There are a number of different ways to record audio:

• Record directly into software on your computer
• Record to your phone
• Record to a device designed to record audio

In our class we will go over recording to your computer in Audacity and recording to your phone.

Recording in Audacity

What you need

In order to follow along you will need

• A computer with Audacity installed
• A microphone. Most computers will have microphones built in. There will be a dropdown in Audacity where you can check.
  • If yours doesn’t and you don’t have a microphone you can plug into a computer then try recording on your phone and opening that file in Audacity.

How to Record

Audacity Tutorial: This is in their instruction manual.

VIDEO TUTORIAL: We are going to go over this YouTube video in class:

This video covers the basics of :

• Setting up Audacity
• Checking that the microphone is working
• Recording settings
• Recording
• Editing the recorded audio so it sounds better including: removing room noise, equalizing, normalizing and compressing.

We will walk through the video in class so that you can get help with it and because there are a few things that have changed in Audacity since the video was made. We will also be able to get more insight into some of the audio terms and concepts we started in class previously.

Recording to Your Phone

If you have a smartphone then you will be able to record audio on it. It’s a bit different for Android and iOS phones so I will link to guides below.

For both phones the process is similar:

1. Open an app that allows you to record sound
2. Record your sound. If it’s just your voice then try to be in a quiet room without a lot of echo and keep close to the microphone.
3. Get the file of the recording to your computer
   1. Save to a cloud storage like Dropbox (instructions for CUNY Dropbox)
      1. Then you would go to dropbox on the computer and download the file
   2. email the file to yourself
      1. Then you will need to check your email on the computer and save the file
   3. There may also be an option to transfer the file directly to your computer.

Phone specific instructions

• ANDROID
  • Recording to an Android phone
  • Alternate Android Instructions
• iOS
  • Recording to an Apple iOS phone
  • Alternate iOS Instructions