Using A Wired Headset With A Mic To Record Your Teaching
This is a follow up to my original "How To Record Yourself Teaching Yoga" post, now with another (probably simpler) way to record the audio of you teaching. In my first post, I briefly touched on using an older Apple or Android device to record the audio of your teaching by using a wired headset. You probably have a few wired headsets from previous phones you've bought over the years, you just need to make sure your headset has a microphone in it.
Newer phones now require adapters to use 3.5mm wired headsets because they've stopped putting headphone jacks into phones. Which adapter you need depends on what kind of phone you have.
For this example, I'm using an old pair of Apple headphones which also have a microphone. I taped the wire from the mic to the earbud back onto itself to make it neater. The earbuds still work so I didn't want to cut them off of the headset wire. If the earbuds didn't work anymore, I could cut them off so the microphone would be the only part of the headset wires I'd use.
I slipped a tiny binder clip over the microphone wires so I could clip the mic to my shirt.
You could any number of things to keep the mic secured to your shirt. Safety pin, duct tape, gaffers tape, a clothespin - basically anything you've got on hand to keep the mic securely fastened to your neckline so your recording won't be muffled by your clothing.
Apple devices have the Voice Memos application already installed by default. I downloaded and installed a free Voice Recorder application on the Motorola Android device I used in this example.
The device you're using to record your audio should be put into Airplane mode, have the screen locked and then you can tuck it inside the waistband of your leggings or pocket of your shorts while you're recording your teaching. The device you use to record your teaching audio cannot be the same device you're using to play music into the studio (if you teach with music) because it is not possible to stream bluetooth music from a device and record an audio input to the same device at the same time. You probably have an older phone you're not using which can be repurposed into a voice recorder.
Here are the steps you can use on an Apple device to use the Voice Memos application to record your teaching, save the file, export the file off your phone so that you can share the recording with other people. I find it easiest to use Dropbox to save files from my devices, but there are many options (Google drive, AirDrop). I would caution against trying to send your recording via Mail or Message because the file size of your recording may be larger than what is supported by Message or Mail.
Here are the steps with an Android device as an example:
Once you have the audio recording copied onto your laptop or PC, you can refer to my post on "How To Edit Your Yoga Teaching Audio File" so that it will be ready for sharing with others.
If you are interested in sharing your audio recordings as a podcast, here is a post I wrote "Sharing Yoga Teaching Audio Recordings As Podcasts". If you're not interested in paying for your audio to be hosted/shared as a podcast, you can always upload your recordings to Mixcloud like Will Martin is doing.