I hope you enjoy our audio lessons and that you find them
useful.  I am a student of the Lithuanian language and am currently
taking a class at St. Casimir's Church in Los Angeles. We are using
Beginner's Lithuanian (henceforth refered to as BL) as one of our
textbooks. I found some audio files on the internet in which a couple
of men read the story and conversation in each chapter.  While they
are better than nothing, I felt I could do a better job. I started
this  project to help me learn Lithuanian. If it helps other people,
so much  the better. I've listened for years  to the Lithuanian
Outloud podcasts and Learn French By Podcast podcasts and thought I
could take some of the ideas from those podcasts and some of my own
ideas and create a series of audio lessons. I wrote some scripts using
material in BL. In most lessons our native speaker reads  the story at
the beginning of the chaper once. Then we alternate with the native
speaker reading the vocabulary, a pause for the listener to  repeat
it, and I give the English translation. Then we do the same for  the
story. Next we study some of the Lithuanian sentences found in the
grammer section of each chapter. We finish up by reading the
converstion at the end of each chapter with the native speaker reading
a phrase, pause, and a translation. Sometimes I add a little material
that I think would be useful to know. I try to break up each sentence
into small phrases which the listener can remember when he tries to
repeat it. I usually study Lithuanian and French with an mp3 player in
bed so I'm not looking at the script, so I can handle only a few words
at a time. If I studied while sitting in front of a computer I would
have probably used longer phrases, but I don't so I didn't.

Before starting this project, I didn't know anything about recording
audio on a computer. I was constantly experimenting with my recordings.
I didn't want to spend any more money than necessary as I don't anticipate
doing much more recording.

I've tried several different microphones, all of them cheap ones that
plug into the sound card on my laptop. Originally I had one microphone
intented for VOIP which I shared with my partner. She would hold the
printed script and I would move the microphone back and forth between
us as we spoke.  I recorded in mono. This microphone broke during
lesson 14, so I ordered another from Ebay. That one worked ok so I
ordered another similar one  from Meritline.com. I took a headphone
splitter and some stereo to mono adapters and got set up to record
each microphone on a separate track.  This allows me to adjust the
volume on each track. My voice usually  records pretty loud so I boost
the volume of my partner's voice by 3db or so.  I bought a couple
cheap gaming headphone/microphone setup and am exprimenting with
them. As I record this I've only recorded lessons 1 to 25 but I plan
to use the gaming setups for the rest of the sessions.

After we are done recording a session I edit the files. I remove our
mistakes and some of the odd clicks and other unwanted noises, both
human and nonhuman.  Sometimes my partner finds an error in the script
as we are recording, she corrects it and we rerecord that section, so
I have to edit out the  uncorrected part.

Before we record, my partner reviews the script for errors. Aldona
does it when I show at her house. Aušra downloads the scripts from my
website, prints them out, corrects them with pencil and I pick them up
from her  at work. I take them home and edit the script and print them
out. After  work Aušra stops by on her way home from work and we
record. 

I use a HP DV9812 17" laptop to record. The laptop is running FreeBSD
7.4 and I use audacity as my recording and editting software.

I would appreciate any corrections you find and any suggestions you
might  have to improve these lessons. If you would like to use these
scripts to rerecord the lessons, feel free. change them anyway you
like.  If you let me have your recordings and I think they are better
than mine,  I'll throw mine away and use yours.

I want to thank Aldona, our teacher, for her help. When she left on vacation
to Lithuania after lesson 14, Aušra took over. We recorded a dozen lessons
until she left on vacation to Lithuania. I thank her for her help.
Now Aldona is back and I hope to finish up the last 15 lessons with her.

I would be willing to record some other material if I have other
Lithuanian speakers. I don't know if Aldona or Aušra will have the time.

Today August 9, 2011 I received permission from Hippocrene Books,
the publisher of BL, to release my recordings. Be sure to support them 
by buying the BL book.

Thanks for listening.
sėkmės