Quick note: I had some unexpected audio issues in this video that I didn’t catch until editing (oh, the irony in a video about audio!). I did my best to fix it in post, but some imperfections remain. Lesson learned-my setup is fixed now, so future videos should sound much better. Thanks for your patience, and I hope you enjoy the nostalgic dive regardless!
Windows removed this or reduced it because it had no purpose and with software like Audacity, or Goldwave free or low cost audio editing was available before XP. I have been using an old copy of Goldwave for nearly 20 years now, I never paid for the windows version I cracked it. I did buy there Android version 5 years ago that never worked so I gess they got payed at least as they should.
@SpectraVision-f5o I played with Linux a looonnngggg time ago. Probably around '05 or '06. I know it's a lot more capable now, but I haven't tried it out since then!
I began making music with sound recorder too. Open start up sound, cut to easily calculated length, insert paste 3x, mix paste same sound reversed and slowed down 25%, etc. Insert paste some more.. I can't imagine I used it for very long before I found good old cool edit 1.6 (non-realtime effects! Woo!), but I do remember at least a few 2 minute long masterpieces!
Have to say, i also had quite a lot of fun with that back in the days, but to my shame i have to say, i completely forgot about it... thank you so much for reviving that memory.
I was probably headed there in another life because of recorder as well. Someone brought in a pc to the repair place I worked at and he was using cubase on a rather basic PC. I think it was a pentium 2, 266mhz. He had an input card. I always thought to make music you needed expensive reel to reels, or something extremely expensive DAW. Nope, just a pc, a card, and some cheap software.
I remember impressing my teacher at school with the sound recorder in Win95. I opened up multiple instances of the program, each with a sound loaded up(Win95 audio sound schemes SE's, & I put them on a loop to create a rhythm & beat. I'm in my early 40's now & I think it's very cute that the newer generations can still have fun with it 😊
My brother and his friend would capture sound bites from Ace Ventura and turn them into Windows alerts. At shut down, it'd go "Take care now. Bye bye then."
Memory unlocked!! I remember taking finding all the songs I knew with the word “Stop” in it, and recording just that part, and using it as my windows error sound
you didn't hurt me nothing can hurt me you didn't hurt me nothing can stop Final seconds of Ruiner by nine inch nails was my shutdown sound for a while.
Me and my neighbors' kids spent (literally) our entire childhood recording funny phrases, reversing them, learning how to pronounce the reversed version by heart, reversing them once again and dying of laughter while listening to these. Never thought I would be nostalgic over Windows 95's Sound Recorder, but yeah...
Came here to see if there were comments about this. Totally made this a game to try and repeat reversed phrases or words and reverse them to try and get them exact
I got REALLY GOOD at speaking entire sentences phonetically backwards. My little sister was always playing with this and I would speak "gibberish" and she'd try to guess what it was before playing it in reverse. Actually could clearly understand all the words, but in that weird reversed cadence. Was literally like playing a record backward. Longest thing was like "Hello Ramsey, this is your brother speaking to you backwards, can you understand me? How about now?" 😂😂
Thank you so much! As a kid, I kind of got into everything all at once, and have been making videos and music for over 20 years... but it took me until 2024 to finally commit and start a "real" TH-cam journey. One day, maybe I will make a side episode to show off some of the cringy early 2000s stuff that I've kept on my hard drive all this time 😅
record>reverse>add reverb>reverse again. Life changing. Also, on some versions of windows you didn't need to record the speakers. You could go into the advanced volume settings to bring up a level for windows mix I believe it was called. Once you had that slider it basically recorded what was supposed to go out of the speakers directly... so every sound windows made, including what you played at the moment and the line in/mic
I have so many stories about this - in the late 1990's i made a full mashup using only sound recorder to make samples and then paste them back into a compilation backwards to get what i wanted. I also figured out an early version of compression by speeding up songs in sound recorder before saving them and slowing them down before replaying them on the other side
It's so fascinating how your videos somehow manage to bring back very clear and distinct memories of being a kid and playing around with this stuff. Clearly they're hitting the right notes in the right way. I've said it before, but thank you for making these videos, and please keep doing what you're doing!
My friend and I made a full album in a day back in 2004ish. We bypassed the minute limit by recording a clip and then slowing it down a few times and then recording over that. I think the album is still on Internet Archive somewhere. It's "The July Sessions" by our "band" called "The Fragment".
I found it. I've tried to copy the link but I don't see the comment anymore, yt auto-delete it. Anyways on Internet Archive if you search ''The Fragment - The July Sessions'' it only shows 18 results so it is not hard to find. Also I listened to it and the songs, the radio bits and skits are literal gold from another era.
We once mixed a "radio drama" with this program. All the "actors" recorded their roles on cassettes, no need to gather all of them in the studio! Then, the Sound Recorder was used to move these to a computer (with PC's microphone pointed into boombox speaker, no line input used here). Finally, these were all layered together using same program. The final effect was recorded to another cassette using PC speakers and boombox microphone. Results were far from good but it worked! BTW, AFAIR record time could be extended by just slowing down whatever is open and then recording over it :)
I loved Sound Recorder. I remember using it to create an audio interview of Alvin from The Chipmunks where I played the role of both Alvin and the interviewer. Fun times.
