Testing out my new toy

With SXSW coming up, I bought a new toy to record better audio for my multimedia videos, the Zoom H1 voice recorder. Everyone, say hello to Finn (yes, it's in reference to the tall and lanky Glee character. See the resemblance?)

Isn't it adorable? I freaking love this thing. It's so tiny, but those two mics on top are freaking powerful little guys.

So naturally, I brought it with me to test it out at a free show at Red 7 with two of my favorite bands, Zlam Dunk and Markov.

I also filmed some video with my Lumix camera because my set up for multimedia is going to be the zoom recorder mounted on top of my camera. But I couldn't get close enough to get any good footage. Zlam fans love to dance so they were so close to the stage that it was hard to get good close ups. Oh well. Instead, I'm going to share the audio.

Now keep in mind that I was standing next to a speaker (thank goodness for earplugs. Thanks Tina!). There is some distorting every now and then (because the recorder was on my camera so I couldn't monitor both at once. Hey, this is a learning process.), but overall, it sounds pretty freaking awesome. So can't wait for SXSW.
By the way, my newspaper adviser also taught me how to properly use shutter speeds. After years of my so-called photography, I finally understand it. So I tested that out too with Zlam Dunk, who by the way, is the perfect band to test shutter speeds on. They move all over the freaking stage.

See that photo of Charlie right there (click on it to see it bigger and more photos from that night)? Epic win.