In this post: Voice recorder for monitoring progress How do I sound? Am I playing better today than I was six months ago? Why not try recording yourself at various stages along the way to monitor your progress? With today’s technology nothing could be simpler.
If you have a tape recorder around or maybe a boom box with cassette recording capability, you can use that. Recently I bought a digital voice recorder with the idea of having something readily available – because it is so small and portable – to record musical ideas (tunes) that I think up. Quality of sound was less important in my mind than portability and ready availability.
I was pleasantly shocked to discover this little Sony digital recorder of mine has outstanding recording capabilities. I recorded an entire nightclub type concert given by the Latin-African fusion band my sax teacher plays in. I thought surely the loudness would kill any hopes of a decent recording, but I wanted it for my teacher, who uses such recordings to monitor the band’s progress and look for areas in the performance that could use modification. The end result was a very credible recording, made simply by placing the recorder on a bunched handkerchief on the table. With the accompanying editing software I was able to convert the files to MP3 and even audio CD for playing on any CD player.
My specific model is Sony ICD-PX720. Staples doesn’t list it now, but I bought it there for less than $60 a few months ago. Amazon has listings for it as low as $46.42. There are other makes and models, of course. Just look for voice recorder. (There are also higher-level music recording devices as well. Zoom is one manufacturer to consider.)
The reason I chose the Sony was its large storage capacity. I had tried recording an earlier concert for my teacher, using his music recorder, and ran out of storage capacity before the last two numbers were played.
Later,
-- Al
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