See, things like that are of huge impact. I remember doing something similar, which led to "oh so you're a big fan of Alvin and the Chipmunks?"; no, i just had an idea that was feasible to execute, haha. Early stages to realizing how people sometimes confuse a curious mind for an obsession with a thing that already exists.
This brings so much back, countless hours spent trying to make the most of that little program. So much easier to make music now, except for the actually doing it lol
My buddy and I released a twelve track CD called "The Spam Hour" as kids to our friends that was like a radio talk show recorded completely with Sound Recorder. Thank you for reminding me of that ha. Great video!
Soo many memories I set aside until just seeing sound recorder in the thumbnail. I started out with Windows 3.1 and dug through every single option it had to offer. I've also done every single trick you have mentioned in this video, even the guitar layering trick! I had one of those cheap desktop mics (I called it a 'stick mic') and I used to throw it inside of my acoustic for better sound. Interestingly, it sounded pretty great for at-home audio quality standards back then. I appreciate this nostalgia trip. I forgot all about having to save and then load to continue recording for more than 60 seconds. Sound recorder was some pretty serious business back then in my wee mind.
A guitar-based tribute to Windows Sound Recorder is something I was not expecting to be stuck in my head today! A very engaging demo of such an unassuming app - thanks.
ooh I can explain the feedback! the microphone, speakers, and even the room you're in have a frequency response curve. Additionally the room seems minimally treated so you're also getting the natural reverb. Each time you re-record exaggerates those "imperfections." It's quite literally just more controlled feedback (which got its name because you're feeding the audio back into the signal chain). The sound art piece "I am sitting in a room" by Alvin Lucier takes advantage of the concept to turn a narration into an ambient drone.
I remember being entertained for hours just saying things backwards onto a recording and reversing it in Sound Recorder, or pitching my voice up or down. Those were simpler times.
I call the whole recording in reverse + playing it back in reverse again "Moosh Noosh". 💪😎✌️ Looonnng story why. But it's a groovily hysterical party game, and I have some of the absolute fondest memories of doing that with an ex-gf of mine. 😂 On some nights, we didn't NEED any additional abdominal workouts, lmao. #CyuarfSchnarrff!
Wow, the basic Vista version is the one I was familiar with, so I had no idea about its previous versions. Had I discovered Sound Recorder a few years earlier when I was playing Sims 2 on Windows XP, I likely would've gotten into audio way sooner than I did! Love the editing btw, you have a fun retro presentation here that I appreciate
Playing with your voice will always be fun for kids! I remember Sound Recorder on our Windows 95 PC, but also the Yak Bak toy. Today, my nieces love this little cactus toy that just listens and plays back their voices faster. Classic!
That is so true… my kids have these little bird toys that repeat what you say but a bit faster and higher, and we’ve had them for YEARS and they still get played with!
I'm so glad to see this being talked about. This is exactly how I got started multitrack recording. My method was this: I made a 6 min blank file by recording 30 sec of silence (i seem to remember mine being limited to 30 sec but i might be misremembering), opened a new file and put the cursor at the end and mixed in the first 30 sec. The "mix" feature would go from wherever your cursor was so it didn't have to be at the beginning. Once I had the 6 min blank; I would open that file every time I wanted to start a new song. I downloaded a free drum machine software and, using a 9$ dynamic microphone I got from wal-mart - into a 1/4 inch to 1/8 inch adapter and into the mic input, I recorded a playback of the drums by holding the mic to the computer speaker and playing the drum track and recording on sound recorder simultaneously. Then i would take the recorded drum track - open a new blank 6 min file - and hit 'record' on the blank file with my mouse and 'play' on the drum track with my space bar and the same time (or close). I'd record a guitar or something on the new track then have to kinda guess where to put the cursor to mix the files together. If I was way off, I would undo and adjust the cursor slightly and try again. This would often lead to parts being slightly askew from each other. I made several full albums of songs with drums/guitar/bass/ and vocals like this..... I honestly thought I was the only person who did this crap ahaha. It's amazing to see that so many more people were innovating right along with me.
Oh my god I instantly clicked when yt recommended this. I had so much fun "remixing" songs with this on my family's XP computer as a kid! I think it smoothed my DAW learning curve a lot.
The hard drive vs ram speed thing is still relevant today, even with our super fast solid state tech! Most programs still operate this way, and for super high performance tasks (such as simulation games) programs will even be optimised around structuring data so that it can be kept in the tiny CPU cache (which is even faster than RAM, due to proximity)
totally underrated channel, i really like the content and can tell there is lot of work behind of it. keep up the good work, im subscribing for sure! 👍
I didn’t grow up in a Microsoft household - but I was totally the kid doing “multitracking” with one boombox facing another boombox, as you said! Love that there was a digital version of this. I think doing these workarounds taught me a different way of thinking creatively about audio production that I still use today. Also it’s just fun! Thanks for the awesome video.
it is so crazy to see this excellent video with so much love and effort put into it.. and then three patrons at the end 😭 i hope your channel takes off
This brought back some many great memories. Definitely used it in a similar fashion, it inspired so much creativity as it was so inconvenient to multitrack but that certainly didn’t stop me from trying. Great video!
