I started recording an audio website component this afternoon. Plan to post it here and on Sound Cloud. It’s taking me a while to learn, and it’s aggravating. It takes a long time to upload tracks at WillowsBend, with a slow tethered internet connection, even though all of them will be less than five minutes long. I may do the recording here, and the uploads where there’s proper Wi-Fi. I hope to have some files up soon and it’ll be a new category.
My father loved to make recordings. We had reel to reel Philips tape recorders in the house ever since I can remember. He would also record sermons for on the radio in the studio for broadcast on CFAM. Frohe Botshaft was one of the programs, and he did them in Hoch or Platt Deutsch, though nothing on the scale of what other ministers did, especially George Ens, my friend Gerhard’s Dad.
My dad also like to tape various things; our voices reciting Bible verses or poems, Christmas concerts,some particular services, his 50th wedding anniversary which was mostly singing, and my mothers funeral.
My first foray into recording myself was a bit of a disaster and got me into trouble. I hated practicing the piano. The large upright Heintzman was in the basement in the new recreation room in the new bungalow in Gretna completed in 1964. I took one of the smaller reel to reel tape recorders, and I recorded myself practicing piano.
I always had a choice after supper, I could help mom wash the dishes and clean up, or I could go down in the basement to practice. So down I went.I turned the TV on quietly and I played the tape loudly for nearly a week before they caught on, because all the mistakes were happening at all the same places and the playing never got any better. Truth is the playing really never got any better even with practicing but that’s a story for another time.