My New Toy

I got a new toy today. It's the Edirol R09-HR. It's a gem. It is the most beautiful and functional sound recorder I have ever encountered. It records in WAV and MP3.  Now, I was a strong supporter of minidisc, but with the real-time downloading and the extra mic and battery pack, it was a pain. Not that it felt like a pain at the time, but now that the Edirol is in my life, OMG, this thing is godsend. I was going through the manual today and I realized that this thing was created with musicians in mind. All the buttons and extras are tailor-made with the idea that this thing is being used to study sound (and music). They're not just buttons that do neat tricks you'll never use, but they're neat tricks that you absolutely must have. One of those buttons on the front creates loops, so that you can listen to a piece of music, say, your teacher explaining a rhythm that she's about to play, and then she plays it, and you can create a loop so that you hear the rhythm over and over again. Stuff like that. The gadgets on this thing are not extraneous. They're not fluff. They're real-life things that you can apply to your art and career. This thing is a great investment.

I bought a 4Gig SD card ahead of time, which holds a ton of info (the new ipod shuffle that came out today is 4Gig--the whole unit is smaller than an AA battery, can hold 1,000 songs, and talks to you for godsake), and as I was messing around with the 4G card on my Edirol today, I realized that the thing holds 60 hours of recording time (depending on the recording quality). Did I not say that loud enough?? 60 hours!! A minidisc holds a mere fraction of that (I don't even remember anymore--5 or 6 hours?). The Edirol can actually accept an 8Gig card, which, if my math doesn't fail me, is 120 hours. That's days of recording time, yo!! One thing I learned in my digicam research was that while big cards are great, putting all your eggs in one basket is a gamble. But still!

Tonight I brought my Edirol to Michaelle's class, and after tweaking the settings and making some educated guesses, I set the inputs and aimed the thing at our drums and was completely amazed at the results: crystal clear sounds! Both voice and drums! If you've ever tried to record drums, then you know how difficult this is.  What I got was a great recording of our class, with the vocal explanations and the drum rhythms all recorded perfectly! Amazing!

I am such a proponent for recording drum classes because I have finally accepted the fact that I am a bit slow in the head about learning new things. You can teach me an easy pattern and I will get it, but if you ask me what it was 5 minutes later I won't be able to remember. I need help. Having something like the Edirol is so essential to my education. Thank you to the folks a Roland for creating such a fabulous learning aid. 

Wanna see it for yourself? Go here.