Had so much fun with Sound Recorder as a kid. Standout memories are: 1. Making silly new sound effects & voices for the original Doom (explosions replaces with keys dropped on a table sounding like shattering glass, and enemies merrily exclaiming "oh no I died!"). 2. Recording short songs about absolutely anything (usually about as mature as you expect from young teenage boys) with just an acoustic guitar and bunch of us "singing". 3. Hearing the cool music from Lords of the Realm 2 at a friend's house, wanting to bring it home on a floppy but the file was too large - no problem, speed it up in Sound Recorder, tadaa half size! Just slow it down home again. Sure, quality took a hit but I just wanted to hear the song, sure beat not having it at all.
This takes me back so much. I remember using this to record some of my earliest "songs" and eventually started recording fake radio shows with multiple guests and segments in it. Wish I preserved them! Don't delete your cringey stuff y'all. You'll appreciate it at some point.
I literally almost dropped my phone when I heard spatula city! For many years my brother and I would exchange spatulas for Christmas, based on the fake commercial from UHF! “Don’t forget, they make great Christmas presents!”
What a neat video. You triggered so many memories of me and my friends screwing around on basic pc and crappy computer mic. So much fun... Fast forward a few years and I now work professionally in post production working with video editors and audio engineers on a daily basis, kind of wild when you think about it... This was totally my first intro into digital audio recording and editing.
This video is so great, I loveddd Sound Recorder! I would slow the audio down a lot and then speed it back up to normal speed to get the bitcrushed, compressed sound intentionally. I always thought that distortion was so cool!! I loved recording fake conversations and sound effects in there as a kid, it’s so great to see that someone loved this software so much growing up too and can still see the magic of its simplicity even now. Thank you for this video!!
Oh man, loved the cover of Daisy, very clever. This is totally my era, but I had a 4-track tape recorder before I eventually got Cakewalk Sonar (ooooooo yeaaaah). What a time to be alive. Love your videos, they're fun as heck.
I really enjoyed this video. You took me back to 2001-2005 when I used to play with this sound recorder. I still have some very funny recordings stored on some CD-Rs or DVD-Rs somewhere.
I used to use that to record my songs I would play the beat in the background over the speakers and would record in a microphone while clicking the button to keep it going for longer than 60 seconds. This brought back memories. 😅
I got in my feels when you listed, "Reminds me of my first recordings". I still have some of my "multi-track" songs that I recorded on WindowsME, a TERRIBLE operating system(!), but one that sparked creativity and a passion to keep doing it 20yrs later. Thanks for the reminder that this existed and... may still be a viable tool for music recording. I'm gonna go download Sound Recorder now!
Sound recording was my first foray into playing around with sound recording back in the Windows 95 days. I took it a step further and transferred my recordings to cassette tape so I could listen on the boombox in my room. Loved the video!
I was doing multitrack recordings on the computer back in the 90s. There were professional sound editing tools and interfaces back then for sure. I mostly used Samplitude, starting on the Amiga and then later on Windows. Very limited in terms of functionality compared to what we have today, but the basics were there.
Oh I absolutely spent countless hours as a little computer geek in the 90's and early 2000's messing with Sound Recorder exactly the way you lay out here. Speeding, slowing, and reversing anything I could think of. This was also the go to tool I used for voicing my flash animation cartoons and even attempting foley with (it was not good). Fantastic video, subbed :)
The thumbnail with the typical TH-cam "omugosh!" pose almost made me skip over this recommended video in my feed (I get it, the algorithm likes those sorts of thumbnails - no hard feelings!), but MAN am I glad I clicked on it anyway! What a nostalgic dive this was! I used to play with Sound Recorder ALL THE TIME, and I still have a few dusty old audio files that I made with it back in the 90's and early-00's. But at some point it became quite the recessed memory, and I'm not sure I ever would have thought of it again had I not stumbled upon this terrific video. But besides all that, I'm a big fan of fun/quirky production quality, so of course I LOVE the way you have those little low-res-gif looking animations of yourself in the videos to introduce different segments, like at 6:57. So much fun! Overall this video was funny, informative, silly, and well-produced. Thanks for doing this! EDIT: Holy shit... I wrote this comment before I finished the video. And then I saw the part where you recorded the song you wrote about Song Recorder... and recorded on Sound Recorder! That was awesome!! Can we download that anywhere?
I remember playing around with this program a lot. Trying to pronounce words backwards was fun, and can't forget the cool effect of reversing your speech, adding echo, and then un-reversing it to give it a ghostly pre-echo effect. Good ol' Sound Recorder.
Oh this takes me back to my childhood! Back when computer magazines still existed and came with CD's filled of program demos. I made techno songs by stacking and appending samples I found of a musicmaker type program my PC could not run. But I had fun with this... And how many times I recorded myself saying stuff backwards and then reversing that... Or adding echo's after reversing it and then reversing it again... Thanks for the nostalgia!
Wow, Sound Recorder! I had completely forgotten about this program... My brother, our friends, and I would spend hours recording all sorts of nonsense and had a blast experimenting with the effects. Such great memories. Thank you for this little trip back in time from 23 years ago!
THANK YOU for giving the Sound Recorder the credit it so deserves!! It used to be my go-to boredom killer when I was a teenager. I still got all my recordings from back then, highlight was a burp I slowed down beyond recognition 😅
i had this really cheap mic that came with our 1995 home PC that i loved goofing around with in sound recorder. i never made anything special with it, but saved all the strange noises i recorded. i was quite proud of myself as a kid figuring out how to make them longer. they're all long gone, now - but i _do_ have a cassette tape full of recordings of child me. i cherish it.
