And I confirmed what I suspected: it takes a lot of time to transcribe natural, garrulous speech. I had less than fifteen minutes of material, but my subject spoke very fast and colloquially, and I wanted to capture his phrasing, so I was constantly having to go back to re-listen.
I completed the transcription on Tuesday last week, but of course it was rough, as conversation is. And it needed review by the subject, who required to communicate his impressions face-to-face. But he was leaving town too, so we had to postpone the review.
The experience taught me that it's much, much easier and quicker to upload the sound file to my computer for transcription. The controls on my Droid phone for stopping, going back, resuming are "touchy," and I often had to restart the playback and begin again at the beginning.
Though I unwisely conducted the interview in the swimming-pool area of the fitness center, with its air-conditioning fans constantly roaring in the background, the conversation wasn't drowned out. Pretty amazing technology, actually.
While all this has been interesting, and recording interviews will enable me to interview people who are not "writerly," I obviously need to improve my technique in order to make recorded interviews viable for me to handle with my limited time and mental energy.
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Copyright © 2013 by Morris Dean
| Please comment |
Remembering my travails as a journalist who wore out countless portable cassette recorders from the 1970s through 1990s, I had to chuckle at your situation. Digital technology is amazing in its place, but there is something to be said for being able to punch one big button for play and another for rewind, and for knowing that every time you stop and restart the tape it picks up exactly where you left off. There was also something to be said for being able to pop the cassette out of the recorder, toss it to the office steno pool, and have pages of typed conversation appear as if by magic.
ReplyDeletePaul, going over the recording with, for example, Windows Media Player is quite as satisfactory as the "big buttons for play and rewind" on a portable cassette recorder—better, in fact, in that you can move the little "ball" indicating where you are as far back or forward as you want (to guess where you want to go), and that's a lot faster than waiting for the cassette to rewind or go forward.
DeleteWhy I didn't think of uploading from my phone first thing so I could use Windows Media Player is beyond me—but perhaps only because the brain decay that prevented me from thinking of it right off is also preventing me from understanding why I didn't think of it right off...except that it now appears that my brain was able to think of the reason.
In other words, I may not have many more years (or months?) during which I'll continue to be minimally competent to do this sort of thing....
In the meantime, I'll have as much fun with it as I can...or continue to have fun with it until it is no longer fun.
I bet this idea sounded good in your head. (smile)
ReplyDeleteEd, see my reply to Paul, above. I'm not sure whether ideas' seeming good in my head is a continuing strength of my head, or a sign of waning powers....
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