allows you to build all kinds of bespoke gadgets from basic components, teaching novices how to code and limited only by your imagination. British developer and maker Matt Brailsford has used the DIY system to combine the technology of today — Raspberry Pi, Spotify, and NFC tags — with the retro tech of yesterday to build a media server that streams different playlists when different cassette tapes are inserted.

Rewind: This Raspberry Pi cassette player plays Spotify tunes from actual tapes – Rich Trenholm, CNET (21 October 2014)

I don’t miss cassettes except that I guess that’s a lie, I see this and I do. Lots of memories, though a key one is of how the buttons would stay down when you press them:

Read the full piece.

Concluding the streaming music debate – a bit

Posted by

0

Previously… I write to music, always have done, I get into ferociously irritating habits of listening to exactly the same piece over and over again. I get a lot of headphones as Christmas presents. I resisted streaming music because I had what I feel is a big collection. But then I tried streaming.

Actually, just to break the Previously and tell you something new: I’ve realised why I tried. I said before that it was iTunes Radio and that’s true, I got access to that early and enjoyed hearing new music. I’ve steadily less enjoyed the steadily increasing number of ads on iTunes Radio but I’ve also realised that its way of playing you types of music rather than letting you specify artists or albums and hearing only those got a bit wearing.

And I heard a song.

I forgot that I could check back in iTunes history to see what it was and instead stupidly spent a while googling every lyric I could be fairly sure I remembered. And I found it.

It was Come to My Window by Melissa Etheridge. Love it.

And I love it enough that I once again tried Spotify. At least with Spotify, I thought, you could name a specific track and play that.

This is sort of true. And it’s also definitely true now that Spotify is free on iPhone and iPad – which is almost certainly true because of the competition from services such as iTunes Radio. Everybody wins, and it earns the artists nothing. Or very little, anyway.

Last time I mentioned this, it was because I’d found this article explaining all the various streaming services and I intended to investigate them. I intended to do this because I was sick of iTunes Radio – I’ve since come back around to it, it’s a mood thing with me – and because Spotify was irritating. I realise they want you to pay a subscription price and not only do I understand that but, spoiler alert, I’m now today thinking of it. But for trying out the service, I thought free was helpful.

But Spotify wouldn’t stick to the music I asked for, it would bound off places playing me other things that might be fine, yes, but I couldn’t stop them when I wanted to. In the end, I would just quit Spotify and force it to restart again. You can’t do that very easily while driving.

Only, today I tried it again. Instead of my usual beloved BBC Radio 4, I had Spotify and a playlist with about 25 songs on it. Including the Etheridge. For 170 miles driving, maybe 2 miles walking and for 90 minutes on buses today, I listen to those 25 songs. Over and over.

There were many, many interruptions for ads and it worries me a bit that most of them were what’s called a house ad: if you can’t sell an ad spot to someone, you use it yourself to advertise something of your business. You want to have some house ads, but you need the revenue from outside companies.

But apart from those understandable interruptions, Spotify played me those songs of mine for a not-very-understandably long time.

I’m a fan. I think. I’m going to play it a bit more to see if I go off it as I have at times with iTunes Radio. And I’m going to wait a bit to see when iTunes Radio officially launches in the UK because the price for it includes some extra benefits and is also substantially cheaper than Spotify. Both Spotify and iTunes Radio start at free but then to get the benefits of the paid-for services, it’s £9.99 UK or $9.99 US per month for Spotify and £21.99 or $24.00 US per year for iTunes Radio.

But for the meantime, I think I’m a convert. That’s a very strange feeling for a man who remembers vinyl, who remembers CD coming in, who lived through DVD coming in and then dying away. But it’s true: I had a very good time today with Spotify.

Late weekend read: the case for CDs

Posted by

0

Just an absorbing read, I wish I’d seen this to get it to you earlier over the weekend:

Compact discs may be more out of vogue than ever, but some albums will always sound best with lasers

The CD Case – Steven Hyden, Grantland.com (8 July 2014)

Nip over to it now and have a good read or pop it into Pocket to read next weekend.