Wow it's crazy I totally forgot about all the stuff I used to do with Sound Recorder. It was definitely my segue into using analogue 4-track tape recorders and multitracking software. Good times! Thanks for the deep dive on this!
My brothers and I would play with sound recorder for HOURS at a time. Especially the laughs from speeding the audio up and the reverse effect. I would also record all sorts of messages for online friends, like happy birthday songs and such. 😊
When i was 12 i spent my Autumn holiday at my Grandmas House. Brought my newly Win95 PC with me. I recorded her Voice and made some samples out of it. Its the only voice recording that exist of my Grandma and its heartwarming to still hear her voice now and then...
I love it! It reminds me of the stuff I had to do with cassette tapes and mini discs. I used to use Sound Recorder to make my own samples for Fruity Loops back in 2001. I had so much fun with it. The only mic I had that could connect to my computer was the built in mic on my old Compaq crt monitor and it sounded very tinny so I had to be creative. Eventually I got a MOTU 848 mkII and I kinda forgot about Sound Recorder. RIP, SR. Thanks for helping me on my musical journey.
Omg, this application also introduced me to sound editing! I spent so much time in my childhood testing out everything! I learned so much useful stuff for music making later in life!
Sound Recorder in Win98 was where my self-production path started, too (backing tracks courtesy of my experiments in Cakewalk Express). Before watching this, I’d forgotten about my prepared “templates” of 3-5 minutes of silence that I’d use for my songs. By the time I realized I could not only make MIDI but also record audio in Cakewalk, I was using the more feature-rich CoolEdit Pro for my recordings.
I don't know how but i spent dozens of hours messing around with sound recorder back in the day and completely forgot all about it until i saw your thumbnail. that 60 second limit was brutal.
Please, we want a full version of “The Sound Recorder Sound,” at least the demo! Those harmonies remind me of a 2000s song, but I can’t remember the name. Super great video!!!
Quick note: I had some unexpected audio issues in this video that I didn’t catch until editing (oh, the irony in a video about audio!). I did my best to fix it in post, but some imperfections remain. Lesson learned-my setup is fixed now, so future videos should sound much better. Thanks for your patience, and I hope you enjoy the nostalgic dive regardless!
Windows removed this or reduced it because it had no purpose and with software like Audacity, or Goldwave free or low cost audio editing was available before XP. I have been using an old copy of Goldwave for nearly 20 years now, I never paid for the windows version I cracked it. I did buy there Android version 5 years ago that never worked so I gess they got payed at least as they should.
@SpectraVision-f5o I played with Linux a looonnngggg time ago. Probably around '05 or '06. I know it's a lot more capable now, but I haven't tried it out since then!
I began making music with sound recorder too. Open start up sound, cut to easily calculated length, insert paste 3x, mix paste same sound reversed and slowed down 25%, etc. Insert paste some more.. I can't imagine I used it for very long before I found good old cool edit 1.6 (non-realtime effects! Woo!), but I do remember at least a few 2 minute long masterpieces!
10😢Likes
Have to say, i also had quite a lot of fun with that back in the days, but to my shame i have to say, i completely forgot about it... thank you so much for reviving that memory.
Between Sound Recorder & MS Paint you had control of the whole universe
Broooo this took me back 20 years. Nobody's ever talked about Sound Recorder until now, thank you so much.
Exactly! Sound recorder is now trending as far as I'm concerned lol =D
Sound recorder is the reason I do what I do now. Full time musician and producer.
I was probably headed there in another life because of recorder as well. Someone brought in a pc to the repair place I worked at and he was using cubase on a rather basic PC. I think it was a pentium 2, 266mhz. He had an input card. I always thought to make music you needed expensive reel to reels, or something extremely expensive DAW. Nope, just a pc, a card, and some cheap software.
guys you might be too young but pocketsuke over here is a piece of internet history
Same!
Same
It was sound recorder and then "cool edit pro" that got me into music production
I remember impressing my teacher at school with the sound recorder in Win95.
I opened up multiple instances of the program, each with a sound loaded up(Win95 audio sound schemes SE's,
& I put them on a loop to create a rhythm & beat.
I'm in my early 40's now & I think it's very cute that the newer generations can still have fun with it 😊
My brother and his friend would capture sound bites from Ace Ventura and turn them into Windows alerts. At shut down, it'd go "Take care now. Bye bye then."
Memory unlocked!! I remember taking finding all the songs I knew with the word “Stop” in it, and recording just that part, and using it as my windows error sound
Reminds me of when I turned some of the sounds on my friends computer into moos haha :) he did not know how to fix it either which made it funnier
@@harkeofficial Stop! by Jane's addiction!!!
you didn't hurt me
nothing can hurt me
you didn't hurt me
nothing can stop
Final seconds of Ruiner by nine inch nails was my shutdown sound for a while.
Ssssssmokin'!!
that microphone is actually kind of a hidden gem for guitar recording wow, like actually sounds like a record
Me and my neighbors' kids spent (literally) our entire childhood recording funny phrases, reversing them, learning how to pronounce the reversed version by heart, reversing them once again and dying of laughter while listening to these. Never thought I would be nostalgic over Windows 95's Sound Recorder, but yeah...
