record my mom

[mpilting]

I want to know how to record my Mom playing piano using bluetooth. My Mom is 73 years old, and she plays piano. I have a laptop that supports bluetooth and a Radio Shack boundary microphone that only supports an eighth-inch adapter. Somehow, I need to send the signal from the microphone to my laptop, so I can record it. My mother will be dying soon, and I'm doing this for my younger sister. I hate my Mom's playing, but my younger sister loves it. If I can record some of my Mom's playing before my mom dies, my sis will be really happy.

 

[mpilting]

Oops - laptop does not support bluetooth - only wireless. My bad.
Hey - it only makes it that much harder to find a solution.
Maybe if I had a usb bluetooth receiver for my laptop, and a bluetooth amp for the mic...
Do such tools exist?

 

[Lt. Bob]

does your laptop have any sorta recording program in it? You'll need that ..... I don't record in a 'puter but I see a LOT of people recommending Reaper for free.

That boundary mic will actually do fairly well for what you're wanting to do. Why not just buy an extension cable and plug it direct into the laptop? I'm not sure bluettoth is gonna carry as much info as a full range recording will need but I could be wrong.

 

[Steenamaroo]

Oops - laptop does not support bluetooth - only wireless. My bad.
Hey - it only makes it that much harder to find a solution.
Maybe if I had a usb bluetooth receiver for my laptop, and a bluetooth amp for the mic...
Do such tools exist?

I dont think so...

The Lt. is right, you need to plug that boundary mic into your microphone input on the laptop, and open sound recorder, or download reaper.

If you just want to record and save (ie no manipulation), sound recorder will do; assuming you're on windows.

 

[maestro_dmc]

If this is a one shot deal, and you don't plan to get into recording per se, I would suggest a ZOOM H1. For about $99 you can make some real quality recordings with zero effort or knowhow.

Then you can make a CD for your sister, save mp3's or whatever you need, almost no recording knowledge necessary.

You could also probably plug that radio shack mic directly into the laptop, at least to see if it works, but you would have to then learn how to record, and how to tweak all the settings of your computer until it works right. Plus you would need to get recording software and figure out how to use it.

 

[mpilting]

Believe it or not, I didn't even think of plugging the mic directly into my laptop - I'm so used to thinking everything has to be usb and wireless/bluetooth that I forgot there was even a mic jack! I'd still like to try going bluetooth, just for ease of use. Plus I just like toys. But for now, I'll just do the simple thing. Thanks for all the replies!

 

[Steenamaroo]

someone might chime in and correct me, but seriously; i don't think a bluetooth recording option exists.

The only voice over bluetooth that i'm aware of is in mobile phone technology, and you (probably) don't want to use that for a piano recording.

Even wireless microphones that do exist aren't designed to connect straight to a computer. They connect to a matched receiver.


Maestro is right though, even pluggin in directly is going to suck a little. A portable recorder will sound great; Perhaps you could borrow one?

 

[Wish]

Instead of just audio, I would recommend using a video camcorder to capture both the audio and video to capture these memories. You can take the audio and create audio files from the video recording if you wanted to, but I think having the video of your mom would be a much better thing to have to remember her by instead of audio only.

 

[MG Eddie]

You could get a usb condenser mic for about 100$ and they plug directly into your computer without the need of an interface.

 

[John Willett]

Believe it or not, I didn't even think of plugging the mic directly into my laptop - I'm so used to thinking everything has to be usb and wireless/bluetooth that I forgot there was even a mic jack! I'd still like to try going bluetooth, just for ease of use. Plus I just like toys. But for now, I'll just do the simple thing. Thanks for all the replies!

No no no - Bluetooth will be crap. Standard Bluetooth is really for speech only.

Plug the mic. into the microphone jack - wired is always better than wireless for recording.

By the way, what country are you in? If you are in the UK send me a PM.