Record Your Voice on a Windows Computer

With Microsoft's Sound Recorder, available free on all versions of Windows, you can record, edit, and play back your voice. It will also let you link phrases together, add music, or insert your comments into a document or video. We'll show you how.

Steps

Using Sound Recorder

  1. Open Sound Recorder. Click the Start button. In the search box, enter sound recorder, and in the list of results click Sound Recorder.
    • In Windows 8, type “sound recorder” while on the Start screen and select Sound Recorder from the search results.
    • Sound Recorder will not open if you do not have a microphone attached to your computer.
    • To play back audio, you must have speakers—or a pair of headphones—installed on your computer.
  2. Start recording. In the Sound Recorder window, click Start Recording, the button with the red dot.
  3. Sing, say, or voice whatever you want recorded. The green bar will move back and forth to let you know it's capturing the recording.
    • You can record up to 60 seconds worth of sound with Sound Recorder. If you want to record more, see the following section, or check out some of the Tips.
  4. Stop recording. Click the Stop Recording button (the black square) to stop recording. This will automatically bring up the option to save the recording.
  5. Save the recording. Make sure to save it to a location where you can easily find it again later.[1]
    • If you’re not quite ready to save, click Cancel to close the Save As dialog box. Click the Resume Recording button to add to your recording. When you’re done, click Stop Recording and save the file.
    • You can play back Sound Recorder files with most media players including Windows Media Player, iTunes, or other similar applications.

Using a Third-Party Program

  1. Find a trustworthy program. There are a wide variety of free and paid recording programs available online, many made by trusted developers. Be sure to download from a website that you know, and read as many reviews as possible.
    • Almost every audio recording program will let you record longer than the 1 minute limit of Sound Recorder.
  2. Play around with pitch and speed. Many third-party programs will allow you to adjust the way your audio is recorded. You can slow your recording down to draw out your words, or increase the pitch to give yourself a chipmunk sound.
  3. Record higher quality sounds. High end recording programs can do a lot to improve the quality of your recording. These are useful programs if you have a high quality microphone and do a lot of voice recording and editing.
  4. Take your singing to the next level. Recording yourself is the first step to getting your name and your music out to the world. You can use free audio recording software to get started in your own home, while giving your music a professional touch!

Tips

  • To record songs from your CD player onto your computer, set up your computer to recognize the line input for recording instead of the mic input, like this:
    • Open your Sound control panel by clicking the Start button, then clicking Control Panel. In the search box, type sound, and then click Sound.
    • Click the Recording tab.
    • Click Line In, and then click Set Default
    • Click Properties, click the Levels tab, and move the volume slider to the right to increase the recording volume, and then click OK.
    • In the Sound dialog box, click OK.
    • You're good to go!
  • If you can’t find Sound Recorder on your computer, you may have deleted the program (perhaps long ago while trying to make space on your hard drive). In this case, you can easily download another free recording program from a trusted website.
  • To record your guitar, you'll need a sound card with a line input. If you look on the back, front, or side of your computer, you should see a section with three holes: one is pink, one is blue, and one is green. The pink one is where you plug in a microphone. The blue one is where you plug in line-level things like CD players, and the green one is the stereo output where you plug in your speakers or headphones. To just plug your guitar in, do the following:
    • Plug one end of the guitar cord into your guitar, and the other end into a 1/4-inch to 3/8-inch adapter, then plug the cord/adapter into the Mic input port. This will work.
    • However, if you want actually sound good, you should consider a USB interface, or some other sort of active (requiring power) interface between your guitar and your computer.
  • USB mics and audio interfaces are an excellent and cost-effective way to get sounds in and out of your computer. There are even USB microphones that sound great.
  • To increase your Sound Recorder recording time beyond the initial 60-second limit, there are a couple things you can do. The first way is by brute force—cutting and pasting.
    • Record the maximum 60 seconds of silence. From the Edit menu, select Copy, and then select Paste. This will double the length of your recording, to 120 seconds. From there, you can continue pasting, 60 seconds at a time, or you can double up: with every paste, select Copy again, and then paste. This will lengthen your record time quickly: 60+60=120 + 120 = 240 + 240 = 480 + 480 = 960, etc. With only 4 copy-paste operations, we now have 16 minutes of record time!
    • The second way of lengthening your record time from 60 seconds has a lower brute-force quotient, and a much higher geek factor.
    • Open the Command Prompt window by clicking the Start button. In the search box, type command prompt, and from the list of results, click Command Prompt.
    • At the prompt, type the following, where filename represents the name of the file you want to record, and filetype represents the file type extension:SoundRecorder/FILE filename.filetype /DURATION hhh:mm:ssFor example, if you want to make a wma recording named "FunkyBunky" that's 3 minutes, 20 seconds long, you would type SoundRecorder/FILE Funky Bunky.wma/DURATION 0000:03:20
    • Press the enter key, and Sound Recorder opens as an icon in the notification area.
    • Record your piece, and at the end of the specified duration Sound Recorder will save you opus with the name "FunkyBunky" in C:\Users\Bunky



Things You'll Need

  • Input device—microphone, instrument, or other playback device. Most modern computers already have a microphone built in, but there are many available if yours doesn't have one.
  • Output device—speakers or headphones

Related Articles

Sources and Citations

  1. ↑ http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/record-audio-with-sound-recorder
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