I had more fun with text to voice XP app, I had audio editing software from year 2000 that was 1000x more powerful then this windows recordeder.
Came here to see if there were comments about this. Totally made this a game to try and repeat reversed phrases or words and reverse them to try and get them exact
I got REALLY GOOD at speaking entire sentences phonetically backwards. My little sister was always playing with this and I would speak "gibberish" and she'd try to guess what it was before playing it in reverse. Actually could clearly understand all the words, but in that weird reversed cadence. Was literally like playing a record backward. Longest thing was like "Hello Ramsey, this is your brother speaking to you backwards, can you understand me? How about now?" 😂😂
Omg I thought I was the only one who did this 😂
Windows Sound Recorder was how it all started for me!
(Well, technically it was cassette tapes. But shortly after, Sound Recorder).
Unique content. The crossover between retro tech and music performance here is something you don't see anywhere. Thanks for that.
Thank you so much! As a kid, I kind of got into everything all at once, and have been making videos and music for over 20 years... but it took me until 2024 to finally commit and start a "real" TH-cam journey. One day, maybe I will make a side episode to show off some of the cringy early 2000s stuff that I've kept on my hard drive all this time 😅
You’re sure about that? I mean…you’re really certain this isn’t common?
record>reverse>add reverb>reverse again. Life changing. Also, on some versions of windows you didn't need to record the speakers. You could go into the advanced volume settings to bring up a level for windows mix I believe it was called. Once you had that slider it basically recorded what was supposed to go out of the speakers directly... so every sound windows made, including what you played at the moment and the line in/mic
I have so many stories about this - in the late 1990's i made a full mashup using only sound recorder to make samples and then paste them back into a compilation backwards to get what i wanted. I also figured out an early version of compression by speeding up songs in sound recorder before saving them and slowing them down before replaying them on the other side
This channel is a gem
thank you so much!
I've been finding a lot of these lately.
Bloody awesome.
This was funny and its amazing you did all this stuff with it. I barely touched it.
Her adorable little smile is a gem…..😁😁☺️😉
@@AnthonyAnthony-tk4yecreep
This brings back memories!!
It's so fascinating how your videos somehow manage to bring back very clear and distinct memories of being a kid and playing around with this stuff. Clearly they're hitting the right notes in the right way. I've said it before, but thank you for making these videos, and please keep doing what you're doing!
Thank you so much! This means a lot!
This channel is going to blow up
My friend and I made a full album in a day back in 2004ish. We bypassed the minute limit by recording a clip and then slowing it down a few times and then recording over that. I think the album is still on Internet Archive somewhere. It's "The July Sessions" by our "band" called "The Fragment".
I found it. I've tried to copy the link but I don't see the comment anymore, yt auto-delete it. Anyways on Internet Archive if you search ''The Fragment - The July Sessions'' it only shows 18 results so it is not hard to find. Also I listened to it and the songs, the radio bits and skits are literal gold from another era.
@@DukeManus Oddly using the archive site's own search didn't work for some reason. But it comes up as being there if using Duckduckgo. 🤷♂
I cannot find it on the archive
Never mind found it
Ugg tied to find it but kept getting pron results😢@@DukeManus
We once mixed a "radio drama" with this program. All the "actors" recorded their roles on cassettes, no need to gather all of them in the studio! Then, the Sound Recorder was used to move these to a computer (with PC's microphone pointed into boombox speaker, no line input used here). Finally, these were all layered together using same program. The final effect was recorded to another cassette using PC speakers and boombox microphone. Results were far from good but it worked! BTW, AFAIR record time could be extended by just slowing down whatever is open and then recording over it :)
I loved Sound Recorder. I remember using it to create an audio interview of Alvin from The Chipmunks where I played the role of both Alvin and the interviewer. Fun times.
See, things like that are of huge impact. I remember doing something similar, which led to "oh so you're a big fan of Alvin and the Chipmunks?"; no, i just had an idea that was feasible to execute, haha. Early stages to realizing how people sometimes confuse a curious mind for an obsession with a thing that already exists.
This brings so much back, countless hours spent trying to make the most of that little program. So much easier to make music now, except for the actually doing it lol
My buddy and I released a twelve track CD called "The Spam Hour" as kids to our friends that was like a radio talk show recorded completely with Sound Recorder. Thank you for reminding me of that ha. Great video!
Soo many memories I set aside until just seeing sound recorder in the thumbnail. I started out with Windows 3.1 and dug through every single option it had to offer. I've also done every single trick you have mentioned in this video, even the guitar layering trick! I had one of those cheap desktop mics (I called it a 'stick mic') and I used to throw it inside of my acoustic for better sound. Interestingly, it sounded pretty great for at-home audio quality standards back then. I appreciate this nostalgia trip. I forgot all about having to save and then load to continue recording for more than 60 seconds. Sound recorder was some pretty serious business back then in my wee mind.
That's exactly how I recorded my first song back in the days.
I even still have it and listen to it from time to time.
Also, this guitar sounds amazing.
it could be cool if you post it
Yess@@sews1523
A guitar-based tribute to Windows Sound Recorder is something I was not expecting to be stuck in my head today!
