It’s not easy to find information online on how to record a heartbeat. I decided to run a little experiment just with the recording gear I already have at home and report my results.
The results were completely unexpected, at least for me.
The only method that worked for me was recording with my phone.
Now I don’t have tons of fancy recording gear, but I have done quite a bit of home recording and I expected the thousands of dollars I’ve spent on recording gear to actually come in handy for this task, but it turned out I just didn’t have what was needed.
And if my one successful recording isn’t enough for you, I found a couple other successful attempts from others. You can scroll to the end of the article to see them.
I already had a recording app on my phone (I use it to record daily affirmations) so why not give it a try? It wasn’t going to cost me anything but a few minutes of my time.
I just booted up the app (I use the Android Voice Recorder app), stuck my phone’s recording microphone on my chest and started recording.
This attempt was a complete failure. I got some sound, but it I couldn’t tell if any of it was from my heartbeat or not. Some of the sound was definitely just the phone movement against my skin, but I there were some faint beats that may or may not have been my heart.
I tried several times and the result was the same every time.
But wait, I still had my phone case on!
The phone case put about 5mm of open space between the phone’s microphone and my body. That’s certainly enough to cause a problem. I removed my phone case and tried again. This time I was able to get an actual recording of my heart rate, yay! This is what I got:
See how the two microphones are flat? I hoped (wrongly) that being able to press the microphone flat on my chest would give the device a good chance of catching some of my heartbeat.
This was another failed attempt. I tinkered with the recording settings several times, but I was never able to hear a heartbeat.
I guess the lesson here is that to record your heartbeat you need a recording instrument that can press directly against your skin and block out ambient noise.
In my search for various ways to record a heartbeat I came across one product in particular that can record your heartbeat and sync with your phone. The product/brand was called Eko.
Basically, the product is made simply to record your heartbeat and then gather various medical information about it. It’s intended purpose is entirely medical. It’s supposed to monitor your heart rate and listen for any irregularities.
It’s not a product for a recording artist, but it might actually be one of the best options currently available for a recording artist. As far as I can tell the product is made like a medical stethoscope, but instead of sending the sound to an analog tube that gets passed to your ears, it simply converts the sound directly to a digital signal.
It’s hard to imagine a better process for getting a good heartbeat audio signal.
I think the reason the phone microphone worked is because it is a one directional microphone that only has a small hole for recording. When I pressed the microphone on my chest it completely closed the hole off from the rest of the room.
With the failures of the home recording gear I have, I think I would go one of two routes to get a louder and cleaner heartbeat recording:
I did find a video from Amal Lad where he managed to get a recording of his heartbeat with only a microphone and some noise gates in his recording software.
I feel like this method should produce a better recording than the phone. Once you get a recording into your software you should be able to clean up the ambient noise and get a clean recording of your heartbeat. It’s probably worth saying that you should also be able to clean up the recording from your phone with your recording software as well.
Anatoly Zolotkov creates a homemade DIY electronic stethoscope with parts from a stethoscope, a very small microphone and a Tascam recording device much like the one I have.
The results were quite incredible.
If you are serious about getting a high quality recording of your heartbeat this has to be the best way to go about it. There are quite a few parts necessary, but the final recording sounds great.
If you just want a low quality recording, you can record your heartbeat with only your cell phone and a recording app. You can also get a slightly higher quality recording with a directional recording microphone placed directly on your chest.
If you want a cleaner, higher quality recording you’ll need to get your hands on a stethoscope and a small directional microphone, or a product specifically designed for recording your heartbeat, like the Eko.
