Always-on Recording

ALWAYS ON RECORDING

I have used audio and video recording in rehearsal before to great effect. When singers hear themselves, it reinforces the feedback the director has given throughout time. The big problem for me was that sometimes I wanted them to hear something that just happened, something that was EXCEPTIONAL (either positive or negative) that I didn’t have the foresight to record. After all - you can’t just record every second of rehearsal, right? Or can you?

After a little digging, I discovered that “there’s an app for that.” On both iOS and Android platforms, there are apps designed to capture audio in a perpetual buffer. They record constantly, but only keep a portion of time in the buffer (5-10 minutes). This has proven to be an answer to my prayers! I start the app and let it run all rehearsal. When the choir sings something I want them to hear, I press a button, and the last 5 minutes are saved as an audio file. I can immediately play it back or save it for later. Even while I play back a clip, the buffer still runs. I can grab anything the choir sings, or I can grab one of my analogies for later. I guess I could also use it if a student got mouthy, but I haven’t done so yet.

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There might be others, but the two I use are HEARD (for iOS) and PAST RECORDER (Android). There is a small charge, though. I use them a lot, and think you will find them incredibly useful. They can not only be used for local playback, but audio files can be exported if you wish to share them to your Google Classroom or the like. And the best news? You don’t end up with a slew of massive audio files piling up on your device!