How to Write Your Memoir (Cont)

In this blog I continue my discussion about how to easily capture a casual discussion of friends and relatives using a handheld recorder.

A good way is if you place the recorder in the center of the table or area where the speakers are talking. This works well unless you’re trying to cover a large area. If it is a large room or there are other conflicting conversations or noise going on, there may still be some unclear words.

Another good way is if the speaker(s) holds the recorder to their mouth. These last two ways are probably going to be the more likely ways to record in a large gathering. Try as much as possible to have the speaker speak “to” the recorder, rather than have their voice turned away from the recorder.

Even better than that is if you have a good microphone that records quality sound hooked up to the recorder and the microphone is passed from speaker to speaker. The biggest problem with this is if one speaker is holding the mic and someone else wants to add something to what the speaker is saying, the second speaker may be difficult to hear. This takes careful monitoring.

The best way is if you have a microphone hooked up to a sound recording system (such as Sony Sound Forge or Audacity) on your computer, and there is not a lot of noise in the background. That is going to give you the best quality of recording.

I document more ways to capture memoirs by recording them in my book “How to Write Your Memoir: Three Simple Steps.

If you have any questions about this series of writing your memoirs, please let me know. I’ll be glad to answer your questions.

Or you can leave our comments below and I’ll address them for you.

Suggestions or alternative ways that you have used to document your memoirs are also welcome.