James commented on Ideas Evaporate:
What equipment do you use to record your ideas? I have been looking for something to capture the occasional “moments of brilliance” on guitar, without having to set up a bunch of gear.

To record an idea one must first have something handy to record it with… A pen and notebook should be waiting on the night table, because we are not likely to get up in the middle of the night, to walk around the house looking for something to write with… And similarly, I have an iPhone with me most of the time. Bruce Sterling called it the Swiss Army knife of phones.

I have two recording apps on my iPhone: Epiphany and iProRecorder. Once turned on, Epiphany constantly records audio, clips between 15 seconds and two minutes, but it only saves a file when something happens that you want saved. Canton and I talked about that in 2003 – see this entry in my old Radio Userland blog, by the way. iProRecorder is a little more versatile, a well-designed app by BIAS.

I have been using these recording apps with the built-in microphone, which sounds pretty bad. But it helps me remember an idea and I seem to have my phone with me most of the time. I might buy a Blue Mikey for the iPhone, as I mentioned on Thursday, which would mean much better quality, and would be a great solution to capture travel-sounds. Then we can play guess-the-travel-sound again!

But since I am currently not traveling, I have been using my 722 with a Rode NT4 stereo microphone, which sounds great. I just lay the mic on the table and tap the record button. The 722 can record in many different formats: any mp3, any FLAC, and Wavs up to 24/192KHz.