A very engaging demo of such an unassuming app - thanks.
ooh I can explain the feedback!
the microphone, speakers, and even the room you're in have a frequency response curve. Additionally the room seems minimally treated so you're also getting the natural reverb. Each time you re-record exaggerates those "imperfections." It's quite literally just more controlled feedback (which got its name because you're feeding the audio back into the signal chain).
The sound art piece "I am sitting in a room" by Alvin Lucier takes advantage of the concept to turn a narration into an ambient drone.
@@anMechSea oooo thanks for the explanation!!
Because you can digitize your music like pros
W
Ooh, I have always been fascinated by I Am Sitting In A Room. It was the first thing I thought of when I heard that feedback.
Spent a lot of time in sound recorder@@harkeofficial
Glad this channel got recommended, I enjoy your vibes.
I remember being entertained for hours just saying things backwards onto a recording and reversing it in Sound Recorder, or pitching my voice up or down. Those were simpler times.
I miss those days 🥹
The amount of jank audio editing I did in that this is astounding.
I call the whole recording in reverse + playing it back in reverse again "Moosh Noosh". 💪😎✌️ Looonnng story why. But it's a groovily hysterical party game, and I have some of the absolute fondest memories of doing that with an ex-gf of mine. 😂 On some nights, we didn't NEED any additional abdominal workouts, lmao.
#CyuarfSchnarrff!
Oh yeah, I still have recordings of me saying doog si nataS that I reversed.
Wow that brings back memories. The quality of your video is top notch! Subscribed
OMG! You've just reminded me that I used to use Sound Recorder to record my own samples to use in Impulse Tracker. Happy days! 😄
Wow, the basic Vista version is the one I was familiar with, so I had no idea about its previous versions. Had I discovered Sound Recorder a few years earlier when I was playing Sims 2 on Windows XP, I likely would've gotten into audio way sooner than I did!
Love the editing btw, you have a fun retro presentation here that I appreciate
Playing with your voice will always be fun for kids! I remember Sound Recorder on our Windows 95 PC, but also the Yak Bak toy. Today, my nieces love this little cactus toy that just listens and plays back their voices faster. Classic!
That is so true… my kids have these little bird toys that repeat what you say but a bit faster and higher, and we’ve had them for YEARS and they still get played with!
@@harkeofficialyou are probably the coolest mom on the planet!
Bro this is the kind of content that satisfies my huge windows nerd side, history side, and my audio editing hobbies side all in one!
I'm so glad to see this being talked about. This is exactly how I got started multitrack recording. My method was this: I made a 6 min blank file by recording 30 sec of silence (i seem to remember mine being limited to 30 sec but i might be misremembering), opened a new file and put the cursor at the end and mixed in the first 30 sec. The "mix" feature would go from wherever your cursor was so it didn't have to be at the beginning.
Once I had the 6 min blank; I would open that file every time I wanted to start a new song. I downloaded a free drum machine software and, using a 9$ dynamic microphone I got from wal-mart - into a 1/4 inch to 1/8 inch adapter and into the mic input, I recorded a playback of the drums by holding the mic to the computer speaker and playing the drum track and recording on sound recorder simultaneously.
Then i would take the recorded drum track - open a new blank 6 min file - and hit 'record' on the blank file with my mouse and 'play' on the drum track with my space bar and the same time (or close). I'd record a guitar or something on the new track then have to kinda guess where to put the cursor to mix the files together. If I was way off, I would undo and adjust the cursor slightly and try again. This would often lead to parts being slightly askew from each other.
I made several full albums of songs with drums/guitar/bass/ and vocals like this..... I honestly thought I was the only person who did this crap ahaha. It's amazing to see that so many more people were innovating right along with me.
this video got me hooked and im binging your entire channel now. your writing is fantastic
Oh my god I instantly clicked when yt recommended this. I had so much fun "remixing" songs with this on my family's XP computer as a kid! I think it smoothed my DAW learning curve a lot.
The editing in this video is amazing. This brings me right back to childhood.
The hard drive vs ram speed thing is still relevant today, even with our super fast solid state tech! Most programs still operate this way, and for super high performance tasks (such as simulation games) programs will even be optimised around structuring data so that it can be kept in the tiny CPU cache (which is even faster than RAM, due to proximity)
totally underrated channel, i really like the content and can tell there is lot of work behind of it. keep up the good work, im subscribing for sure! 👍
Thumbs up for SPATULA CITY!!! :)
🫡
I liked their spatulas so much… I bought the company
We sell spatulas…. And that’s all.
subscribed for that alone.
Buy nine spatulas and get the tenth one for just one penny!
This was a really fun video and brought back some much needed sound recorder nostalgia! thx :)
finally, someone gave sound recorder the recognition it deserves
I didn’t grow up in a Microsoft household - but I was totally the kid doing “multitracking” with one boombox facing another boombox, as you said! Love that there was a digital version of this. I think doing these workarounds taught me a different way of thinking creatively about audio production that I still use today. Also it’s just fun! Thanks for the awesome video.
it is so crazy to see this excellent video with so much love and effort put into it.. and then three patrons at the end 😭 i hope your channel takes off
haha thank you!
Yeah! I remember 🎉 Thank You ❤ ...
❤ I wish love and happiness to everyone ❤
1:04 - Holy frell, what a cool book you got there!
Oh my goodness YOU NOTICED MY COOL BOOK?!!!!
