Interested in Recording Oral History?
With the advent of high-speed internet connections, and with lots more people now used to making video and audio calls online, it’s now easier than ever to conduct oral history interviews remotely and capture high-quality audio. As a composer, my work primarily involves using audio oral history recordings as part of a musical work. I gathered a few of my favorite resources in the list below to help you get started.
Web-based Tools For Audio
Cleanfeed is a remote recording studio solution that uses the Chrome browser (for the host). The free version has unlimited tracks, and it’s easy to invite others to join the recording. It’s a great option for doing remote interviews, podcasts, and the like. I use the premium version of this tool to record remote interviews for Family Association, which is capable of creating multi-track recordings that split up the interviewee and interviewer into different audio tracks, which helps with post-production.
Soundtrap is a web-based digital audio workstation for editing and mixing audio; scroll down to the bottom and sign up for a free account.
Soundcloud is a web-based audio hosting solution, for creating embeddable audio players and links. This is a great place to host your audio and allows other listeners to follow your work and comment directly on the sound file.
Free and Useful Software For Audio
Audacity is a free, open-source, powerful, and very commonly used audio editor. It’s most useful for editing mixed audio (e.g. selecting a clip in the middle, adding fade in and fade out, normalizing, or adding basic compression). It’s free! I use it whenever I’m converting from WAV / AIFF files to MP3.
Tutorials Related To The Workshop
Setting up Cleanfeed: https://blog.cleanfeed.net/getting-started-cleanfeed/
Getting started with Soundtrap: https://www.soundtrap.com/tutorials
Creating a virtual tour on Google Earth Web: https://www.google.com/earth/outreach/learn/create-a-map-or-story-in-google-earth-web/
Google Earth
Demonstration virtual tour using interviews from The Emigrants, Soundcloud, and Google Earth Web
Useful Equipment for Recording Audio
USB Audio Interface: this is essentially a go-between that connects a microphone (which produces an analog sound signal) to a computer (which receives a digital audio signal). There are lots of different options, but the home studio standard at the moment includes the Focusrite Scarlett series. This is a good bundle here that includes a condenser microphone, headphones, the interface, and an XLR audio cable.
Podcasting Arm: I’m not sure what this is technically called, but if you plan on doing lots of recording, or even if you’re just looking for a different option for getting better audio for online meetings, a microphone arm is very useful and saves space on your desk.
Headphones: Good headphones are also very useful for monitoring audio. They also make things sound better (and truer). And if I’m listening to recorded oral history or testimony in higher quality, it helps to inspire more ideas! Here are the headphones that I’m currently using; not very expensive, but I’m also not a pro-audio expert.
Field Recording: If you are looking to capture audio that’s directly in front of the microphone (and nowhere else), a shotgun mic is the way to go. There are good quality shotgun mics on the market for about $100-$200, and it’s a good investment if you’re looking to capture higher quality interviews in the field. I used the Audio-Technica AT8035 for my field recordings.
Portable Recorder: The Zoom H1n is now the home studio standard for a portable field recorder. There is a stereo pair of microphones arranged in an XY configuration, and the settings are very easy to adjust.
Oral History+ Resources
There are a lot of very useful oral history resources! Here are a few that I find useful, plus some related stuff as well:
Radio: An Illustrated Guide (Jessica Abel)