Why I Can’t Delete a Digital Moment I Don’t Even Remember

Posted by

0

There isn’t anything productive about this, perhaps it’s even the opposite of that. But it fascinated me: writer Jessica Miller very simply and starkly conveys what it’s like when you’re dumped yet she’s doing so in order to examine something more. It’s about memory and perception and technology and ourselves – and it’s about a 34-second audio recording that she includes in her piece:

What you’re hearing might not sound like much, but for me, listening to this clip transports me to a place with weight and dimension and color. It’s mostly me trying to get my microphone-shy boyfriend to talk. To tell me what he feels in this moment when the relationship is new and everything seems right and beautiful. He’s laughing at me because I’m being ridiculous, although he was always a man of few, well-chosen words. And then the kiss. He probably kisses me to get me to stop trying to make him talk. I guess it worked, because that’s where the recording cuts off. But it’s a sound so sweet, and so genuine. In an instant, I smell saltwater, grass, and his shampoo. I feel skin and the late summer air and the feeling of not being afraid to be completely myself in front of someone I care about.

But the thing is, I have absolutely no memory of this even happening.

Why I Can’t Delete a Digital Moment I Don’t Even Remember – Jessica Miller, The Atlantic (29 June 2014)

Now, for some reason I can’t hear her embedded SoundCloud audio track. But I’m okay with that: it’s her story, what she thinks next and now my imagination of what that recording is that engrossed me.

Turn CDs into LPs – like, a bit like vinyl, like, really

Posted by

0

Vinyl records store music in long grooves that a needle bumps its way through. CDs store music in light pits that convey on and off, 0 and 1 to a laser. But now Londoner Aleksander Kolkowski is taking CDs and cutting grooves into them. After he’s done his doings, you can play music off the CD – on a vinyl record player, never again a CD drive.

Not for all that long: this reborn CD doesn’t hold enough music to include a three-minute pop song.

It’s transforming a disposable media storage device made for cloned copying into a one-of-a-kind cult object. In a way, it’s very tongue in cheek. There’s a lot of fetishism about vinyl, but I see this as quite throw-away, really. I do it for free. People bring a CD and I give them one in return. On a few occasions people have asked me to go into commercial production, but that’s not really my intention.

Aleksander Kolkowski speaking to The Atlantic (30 June 2014)

Do read the full article from The Atlantic as it’s got a lot to say about his artistry, his physical technique and about the state of vinyl collection.

Apps in use: Audio Hijack Pro

Posted by

0

I can't remember how long I have been using Rogue Amoeba's Audio Hijack Pro on my various Macs. It's long enough that I forget it's software, I just know it in my bones, and it's long enough that it's years since I noticed ow Rogue Amoeba is an unusual name.

I use it for clipping my and friends' radio appearances, I use it for recording Skype interview calls, I can't count how many things I've used it for and I'm frustrated that I'm so used to it that I can't remember a longer list of examples. But trust me, it's a favourite and it is indispensible – and today the Rogue Amoeba blog ran a little news story about uses of it that I didn't know and am immediately nicking:

Real World Usage: Podcasting With Audio Hijack Pro

Our audio recorder Audio Hijack Pro has long been a favorite tool among podcasters. Whether you want to record a conversation from Skype, or just your own microphone, Audio Hijack Pro can help you get your podcast going. As the podcast world has grown, we’ve been thrilled to see our app used by thousand of podcasters in the past decade.

One podcaster making great use of Audio Hijack Pro is Dave Hamilton, who might just know more about the app than we do! Recently, he started dishing out some tasty knowledge. First up is a video on sending multiple audio sources over Skype, using Audio Hijack Pro and Soundflower. Next, Dave had a clever trick for creating a noise gate on your Mac, to record only when audio reaches a certain level.

Seasoned veterans of Audio Hijack Pro may already know about these tricks, but if not, check them out. And of course if you’re new to the app, you can always download a free trial of Audio Hijack Pro to try it out.

Rogue Amoeba blog

Take a read of the full piece, look at the videos and add Audio Hijack Pro to your Mac.

Productivity lessons from Blake’s 7

Posted by

0

blakes7logo

In fact this came from Blake himself: Gareth Thomas suggested I do this when I was interviewing him for a forthcoming book about the BBC science fiction series.

Actually, full disclosure, it was more that he couldn’t fathom why I was such an eejit that I wasn’t already doing it.

