Recording Fun (Dear Diary)

Hello everyone, and welcome to Dear Diary! On our last blog week, I talked about how I became interested in music. Listening to music is now a pretty big part of my life. However, that’s not the only audio hobby I dabbled in. When I was younger, I loved to listen to things like audiobooks. Plus, I was a little interested in radio shows, thanks to some magazines who educated me in how those work. Combine that with my interest in storytelling and creativity, and you get someone who wanted to play around with recordings. And sure enough, that came about with our mini tape recorder.

Yep, I had a tape recorder for a little while. We had these blank CDs that we could record audio on and then play anywhere, and I thought it was super cool. Originally, I would just use it to record what events were going on with my toys, like some sort of TV narrator. I left that CD with simply one or two recordings for a long time. It wasn’t long before I picked it up again though, especially after learning more about radio. This time, I was laser-focused on making the most out of this recorder.

So, I got started with making this tape recorder about… well, whatever I wanted it to. I would record audio stories, usually by reading from magazine stories. When some story event was going on with my toys, I would record the event on the tape recorder like I was some sort of newsperson. Then, I ran with that idea and took it even farther. I had a horse kingdom called Continent Farm which would often have royalty and celebrities attached. They would come on and do little interviews on some radio show. It was really similar to what I did with my camera, and it came at a similar time too.

But, alas, all good things must come to an end. As I recorded more and more bits, the CD got fuller. Eventually, when I play back the CD, it could only play parts of each recording. At first, I considered it an interesting way to switch back and forth between stories. I was pretty much in denial though. The CD got so full I could barely tell what was going on, so that was the end of that. Somehow, I didn’t think to ask for a new blank CD, so I just put the tape recorder away for good. I believe I eventually lost it and moved to my camera recordings instead.

That would be the end of the story if it weren’t for a new discovery I made a few years later. My dad had an iPad that he only occasionally used for entertainment. One day, he showed me this new app he downloaded called GarageBand. You’ve probably heard of it, but in case you haven’t, GarageBand is basically an app where you can mix and make music with the various instruments it gives. I was able to mess with the app for a while, but it was more of a casual look around. I messed around with the instruments, but not in a musical way. More like in a pressing the screen randomly kind of way.

One of the things I came across was a piano feature where you can play random audio clips as the piano keys. The audio clips could even be pitched higher or lower depending on which key you pressed. So, you were able to play any tune in the sound of whatever noise you want. And how do you choose which noise you want? By recording it, of course! So, once I figured this out, I tried out different noises and played them on this piano. It was really entertaining, for sure! But then, I figured out if I played the middle key, it would just play back the recording in a normal pitch. Not only that, but recordings can be whatever length you want them to be. And not only that, but you can toggle an option to have the entire recording play once a key was pressed. You can just straight up record anything on this digital piano and play it back like a regular recorder.

At first, the recordings were rather reasonable. Since IHeartRadio, the only music app I had, didn’t allow you to choose which songs to play, I started making my own way to play songs. I would start recording songs from my browser into the digital piano to play whenever I wanted. The sound quality of an iPad is pretty bad, but I loved it all the same. Plus, I can pitch up or down the song, so I could make the singers sound like chipmunks or like they’re about to collapse from exhaustion. It was peak entertainment!

Then, I realized we could record any message. It didn’t have to be music related. It could be a full replacement for my old tape recorder! And so back it went. There were still some interviews and things like that, but things started to diverge in a different direction. Me and my brother would tell stories where I would say the most nonsensical events possible, and my brother would act as the confused co-host that had sense. We found these hilarious, which led to even more of these stories being made. Messages were recorded back and forth to each other. I even tried dabbling in making some silly music with my own lyrics. These did not sound good, but they existed nonetheless.

I had fun with this feature for a long time, playing with it way longer than any other feature on GarageBand. We kind of strayed away from the original intention of GarageBand, but at least I had fun. This would not last either though. I was given permission to begin listening to music on YouTube, which became the listening platform I still use today. As for the audio skits, multiple factors led to me leaving them. I had lost interest after the hype died down. I was growing up. We were moving away from using the iPad in general. And the factor which basically brought the death of my time with GarageBand: my own phone. That became the go-to device for recording anything I wanted to, so GarageBand became obsolete.

Despite my highs and lows with audio recordings, I loved taking part in them. They were such a fun and unique way for creativity, to let your imagination take hold without a picture to instruct you. I had a lot of fun with this feature, and though I’ve moved on, the memories will still bring me a lot of joy in the feature. Thank you for reading, and I’ll see you all next time!

This article and more seen on my blog site, Violet Pages.