Creating art from an ancestor's audio archive
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How I am honoring the memory of my grandfather by converting his music passion (recorded on tape) to digitalj.
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Creating art from an ancestor's audio archive
- 1. Creating Art from an Ancestor’s Audio Archive Ninja rebelnotion.wordpress.com ninja-radio.com Podcamp 2017 Feb 25-26
- 2. Who I Am • Application of the 12:00pm Session : Fuck Followers: Creating Content for the Sake of Creating • Ninja is an IT Professional and Podcaster • Audio and camera webcast for MCCT • a veteran of podcamp • active podcaster from Aug 2006 to March 2015. • Too busy right now • Focus has been sound-art
- 3. My Grandfather’s Project • April 2016 – email from Aunt - Do I want memorabilia • Charlie recorded off the radio in the 60s onto reel-to-reel and then in the 70s to cassette tape • Hours of his favourite classical music • Grandfather was a woodwind and brass musician with the TSO and CBC in the 30s and 40s. • Copyright issues didn’t concern him • A music library for his friend Edward • 23 binders with 250 tapes
- 4. What I’ll Share • My Tools • Basics of using tape Copying software • Basics of using Audacity, the free audio editing software • How to organize your material • How to stay motivated enough to keep going • Keeping the past alive and vital • My creative process that you might benefit from
- 5. Tools – Conversion and Copying • Audio Cassette Player and Transfer Software ($70.00+tax at Bestbuy) • http://www.honestech.com/main/audioRecorder30plus.asp
- 6. Tools - Laptop • Your workstation ($$ vary)
- 7. Tools - Audio Editor • Audacity (free) • http://www.audacityteam.org/ • V2.1.2
- 8. Tools – MP3 Encoder • Software patent issues precludes an mp3 encoder to be included with Audacity. • LAME MP3 encoder – Allows Audacity to export MP3 files. (free) • Leaving your files as .WAV files or other types often make the size of your resulting sound files very large • Tradeoff • (LAME = Lame Aint an Mp Encoder)
- 9. Tools - Effects Library • Effects plugins for Audacity (mostly free) • Nyquist (Audio scripting language) • VST (Virtual Studio Technology) • LADSPA (Linux Audio Developers Simple Plug-in API) • http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Category:Plug-ins • Choose from a vast array of effects. • De-clipper • Stereo Left and Right Channel Adjustments, LFO Phaser • Reverb, Time Slide, Delay, Echo
- 10. Tools - Your Internet Presence • A Web Presence ($50.00US /year for audio uploads). • File types I’m allowed to upload: jpg, jpeg, png, gif, pdf, doc, ppt, odt, pptx, docx, pps, ppsx, xls, xlsx, key, mp3, m4a, wav, ogg, zip.
- 11. Tools • Time and Patience
- 12. Organizing the Material – Have a Plan • Starting is easy. Just pop in a tape and walk away. • Tapes and software won’t behave – ramp up time to get it right • 10 months for 200+ tapes • Files are organized in Folder Hierarchy like this: • Binder Name BOOK R • Tape Number R01 • Tape Size R01-60.mp3 • R01-60 Side A Doppler Hungarian Fantasy.mp3 • R01-60 Side B Böhm Variations for Flute.mp3 • R01-60 Side A Voice Fragment 1.mp3 • R01-60 Side B Charlie Green Commentary
- 13. How to Stay Motivated • Patience • Experiment and have fun • I know my grandfather would be thrilled that I was doing this. This was his long time pet project.
- 14. Tutorial – Audacity Basics • Importing files • Basic commands and actions you would perform • Removing audio • Altering audio • Saving projects • Saving audio
- 15. Tutorial • Tape Conversion Software
- 16. DEMO and Links • http://rebelnotion.wordpress.com/ • http://bit.ly/2lo4nEo - this presentation (dropbox) • http://bit.ly/2loag4L - setting up honestech audio recorder (dropbox) • https://www.ninja-radio.com/ • https://rebelnotion.wordpress.com/ • Facebook: Ninjar DeHotfrm • Twitter: @ninja_radio
Editor's Notes
- Last year my aunt called me to ask if I wanted to take some of my grandfather’s memorabilia off her hands as her children did not want it. I accepted and found my self with approx. 250 cassette tapes spread over 23 binders. They were the tapes Grandpa Green was making most of the times I would visit him. My recollection was of him recording music off the radio, using a reel to reel tape recorder, a cigarette dangling off his lip, squinting in the smoke, asking me what instrument I was planning to become proficient in as he prepared to verbally annotate the recordings via his microphone. So I took these tapes, many of which he converted from reel to reel to cassette. I moved all the content to my PC. And I’m going to talk about what that involved. I’m Ninja, a veteran of podcamp, and was an active podcaster from Aug 2006 to Sep 2015. I loved it but became too busy in the last two years. I hope to publish podcasts again in the future. But at the moment I’m working on this project.
- I have several workstations. One running Linux (UBUNTU 16) and two running windows. One windows laptop is dedicated to converting media from cassettes and VHS tapes. The one I am on now is my workhorse.
- In reality I had to do some experimenting first to ensure that the tapes were being converted and loaded onto my computer as I intended with acceptable sound levels, minimal clipping, etc. Now what : 213 hours of music, 4 hours of music fragments that I could recognize and others I couldn’t, 1 hour of voice fragments, 1 hour of my grandfather talking Makes 3 DVDs or 16GB key of the library and my grandfather. This is for the family But I wanted to do more. I wanted to shape and play with some of the material to make interesting audio pieces. Copyright issues. Can give the set away to anyone I want as long as money is not involved. I can do whatever I want with my grandfather’s commentaries and audio notes. That’s where the fun begins.