Making a memory for both the grandchild AND a dog!
I’ve spent the last month grappling with technology so as to share my voice with my family.
A box of old tapes discovered earlier this year enabled me to hear my parent’s voices once again, if only for a snippet. You can read that post here.
A further investigation into the box turned up a dozen or so tapes of me reading aloud The Chronicles of Narnia–all seven books.
I’d forgotten about them, but there they were and an idea formed.
I can’t get back much, if any more, of my parent’s lost voices, but I could give my grandchildren a gift.
Technology, if I could either master it (ha!) or find someone to help, could provide a wonderful Christmas present, if I do say so myself.
And the bonus on this?
My then seven-year old daughter was learning to read the year I read those books aloud to her.
We hear her piping voice sounding out the chapter titles.
Very sweet.
These are the tools I used
This is how I made the technology transfer from audio tapes to MP3s to CDs:
First we had to find a tape player.
I found one on the side of the road when a neighbor put out electronics for recycling. She let me have it.
We followed a variety of steps, using a auxiliary audio cord and my technology-savvy family members could manage just fine. You can read about the steps here.
It all felt too complicated to me. I finally bought a device called Ion Tape Express. With some coaching from my nuclear engineer husband, PhD son and the aforementioned daughter, even I could manage the technology!
Plugged right into my computer and came with its own headphones
Download the program (from a CD!), put in the tape, follow the two steps, press play and monitor. It even turns itself off when it reaches the end of the tape.
We had a lot of double-sided tapes. It took nearly a week to turn them all into MP3s. It did not require close monitoring; I performed lots of other duties while it worked, but I did have to stay on top of it to keep my large task on track.
Because the Ion turned off when it reached the end of the tape and I had just merrily read along all those years ago, we had some problems with continuity. While I was able to burn CDs right off my computer, ultimately the burn process went much better when all the “tracks” were shifted to Itunes.
Each book became its own playlist and then Itunes burned the entire playlist, in order, directly onto the necessary CDs–most of the books with 80 minute CDs required 4 CDs each.
Two of the taped books had corrupted files; or at least I couldn’t figure out how to put them into a correct order once we got them into Itunes.
As a result, I reread, aloud, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian, directly into my phone.
They transferred easily and smoothly to Itunes.
Would so love to hear her voice again!
Our grandchildren are very young; CDs are best for their age. Their parents will get the whole readings on a flash drive–so they can listen, but also so they can burn their own CDs when the children destroy what I made!
Because most cannot read yet, my husband made labels with pictures for each book, numbering the CDs.
They should be able to manage the CDs and their players, just fine.
We also, of course, gave them a complete set of the books for their own reading enjoyment–some day!
For me, remembering the joy of hearing my parents’ voices, my hope is technology will remind my adorable grandchildren for years to come, a voice of love reading a wonderful series of books.
What would you like to hear your parents or grandparents say or read once more?
Tweetables
Technology and a loved one’s voice.Click to Tweet
Transferring audio tapes to CDs for memory’s sake. Click to Tweet
Grandma’s voice reading Narnia–forever? Click to Tweet
(Note about copyright: I did NOT sell my reading of these books. In addition to burning 30 CDs of MY voice reading the books aloud to MY family –with a commentary or two–I also purchased and gave the same children all seven books.)
Thoughts? Reactions? Lurker?