The Recording is completed, now to make it a listening pleasure!

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You have the audio recorded so now tt’s time to look how you will edit your Life Story and what style we use.

To date you’ve been concerned with everything you need to generate the audio recording. The emotional, physical and technical aspects of sitting down and recording someone, in a clear well produced and expressive way, while maintaining all of their personality. Now you have the audio recorded, it’s time to start the process of post production on your way to sharing a Life Story.

Audio editing software is available in free versions, if you have an Apple computer, the iLife suite has GarageBand or get the open-source editor, Audacity which is available for Mac and PC.

No recording will be perfect from start to finish and even if it is, there are still things that can be done with the audio to enhance the quality of the sound and to improve the listening experience. Sure a recording in the format in which it was recorded can just be put onto a medium for replaying like a compact disc but that will limit the uses of it and doesn’t make it all that it could possible be.

The reason you’re creating a Life Story is not only to capture the information that is contained within the stories and life experiences but also to share that information. In order to help people to listen and engage so they learn the information that is in those stories. You need to endeavour to make the audio as interesting and entertaining as possible. These are the reasons behind the previous recording and storytelling technique episodes but also the motivation for spending some time in tiding up the audio to make it a pleasure to listen to.

The aspects of audio that will often require attention are:

* Removal of introduction and closing chatter

* Enhancement of audio quality

* Removal of background ambient noise

* Editing long pauses and repeated sections

* Rearrange audio to help with conversational flow

* Remove sections that are on reflection, inappropriate to mention

* Removal of interruptions

* Normalise (even out) volume of recording to a constant level

* Introduce additional voices

* Enhance with music and sound effects

* Chapterise long sections

* Format various versions for different consumption methods

* Duplication

If a recording was to be commenced without considering any future editing we would always be “on task” from the moment the record button is pressed. By allowing editing we can start the recorder, then set and forget while we worry about the more important task of having an engaging conversation.

Editing software enables the removal of pauses, umms and args and inappropriate stumbles which although a normal part of everyday speech we find irritating when listening to without the non-verbal queues of a physical conversation.

All conversations wander around the timeline and themes, requiring some reorganising in order to help with the flow of the greater conversation but also, as new things are discovered and remembered there will be a need to rearrange the audio to suit the flow of the conversation. This also assists with later searching of thematic information, as we know where in the general area of the audio to search for a subject.

Editing software has many tools not only for removal and rearranging of audio but also for the enh...