Cassette tape history

Between 1978 and about 1990, we made cassette tapes to send back to the UK and we received tapes, mainly from parents.

There are over 30 in total, varying from 15 mins to 90 mins for two sides, mostly of an hour duration. I bought a cassette player with USB output, installed Audacity software on my windows 7 notebook and began converting clips into MP3 format for emailing to relevant family members. Converting a whole tape is too big a file to email and contains too much variety for it all to be of interest to a single person anyway.

Part of the process involved listening to every tape (more than once!) so that I could make detailed notes and adequately  label and then  number each cassette, in date order. It was made more difficult as some of the tapes had been recorded over, in part, so spanning two time periods and two families.

However, the end result is a fascinating record of those years when the children were young and to recall and revisit some of their stories and songs and memories of life then, including our transition to Australia and changing employment, new friends and places.

There are much valued recordings  of relatives no longer with us.

I acknowledge the assistance rendered by friend Roger, who had preformed cassette labels, suitable for computer typing up,  plus a cassette copier--thanks Rog. Also thanks to Matt Mackay, who gave me valuable recording advice, on Christmas Day--at a family get together.

The pic below is of the completed tapes, in a file folder.