Digitizing Music, Part 2: Vinyl Records

Depending on the age of your relative with Alzheimer's disease, they may have vinyl records that you can use as music for their device. For my project, one of the residents at Homestead Assisted Living had a record from their brother who was a polka singer. Her family did not have a CD, only the vinyl. Luckily, my mother already owned a record player and digitizer for her own extensive record collection. Through the process, I learned how to digitize records. If your relative has a vinyl record collection, you can follow these steps to digitize their records and put it on their music device.

Step 1: Gather the Supplies

Firstly, select a record to digitize. Next, if you do not have a record digitizer, you will need to purchase one. I used the USB record player by Innovative Technology. It is important to clean the record before putting it in the digitizer, if you do not have the proper equipment to clean the record, I recommend the Record Friend Vinyl Record Cleaning kit. That is what I used when digitizing the record.

Optional Step: Software

Depending on the digitizer you use, it may come with software for your computer so that you can export, edit, and divide your recording. If it does not come with software, like mine, I used a free program called Audacity in order to do this. If you do use Audacity, there are many great online tutorials on how to use this software. I used a youtube tutorial by the channel Which? and it was very helpful.

Step 2: Cleaning the Vinyl Record

Your record cleaning equipment may come with its own instructions on how to clean the record. However, as a general tip, make sure you do not touch the flat part of the record after it is cleaned, this will add fingerprints and oil. In addition, you should let it dry for quite awhile before trying to digitize it in order to avoid damaging the record digitizer. Also, vinyl records are very fragile and thin, they can be easily broken in the cleaning process so go slowly and handle it gently.

Step 3: Digitizing the Record

Your digitizer contains instructions to digitize the record. But it is important that you do not bump or move the digitizer during the process, this could cause the record to skip, giving the audio a bad sound and losing a few moments of music.

Step 4: Use the Software

Once you have the recording, use the audio software to edit the recording in order to eliminate some of the loud static and separate the recording into the individual songs. The previously mentioned tutorial can help with that.

Voila! You have digitized your record. Now just drag and drop the music files into your music device.