It’s just this: put your phone calls on speakerphone and tape them.

For all that I said yesterday about finding it hard to make certain types of calls, I have made a fairly constant stream of them throughout my writing and especially journalism careers. With Gareth, I really wanted to phone him over Skype so that I could record the call on my Mac. But he wanted to phone me instead.

I do loathe costing my interviewees any money, I don’t see why they should pay for the call or go out of their way for me, but Gareth couldn’t do anything else. He was on tour in a play and fitting me in on a Saturday morning; he might be able to predict what town he’d be in but there was no way to give me a phone number to ring. I would of course have accepted a mobile number, very happily, but mobile to Skype to Mac has proved tricky before. More than one interviewee has said I sound like I’m in a barrel down a mineshaft.

So I’m genuinely mithered over what to do in order to record the interview. I have to record it. Have to. I’m not going to get a huge amount of time with him and he is somewhat vital to the book, I need to make the most of the chat.

I’ve never actually met Gareth Thomas, I’ve just now done two phoner interviews with him over the years. But even in those short times, I can tell you that he is as charming and funny and interesting as you would expect. Yet I swear I could feel him thinking the word ‘eejit’ before he explained to me that I didn’t need to route the call through my Mac to record it.

Ever get the feeling you’ve been doing something wrong for twenty years? So that happened.

I recorded that man three ways from hell. I rang him on my landline, had my iPhone and my iPad recording the sound from the speaker and I even got my Mac to do it too.

And that’s the productivity lesson: use your Mac or presumably your PC to record calls. You can’t just record anything, it has to be with permission and agreement like I had there with Gareth and a book interview, but you can record anything – in that anything that makes a sound, you can record.

Since that interview, I’ve recorded many calls. Lots of interviews, naturally, but also phone meetings or conversations where I’ve really needed to find out a lot of things and there isn’t much time.

I don’t know how you do this on a PC, though I imagine it’s part of Windows Media Player, but on a Mac you just launch QuickTime Player. Doubtlessly because of its name, few people realise that this Player also records. It can record anything that happens on your screen – so it’s ideal for showing someone how to do something – or it will record your face through your Mac’s camera. Or it will simply record audio.

Choose that, hit the record button. Here’s a second productivity tip, this time discovered by me without the aid of Roj Blake, fictional freedom fighter: identify yourself for the recording. I say my name, the date, the time and who I’ve agreed to record. You don’t think you’ll do this all that often but over the last six months I’ve gathered up a stock of maybe fifteen such calls and being able to identify them in the first few seconds of playback is a godsend.

Especially since QuickTime Player confuses me continually. Once you record something, it is there as an untitled document. Close it and it will ask you for a name to save it under. Or you can just save it and then close it. I say this to you and I cannot see what is so hard. Yet I regularly end up wondering whether I’m going to save or accidentally delete the recording. And I postpone worrying about it by leaving them all there.

So I’ve currently got about seven Untitled phone recordings on my Mac.

I promise to sort through them.

One more productivity tip, this time from my years producing UK DVD Review. That was a podcast from 2005-2010 which I’m proud to say peaked in the top ten of all podcasts, of all genres, across the entire world. I think there were only 11 podcasts then. But I learnt this. If you’re recording a lot, I mean for a long time and maybe just doing a few calls one after another, clap your hands.

I clap three times before the start of a long recording. Interviewees think I am strange. But they suspected that anyway.

This is pointless if it’s just a quick call and even with the much longer one I did with Gareth, it was straightforward: I just transcribed it afterwards from start to finish. Often, though, I will have such a long recording that I need to find parts of it quickly. Usually that’s the start of the next interview. When I was doing this for broadcast, it would be to find the next take or the next section.

These are all things that I would tend to listen to in a proper audio editor instead of just through QuickTime Player. (You don’t have to launch QuickTime Player to listen back to a recording: just find it on your Mac and tap your spacebar. It’s gorgeous how fast that is when you have a lot to look through.) With a proper audio editor, you get wave forms.

And with waveforms, the clap is really distinctive. You get three massive spikes in a row and you can just skip straight to that.

So. With permission, record your interviews or other detailed calls. Do it simply on your computer, label everything, and clap yourself if you’ve done a good job.