@harkeofficial Wait - wasn't the video _about_ the cool book? 🤔
I’m thinking about doing a video where I just read the whole book in one sitting out loud. Everyone will love it!
@@harkeofficial I promise I'd watch that on repeat for _at least_ five minutes straight!
This brought back some many great memories. Definitely used it in a similar fashion, it inspired so much creativity as it was so inconvenient to multitrack but that certainly didn’t stop me from trying. Great video!
Fond memories of saying the lyrics of Another One Bites the Dust in Sound Recorder and then listening to the backwards "secret message".
I’m so mad I forgot about that one for the video!!
Sfun to scout mare wanna 😆
Did it make you a pothead?
discovered your channel and have loved it since, your personality rocks and your skills are awesome
Had so much fun with Sound Recorder as a kid. Standout memories are:
1. Making silly new sound effects & voices for the original Doom (explosions replaces with keys dropped on a table sounding like shattering glass, and enemies merrily exclaiming "oh no I died!").
2. Recording short songs about absolutely anything (usually about as mature as you expect from young teenage boys) with just an acoustic guitar and bunch of us "singing".
3. Hearing the cool music from Lords of the Realm 2 at a friend's house, wanting to bring it home on a floppy but the file was too large - no problem, speed it up in Sound Recorder, tadaa half size! Just slow it down home again. Sure, quality took a hit but I just wanted to hear the song, sure beat not having it at all.
This is the coolest thing on the Internet. Nice job on that song! Amazing how good it was just with 90's basic software and a single mic!
This takes me back so much. I remember using this to record some of my earliest "songs" and eventually started recording fake radio shows with multiple guests and segments in it. Wish I preserved them! Don't delete your cringey stuff y'all. You'll appreciate it at some point.
what you do here on this channel is so epic! i subbed in a heatbeat!
I literally almost dropped my phone when I heard spatula city! For many years my brother and I would exchange spatulas for Christmas, based on the fake commercial from UHF! “Don’t forget, they make great Christmas presents!”
Buy nine spatulas... get the tenth one for just one penny!
@@harkeofficial more than once those spatulas came in handy! I still have one in my kitchen to this day.
I love the "little" toaster reference you made at the beginning, it made me smile 😊
The "woah" as you're falling off the Sound Recorder window is so funny!
Thank you! It was a long fall, but I'm okay :)
@@harkeofficial You still never answered how you got up there in the first place though, did you climb the start menu before someone closed it? haha
What a neat video. You triggered so many memories of me and my friends screwing around on basic pc and crappy computer mic. So much fun... Fast forward a few years and I now work professionally in post production working with video editors and audio engineers on a daily basis, kind of wild when you think about it... This was totally my first intro into digital audio recording and editing.
5:36 She liked their spatulas so much, she bought the company.
This video is so great, I loveddd Sound Recorder! I would slow the audio down a lot and then speed it back up to normal speed to get the bitcrushed, compressed sound intentionally. I always thought that distortion was so cool!! I loved recording fake conversations and sound effects in there as a kid, it’s so great to see that someone loved this software so much growing up too and can still see the magic of its simplicity even now. Thank you for this video!!
Vivid memories flooding back of me recording Metallica riffs on Sound Recorder like a true guitar rookie.
Oh man, loved the cover of Daisy, very clever. This is totally my era, but I had a 4-track tape recorder before I eventually got Cakewalk Sonar (ooooooo yeaaaah). What a time to be alive. Love your videos, they're fun as heck.
Your channel is awesome!
Thank you so much!
Thank you for the trip down memory lane! Wish I still had all my old recordings.
4:26 That sounds exactly like that annoying and notorious AI voice in TikTok video's....🤣🤣
That multi track bit. Proud of your childhood ingenuity. Doing that stuff was too much fun!
I really enjoyed this video. You took me back to 2001-2005 when I used to play with this sound recorder. I still have some very funny recordings stored on some CD-Rs or DVD-Rs somewhere.
I used to use that to record my songs I would play the beat in the background over the speakers and would record in a microphone while clicking the button to keep it going for longer than 60 seconds. This brought back memories. 😅
This program defined my adolescence. Finally someone gives it the attention it deserves. Bravo.
I got in my feels when you listed, "Reminds me of my first recordings". I still have some of my "multi-track" songs that I recorded on WindowsME, a TERRIBLE operating system(!), but one that sparked creativity and a passion to keep doing it 20yrs later.
Thanks for the reminder that this existed and... may still be a viable tool for music recording. I'm gonna go download Sound Recorder now!
Sound recording was my first foray into playing around with sound recording back in the Windows 95 days. I took it a step further and transferred my recordings to cassette tape so I could listen on the boombox in my room. Loved the video!
This is CRAZY! I used to do this every day and night! I was 15 when windows 95 came out. Fun memories!
I was doing multitrack recordings on the computer back in the 90s. There were professional sound editing tools and interfaces back then for sure.
I mostly used Samplitude, starting on the Amiga and then later on Windows. Very limited in terms of functionality compared to what we have today, but the basics were there.
Oh I absolutely spent countless hours as a little computer geek in the 90's and early 2000's messing with Sound Recorder exactly the way you lay out here. Speeding, slowing, and reversing anything I could think of. This was also the go to tool I used for voicing my flash animation cartoons and even attempting foley with (it was not good). Fantastic video, subbed :)
I enjoy learning with you. You make it so fun!
