Editing the printed word vs Editing the spoken word

In most languages, except Chinese and Japanese, the printed words represent the sounds of the spoken words, and stand in their place. They give us a way to "freeze" the spoken words, and the ideas they tell about, in stored form, that help us remember, and make our ideas easy to share with others.

We go thru elaborate educations, just to learn how to store the sounds of these spoken ideas in frozen visual form, and how to recover these frozen ideas from the printed page, and thaw them out, turning them back into sounds.

First we learn how to read the sounds from the page out loud, Later, we learn how to replay them again, in our minds, in unspoken, but internally-verbalized form, as a string of sounds. We have taken one sense, the auditory senses, our speech and hearing, and taught ourselves how to converse in it with our visual sense. We have used our pattern recognition sense, together with our visual sense, to drive our verbal word sense. Our printed words are "codes" for our spoken words, that have allowed us to store and transmit our wisdom, to conduct business transactions, and save our sentimental memories.

Let's review the ways we learn how to edit the printed word.

In handwriting, our choices are to erase---if we are writing with a pencil---or to scratch out the mistakes, and write the words again, the way we want them to look. We can even draw a neat horizontal line thru the words that we want to delete, instead of scratching them out and making it look messy.

When we learned to type, on the old-style typewriters, if we made a mistake-----which happened often, because the little levers attached to the keys would get crossed up----we could use "white-out" liquid, to cover the mistake up, or use a special lift-off tape, and then type the character again, to remove it, and then type it the correct way.

If the typewriter was newer, we might have had a backspace lift-off tape to remove the mistakes, or even an electronic window that held a whole line of text, so that the mistake never even touched the page, if we caught the mistake before we pressed the carriagereturn key. This made us look like the perfect typist!

As we graduated to typewriters with memories, and to word processors and personal computers, with word processing programs or text editors, and TV monitors instead of rolls of paper, we had more and more choices for editing our printed words. We could move the pointer (cursor), and either <Delete> a "string" of characters (character\word\line(s)\ paragraph(s)), or use the <Backspace> to do the same thing.

We could highlight a phrase or a paragraph, and then <Delete> it, or <Cut> or <Copy> the string of characters, and then <Paste> it somewhere else in our document. We could position the cursor and either <Insert> a string of characters, with the <Insert> toggle turned on, or we could type over the ones there, that we don't like, with the <Insert> toggle turned off, substituting correct characters for the ones that are wrong.

Our early text editors had developed from programmers' editors, and gradually special shortcut keys were added to them, that we could remember to do repetitive tasks quicker and quicker.

Many of our fancier word processing programs, and lots of the programmer's compilers and assemblers copycatted these shortcut keys, to help new users get used to a program, with keyboard skills that they already had. As personal computers became more affordable for individuals, one of the most important uses that people found for them, was as smart typewriters.

Over time, the word processing programs became more and more powerful. We have gotten very accomplished at making our printed documents look better, with fancier and fancier character fonts, and even pictures too, on faster and clearer-printing printers.

Each year, personal computers go almost twice as fast as last year's, and can store twice as many characters. Multi-media personal computers, with sound cards, speakers, and microphones, and the right software, can act like smart magnetic tape recorders, and so much more.

Nowadays, documents are being developed that can have attached multimedia files to play thru the sound card and speakers, or moving pictures to watch on the monitor. With special adaptor boards available, that can give us a cable-ready TV receiver to watch onscreen on the monitor, or a built-in FM radio, with capability to capture files right off the airwaves, or to learn to play an electronic musical instrument with a sound card music synthesizer, the lines between computer and stereo are rapidly blurring.

To use all of these new capabilities, is the reason why we need a good sound file editor, as much as we needed a good word processor for written language.

Editing the spoken word

The difficulty of making precise edits on the old-style streaming magnetic tape was in positioning two different tape recording decks at just the right spot, just before a certain thing is said, when the words that we want to copy over are going to happen next, then we start our other tape recorder on record. It was pretty hard to do an edit like this without the edits being noticeable, and it took a lot of tries before we could make a decent copy this way.

With these Voice File editing tools, and the Indexed Audio Filing System, we can edit and organize sound recordings in easier, more efficient ways. With computer-assisted sound editing, you can neatly edit out wasted seconds, of silence, while you thought of what next to say, or the awkward "uh....uh's". You can also adjust the loudness more powerfully, and edit out noisy or bad parts, and redo them.

Because you can SEE the voice print of the sounds, you can put the pointer precisely where it needs to go, to keep all the good parts, and delete the mistakes, without time-wasting trial and error, and lots of stops and starts, trying to coordinate two tape recorders.

Voice File Edit takes the actual sounds of the spoken words and makes them visible, by plotting them as a graph, that we can see, according to their loundness. The fluctuations in amplitude (loudness) show us where to put the pointer. This is more precise than the ordinary mechanical positioning of magnetic streaming tape, because humans cannot see the ones and zeros on the magnetic tape. We don't have xray vision, like Superman. PC-assisted sound editing, is for recording sound, what the microwave oven was for cooking: precision.

