Okay – so you want to leave some audio feedback for Confessing The Blues, but you’d like it to sound a little better than our voicemail line. We can help!

(This document isn’t intended for people who already have the know-how to do a recording – if that’s you, just do a 24-bit, 44.1KHz mono recording. If it’s less than 3 minutes, it should be less than 20MB and will attach directly to an email. Otherwise, you can probably get about 6 minutes by using FLAC. Contact us at info@confessingtheblues.com to send in your feedback or for info on our FTP site if your recording is more than 20MB.)

What You’ll Need

1. A computer with a microphone (if you can use skype, then you can record us feedback)

2. Software to record your feedback – the easiest one we’ve found is called RecordPad and it works on Macs and Windows computers. This document walks through using RecordPad.

General Procedure

1. Download and install RecordPad from http://www.nch.com.au/recordpad/index.html. Go ahead – do it now, we’ll wait.
2. The first time you start RecordPad, it opens up the Microphone Connection and Record Volume window. This is where you set up your microphone and make sure that the computer is set to record your voice:
   

   If you’ve selected the right microphone and your volume is good, when you talk, you should see some green in the level meter. When you talk in a normal tone of voice, the meter should show in the “good” range. If it doesn’t, click on the button that says “Open Windows Record Mixer” and adjust the volume of your microphone until you’re in that “good” range.

   On a Mac, you’ll probably have a slider marked Record Volume. Adjust that so that when you talk, your voice is peaking in the low side of the “high” region.

   Click Finish.

3. The main window for RecordPad should come up. Click on the options button. It will open the Options windows. Click on the “Output” tab:
   

   Make sure your output format is “Wav”.

   You can set your “Destination Folder” whereever you’d like. I set it to my desktop, so I can easily find the file that I just recorded. You can save it to your documents folder or anywhere else you’d like. You can change the third option to ask you for a filename when you record, but that’s up to you. BEFORE you click OK, click on the button that says “Format Settings…”. It’s part of the Output Format section.

   

   Make sure the format is “PCM Uncompressed” and the Attributes are “44100 Hz, 24 Bits, Mono”. Click OK here, and then on the Options window. (If you don’t have an option for 24 Bits, use “44100 Hz, 16 Bits, Mono”.)

   For Mac, use the following settings in the “Format Settings…” window:
   Settings: Custom
   Format: PCM
   Sample Rate: 44100
   Bits Per Sample: 16
   Channels: 1

4. Now you’re ready to go. Just click on the red circle (record button) and start talking!
   

5. You can talk for about 3 minutes before you exceed the size of a file that can be directly attached to an email. But don’t worry – if you’ve got a lot to say, just email us and we’ll tell you how to compress the file for email or how to upload to our FTP site.
6. The file you recorded is saved conveniently in your destination folder, so just send us an email (info@confessingtheblues.com and attach your file.