Record and Share the Voices of the Past

I recently read a great book: Listening is an Act of Love. This book is a compilation of voice interviews conducted by the StoryCorps Project. I first hear of StoryCorps when I listened to National Public Radio (NPR) and heard one of the interviews. One such interview is played every Friday morning on NPR's Morning Edition.

The way StoryCorps works is this: they basically have a sound booth set up that permits anyone (sign-up is usually months in advance) to come in and record an interview. These interviews are then preserved at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. Also, the participants are given a sound-studio quality cd of the recorded session.

These interviews are all very real, very heartfelt discussions, many times from a grandparent to a grandchild, or a father to son, or siblings or any other number of interview possibilities. The book compiled select stories that ranged from discussions of the depression, love stories, stories of the battles of addiction, stories of the events of 9/11 and more. Very amazing concept and book.

But this idea really hit home when my father allowed me the distinct privilege of converting a few of his old cassette tapes to digital. His father, my grandfather, had sent a couple of "letters" to them in the past when he was alive, but he had sent the "letters" in the form of cassette tape recordings.

To make these tapes digital I basically did this: I played the cassette from a tape player into the line-in outlet of my computer. I then used free voice software, in this case Audacity, to record the cassettes. I would then clean them up as I wanted, saving them as a .wav files and as mp3's. I have details in my tech blog listed in the resources/links area.

This became even more fun when I uploaded the "cassettes," now mp3's. Any number of free link sharing websites are available, but I used one called sendspace, also listed in the links/resources area. For free, sendspace lets you upload files and then send/share the files with others via accessible links. Since these mp3 files were pretty big, I needed a service like this to let me send links rather than the whole files.

Now with the accessible links, I sent these mp3's to my father. I then asked him whether or not he, or I, could share them with my siblings and others. At first, he didn't think anyone else would be interested. Of course, as you might have suspected, my siblings and all other relatives I asked were extremely interested and loved getting copies of these recordings, allowing them to hear voices of the past coming from their computers for them to hear.

You see, the true beauty of these recordings is not always what is said. It is a powerful blend of what is said and who is saying them. These recordings are priceless and deserve to be preserved in whatever way possible.

Since then, my father has allowed me to do other conversions for him. He had the foresight to have conducted recordings himself in the past, one of my other grandfather, now passed-away. Now with this link created I could send this preserved recording to the other side of the family and many got to hear a voice they hadn't heard before or at least in a very long time.

So I encourage you to begin recording people on your own. There are many that have things to say that just need a place to say them; many have stories and knowledge that would be a true shame if they were not preserved. Record your dad and make a tape out of it. Make a cd out of your grandfather's stories. Save the recording of how you and your wife met. Save the recording of what your grandmother did during the depression. All of this is pure gold and will be missed if not preserved.

This can all be done with very little cost and a great deal of gain. Start now and save the voices of those that mean the most to you so they can be heard in the future.