recorders are Edirol, Zoom, Marantz, and The Big Playback
M-Audio. (www.apple.com/pro/tech-
niques/richmedia/index3.html). Playing back a recording of your ensemble is an effective way
These recorders are not cheap. for the students to evaluate their own performance with their full
Starting price for these devices is about attention. The best time to play back a recording is immediately
$250, and can go higher than $500. after your ensemble has finished performing, similar to the way that
But like a good pair of shoes, you get The M-Audio pilots are debriefed immediately after an air encounter. Do it while
what you pay for. MicroTrack 24/96 it is fresh in their minds. This is why it is preferable to have your
computer or recording device hooked up directly to the sound
Software Solutions system in your music room. The key is having a playback system
that is loud and full enough to accurately re-create the volume and
There are many different software programs that can be used to frequency response of your performance. If the bass on your sound
record to your computer. Most are tailored specifically for either the system isn’t powerful enough, it will always sound like the bass
Mac or the PC platform, such as Garageband for Macintosh OS X, singers or lower instruments are performing too quietly.
and SoundForge for the PC. For the sake of clarity, I will mention Take great care in the balance placement of your speakers. Since
two great software applications for recording that are available for you are trying to let the students know exactly what the music
both operating systems. One of the best all-around audio and video sounds like in your ears, your microphone should be placed as close
recording programs is QuickTime. QuickTime for video and audio to your head is possible, and your speakers should be equally placed
playback is a free download available from Apple (http:// on either side of you. This is why a stereo recording of your per-
www.apple.com/quicktime). It comes included on most computers. formance is superior to a mono recording. The stereo recording gives
The recording and editing options of this program are available greater depth and balance of the original performance. The micro-
through the upgrade version, which costs about $30. This is $30 phones tend not to lie. It doesn’t take a pair of $300 stereo micro-
well spent as the program gives you the ability to record audio and phones to highlight the fact that you have two flutes that are 20
video, save your recording to virtually any format, edit, and prepare cents sharp!
for upload to any destination of your choice. The controls for this A particularly attractive reason to record your ensemble is not
program look very much like the controls that he would find on any only to let the students hear and evaluate their performance, but also
CD or DVD player, and are designed for easy use. to share their performance with parents, administrators, and your
Although it looks very simple and supporters. It’s a great way to let everyone know what is going on in
plain on the surface, Quicktime is a very your class. There are three main methods of distributing your
powerful software engine. In fact, recordings. The first is by burning your recording to a CD; iTunes,
QuickTime is the basic engine for most which is available for free on both the Mac and PC platforms, allows
of the audio in video programs on your you to take any recordings and burn them to a CD with one click.
computer. Using QuickTime will Those CDs can then be distributed by hand to your students and
enable you to export your audio and parents. Burning 40 or 50 CDs for distribution to your ensemble
video in any format, such as MP3 or 3GP (cellphone format), and may not be a practical method in terms of both time and money. In
allows you to choose the quality and file size that you desire. terms of the environment, it may not be a practical idea either.
Much of the music on those CDs that you distribute will be import-
Solutions for the Budget-Conscious ed onto another computer, and the CD will be discarded, filling up
landfills with more plastic that will take thousands of years to
There really are some terrific free software programs available degrade.
on the Internet, and my favorite free software program for recording The second method, a little bit more gentle on the environ-
audio is Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/). It features com- ment, is to e-mail the recording. If you were to make a mailing
plete audio recording and editing, and allows you to save your audio group in your email program with the names of the students and
files in a several different formats, including MP3, AIFF (the format parents, the recording can be attached as an MP3 file and deliver to
commonly found on CDs), and WAV (the format commonly found all parties with one click of a button. That music file then can be
on PCs.) Unlike QuickTime, Audacity allows you to tweak the qual- imported into iTunes or the music management program of the
ity of your sound, reduce background noise, and apply effects such recipient’s choice.
as reverb and echo. Once a recording is edited in Audacity, it can be The third way that the file can be distributed is via the Internet.
imported into an audio management program like iTunes, and be For music teachers that have a school or blog or personal webpage,
prepared for burning or uploading or e-mailing to the destination of the recording can be uploaded to the website, and the link can be
your choice. distributed to everyone directing them to the webpage that hosts the
If you choose not to pay $30 for the editing and format con- recording. This option is little bit more technically challenging, but
verting options of QuickTime, you can perform some of these oper- can be a very efficient way of hosting and distributing all of your
ations in iTunes. iTunes also allows you the option of transferring ensemble’s recordings.
your recordings to your iPod, which can then be used for playback Don’t be afraid to give pedagogical recording a try. There are
in the classroom. music teachers throughout America who are already employing this
method of evaluation in their classrooms. Many are using their
TEMPO 64 MAY 2009
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