How to make soundfiles (was: Eyn Keyloheynu)

[Joe Kurland <ganeydn...>]

At 11:46 PM -0400 5/15/01, AGREENBA (at) aol(dot)com wrote:
>(My website is currently undergoing some major work, mostly trying to get
>sound into it. I?m working with a person in Ohio, my domain host and
>webmaster, and she can?t get the sound files to work. How the heck did you do
>that so easily, just singing into the computer and bingo it?s there? Maybe
>answer off list if I?m the only ignorant one here - along with my presumed
>professional who also can?t figure it out. Argh.)

I'll answer on list to encourage other list members to do the same.

I have a Mac.  I don't know if it's as easy on a Windows machine, but 
I'd guess it is.  Maybe a Windows user can contribute a method.

A few years back I found a couple of shareware programs on the 
internet called SoundHack and SoundEffects.  The writers of those 
programs were happy to accept $15 or a piece of the user's music in 
return for the downloads.  Both of these programs are able to 
manipulate sound files as well as to record them from a microphone 
plugged into your computer (Mac's come with mics.) or import them 
from CDs.  Among other things you can speed up or slow down a sound 
file while maintaining constant pitch--great for picking apart 
ornamentation on old recordings.

I've usually used low sampling rates to keep file sizes down, so I 
don't know what kind of quality you can get doing all these 
manipulations with high sampling rates.  With low sampling rates, 
don't expect great sound quality, but it's certainly good enough for 
allowing us to hear what we're talking about when we want to compare 
liturgical melodies.

But for simple recording, these programs work just like a tape 
recorder, and then you can save the files as .au or .aiff files.

I haven't been keeping track of SoundHack or SoundEffects for a 
couple of years now, as the versions I have have been working well 
enough for my purposes.  But I just went to a website where you can 
download both of them:
        http://www.music.calarts.edu/
Scroll down the page till you see "Music Software for the Macintosh" 
and "Music Software for the PC."  From a quick view of the PC page, 
you might need a sound card installed in your machine if you have a 
Windows machine.  The Mac programs will work with the mic that comes 
with the machine.  For electronic music junkies, there's lots of 
other stuff there as well.

Once you've recorded the sound, you can upload it to your website, I 
do it in a folder called sounds, put a link to it on one of your 
pages, and tell the list how to find it.  There are any number of 
sound player plug-ins for your web browser, some of which you can 
find on the calarts website.


Zayt gezunt (be healthy),

Yosl (Joe) Kurland
The Wholesale Klezmer Band
Colrain, MA 01340
voice/fax: 413-624-3204
http://www.WholesaleKlezmer.com

---------------------- jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org ---------------------+