All sibling interviews done.

I meant to write yesterday after Derek's interview. Alas. It is now the late evening of January 3, 2010. All the recording of my siblings is over. Somewhat of a relief and somewhat of a burden because now I have to edit all of this stuff. Each interview ended up being roughly two hours and the group conversation over one of our now famous "sibling dinners" was two hours as well. I also have the home videos and cassette tapes. Oy. A lot of stuff to sift through. But, I'm excited to do it. Derek's interview went well... I copied all the files from the 722 to my computer after his interview. I am really sad to report that the audio is super quiet, but it is clean, so I think I can up the gain without too many problems. The interview with David went really well, too. His was definitely emotionally taxing, though. In fact, all three of the personal interviews were. There are so many things that I didn't know that my siblings felt... so much love for me... so many issues with our parents splitting the siblings up. The sibling dinner was a little stressful for me. Not because of any recording issues, though. That ended up working well... I originally was going to use the AKG 414 on the omnidirectional pickup pattern setting, but I ended up using a bidirectional setting (Derek and I were on one side of the table and David and Crys were on the other [instead of us sitting all around it]). But, anyhow. It was the first time that I really felt like an outsider with my siblings. They have all these shared memories and moments in their adolescence that I was not a part of because I was the only sibling with my mother. There were a lot of inside jokes and even emotional pain that I was jealous of. I don't necessarily wish I had stayed with them, but I definitely wish we were together. If that makes sense. All six hours of the audio I collected while here in the Dallas/Fort Worth area seems a bit on the quiet side. I am not sure how this happened because I monitored the levels on the 722 the entire time. I really hope it doesn't sound awful... that would really take away from the work. I fly back to Boston tomorrow. I am ready to be back in my own space. And start editing all of this, of course.
LATER: I just re-copied all the audio from the 722 to my hard drive on my computer. None of the files sounded nearly as quiet as they did. Huzzah! I'm not sure why the other files were wonky or what could have caused that, but they all sound pretty good (or at least decent enough to work with).