The thumbnail with the typical TH-cam "omugosh!" pose almost made me skip over this recommended video in my feed (I get it, the algorithm likes those sorts of thumbnails - no hard feelings!), but MAN am I glad I clicked on it anyway!
What a nostalgic dive this was! I used to play with Sound Recorder ALL THE TIME, and I still have a few dusty old audio files that I made with it back in the 90's and early-00's. But at some point it became quite the recessed memory, and I'm not sure I ever would have thought of it again had I not stumbled upon this terrific video.
But besides all that, I'm a big fan of fun/quirky production quality, so of course I LOVE the way you have those little low-res-gif looking animations of yourself in the videos to introduce different segments, like at 6:57. So much fun! Overall this video was funny, informative, silly, and well-produced. Thanks for doing this!
EDIT: Holy shit... I wrote this comment before I finished the video. And then I saw the part where you recorded the song you wrote about Song Recorder... and recorded on Sound Recorder! That was awesome!! Can we download that anywhere?
I remember playing around with this program a lot. Trying to pronounce words backwards was fun, and can't forget the cool effect of reversing your speech, adding echo, and then un-reversing it to give it a ghostly pre-echo effect. Good ol' Sound Recorder.
Oh this takes me back to my childhood! Back when computer magazines still existed and came with CD's filled of program demos. I made techno songs by stacking and appending samples I found of a musicmaker type program my PC could not run. But I had fun with this...
And how many times I recorded myself saying stuff backwards and then reversing that... Or adding echo's after reversing it and then reversing it again...
Thanks for the nostalgia!
God this is so nerdy. 🤓 the gifs, green screen, aesthetics. Instantly subscribed. Love from Germany 🇩🇪
Wow, Sound Recorder! I had completely forgotten about this program... My brother, our friends, and I would spend hours recording all sorts of nonsense and had a blast experimenting with the effects. Such great memories. Thank you for this little trip back in time from 23 years ago!
Gorgeous nerdiness ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
no way. completely forgot about this gem. thanks for the nostalgic trip down memory lane.
THANK YOU for giving the Sound Recorder the credit it so deserves!! It used to be my go-to boredom killer when I was a teenager. I still got all my recordings from back then, highlight was a burp I slowed down beyond recognition 😅
i had this really cheap mic that came with our 1995 home PC that i loved goofing around with in sound recorder. i never made anything special with it, but saved all the strange noises i recorded. i was quite proud of myself as a kid figuring out how to make them longer. they're all long gone, now - but i _do_ have a cassette tape full of recordings of child me. i cherish it.
This program definitely started my audio obsession. Thank you for dedicating a video to it :')
You are so good telling a story that it's shocking. So glad I found your channel. You are awesome!
That means a lot to hear, especially because I feel like a jumbled incoherent mess sometimes! Thank you so much!
Wow it's crazy I totally forgot about all the stuff I used to do with Sound Recorder. It was definitely my segue into using analogue 4-track tape recorders and multitracking software. Good times! Thanks for the deep dive on this!
Wow. You're right, I had forgotten about this completely.
My brothers and I would play with sound recorder for HOURS at a time. Especially the laughs from speeding the audio up and the reverse effect. I would also record all sorts of messages for online friends, like happy birthday songs and such. 😊
When i was 12 i spent my Autumn holiday at my Grandmas House. Brought my newly Win95 PC with me. I recorded her Voice and made some samples out of it. Its the only voice recording that exist of my Grandma and its heartwarming to still hear her voice now and then...
This was such a fun video! Subscribed, and am going to be going down a rabbit hole that is the rest of your videos. :D
I love it! It reminds me of the stuff I had to do with cassette tapes and mini discs. I used to use Sound Recorder to make my own samples for Fruity Loops back in 2001. I had so much fun with it. The only mic I had that could connect to my computer was the built in mic on my old Compaq crt monitor and it sounded very tinny so I had to be creative. Eventually I got a MOTU 848 mkII and I kinda forgot about Sound Recorder. RIP, SR. Thanks for helping me on my musical journey.
Dude yes!! This brought back so many memories. I loved playing with sound recorder.
Omg, this application also introduced me to sound editing! I spent so much time in my childhood testing out everything! I learned so much useful stuff for music making later in life!
I dint remember this app until I noticed this thumbnail, but OMG, I spent dozens of hours figuring out the tricks you cover here.... good times indeed
Sound Recorder in Win98 was where my self-production path started, too (backing tracks courtesy of my experiments in Cakewalk Express). Before watching this, I’d forgotten about my prepared “templates” of 3-5 minutes of silence that I’d use for my songs. By the time I realized I could not only make MIDI but also record audio in Cakewalk, I was using the more feature-rich CoolEdit Pro for my recordings.
Yes! Brings back so many memories. Sound recorder + PowerPoint '97 = hours of fun!
I don't know how but i spent dozens of hours messing around with sound recorder back in the day and completely forgot all about it until i saw your thumbnail. that 60 second limit was brutal.
Please, we want a full version of “The Sound Recorder Sound,” at least the demo! Those harmonies remind me of a 2000s song, but I can’t remember the name. Super great video!!!
This brings back memories! I had no idea you could stack sounds back in the 98' days.
This is soo cool. It really brings back memories of playing with the sound recorder.
Love you for this one! Memory unlocked!