Another plus: with editing the sounds of the spoken words, and preserving our thoughts and ideas in audio sound form, we can capture the mood and feelings, in a more authentic way, than by using spelled out sounds in text characters.

What is"voice file editing" and what can I use it for?

Voice file editing, gives us new tools to preserve and organize our ideas, our thoughts and feelings, for many purposes that we now use audio tape recorders for.

Writing or studying anything can involve more of our senses, and therefore, make a stronger recording inside us, intensifying our self-direction and our efforts at self-improvement, making our goals and priorities more effective. It is like taking vitamins for your decision-making, self-control and goal-making. We can "make ourself mind ourself" better, "get our act together" better, and "get our story together" better.

In the electronic gadget age, a personal computer -assisted thought recorder gives us a powerful new tool for pointing ourselves in constructive directions.

We can not only collect our thoughts better, but we can preserve the thoughts of these more centered peak experiences for playback to ourselves when we are in a less-energized, followup mode, not feeling so crystal clear mentally. We can become the masters of our fates, in new more powerful and easier ways.

We can use voice file editing to prepare for public speeches before a group, or for things like appearances in court.

We can save voice recordings of our thoughts, either directly with a microphone, or on cassette tapes, then bring them into VFEdit with a tape player hooked up to "LineIn" on the sound card, and copying them to disk files for digital editing.

We can save voice recordings of our thoughts in our personal battles to overcome trauma, or to assist ourselves in personal growth of any kind. Our thoughts will not be so random, our personal growth paths not so drifting.

When we face momentus decisions, we can have a talk with our inner self, capturing our thoughts with the microphone. Then with the voice file editor, we can listen to ourselves, over several days' time, until we can see the ideal solution, instead of over-reacting and maybe making impulsive, unconsidered choices. This could be a tool for teaching us patience and deliberation, and good rational decision-making.

A tool for leaving a legacy of ideas for future generations, to leave a personal "time capsule", a legacy of wisdom to pass down from one generation to the next, and the next, and the next. Youngsters of tomorrow can hear their grandpa's hopes and dreams, when he was a young man, before he even met grandma.

To encourage open lines of communication between family members.

A strengthener of families

Not just edit, but edit and organize into a more meaningful whole---an integrating tool.

A tool for self-improvement

A personal growth tool

A tool for enhancing learning

A tool for preparing lectures and speeches

A tool for practicing music or singing

We can use voice file editing to prepare for public speeches before a group, or for things like appearances in court.

We can save voice recordings of our thoughts, either directly with a microphone, or on cassette tapes, then bring them into VFEdit with a tape player hooked up to "LineIn" on the sound card, and copying them to disk files for digital editing.

A tool for organizing audio momentos

A strengthener of families.

To encourage open lines of communication between family members. A tool for working on communication between married partners, to discover and root out those little misunderstandings that turn into resentments, and build up walls between married partners. By focusing on the words,

instead of blaming each other, and by looking at it more objectively, to find ways to start growing in the same direction, and stop growing apart.

Gaining perspective, understanding things better.

Developing a stronger identity, becoming more emotionally and mentally stable.

Collecting our thoughts about something, to make better decisions.

Helping ourselves stay grounded in reality, if we have a tendency to get carried away on a whim.

Expressing ourselves, relieving all those feelings of "No one cares about what I think", getting it off of our chest.

Making self-awareness easier.

Organizing our goals and priorities: Planning Ahead.

Saving extra good ideas for replaying, instead of forgetting to remember.

Audio Stick-On Notes: Make an audio "to-do" list file, and set up your PC to play this for you, when you start it up in the morning.

Developing a research paper.

Thinking out loud. Keeping a journal. Making our private time more meaningful.

Making your own "audio books", being a "writer", even if you are not a good speller, and can't type.

Reinforce your own positive wishes, hopes, prayers and affirmations. Repeatedly listening to your main wishes, prayers and other self-talk, makes a stronger multi-sensory impression on our own subconscious, to really help things happen. Making your faith stronger.

Think of your own memories as magnetic tape, constantly recording your thoughts, along with your visual, auditory, and other sense impressions.

Using a voice file editor, to more strongly focus your own attention, like adjusting the lens on a 35mm non-auto-focus camera, also acts like a consciously-focused thought recorder inside your own mind-body.

Recording important family moments, like when you proposed marriage, or your feelings when you bring home your first newborn baby, your hopes at high school or college graduation.

Freezing special moments, recording your expectations and plans, then replaying them in a year or so, and comparing what really has happened, to gain wisdom and more concentrated self-direction in your life.

Turning that drawer full of used magnetic cassette tapes, the ones that you can't throw away, because they have ten minutes of something that you want to keep, into a drawer full of freshly recycled cassettes, without losing the special moments. Then you can go out and capture many more memories, without needing to continually buy more cassettes.

Taking our spoken thoughts and allowing us to edit and organize these thoughts, and gain wisdom and perspective, making it all make more sense.

Part of some technical writing I did for Andrew Michalik, of Voice Information Systems Inc.
http://www.vinfo.com/
vf061395.* 3:35pm 06-14-95 Shari Soza now is vf61395a.rtf      last edited 12-07-96