Zoom H4n

Recently I've been toying with this nice portable recorder, the Zoom H4n. It's a very interesting piece of equipment:

• highly sensitive condenser microphones, in XY stereo configuration;
• two jack/XLR inputs;
• multi-track recording mode: 2 tracks recorded while 2 are playing and bounce (mixdown of multiple tracks) functionality;
• 4CH mode: recording of up to 4 tracks simultaneously;
• digital effects;
• and much more!

Unfortunately those "thingies" are highly portable but their user interface is rather simple, given the small space on the device for buttons and stuff. Often interaction is very limted, too: a simple task as changing a name to a file or a project can become time-consuming and, in the end, boring. This is why I usually keep the name automatically given by the recorder itself.

The idea

I needed to record some multi-track sessions for a demo, so I tried to organize my work; I fired up OpenOffice, and created some print-ready forms that could be used during the sessions. Yes, that's right: the same old pen and paper! Despite the semplicity of this solution, you can track down all the basic settings, so when it's time to download the tracks on the PC it's easier to archive them.

One of the motivation of this choice is that I absolutely didn't want a noisy PC in the same room I was recording in: everybody knows that annoying "hum" that subtly gets inside your carefully recorded takes... especially when you have very sensitive microphone like the H4n's ones.

The template

The template is organized in pages: this way you can print multiple copies of each one.

By know there are only two sections:

Project list:

Tracks / takes list:

How to use it

Usually I print one Projects page and, say, ten Tracks pages, just in case ;)

The Tracks page is organized to have a quick overview of important details like:

• file names;
• input configurations;
• levels, pan, effects;

but, at the same time, tries not to overload the sheet of informations, so that small corrections can be made without too much "burocracy". I also created a small header section with date, time and page number, so you can easily archive your sheets together in a (physical) folder.

Download

You can find the template in the "attachment" section of this page:

http://www.megadix.it/content/template-pre-stampati-zoom-h4n