The above is a shot of what is sat on the corner of my desk right now – and it brings me joy. Despite only relatively recently discovering this hefty tome, I can quite honestly say it is the single most important tool for writing after a pen and paper – I place this book as more important than computers and word processors!

The Synonym Finder by J.I.Rodale, first came into my life thanks to Jen (and further thanks to her for sourcing this copy), who has a treasured hard cover version shipped with the rest of her most precious books when she moved from the US. Mine is a lowly, but pristine, soft cover version as the hard cover is impossible to locate (even a well cared for soft cover is no easy find!).

This is no ordinary Thesaurus

Oh no. This book is magical.
I have owned and used thesauri in the past and found them to deliver less than they promise. Lists of alternate words would pass my imagination by and the book would return to the shelf with a shove of dissatisfaction.

The Synonym Finder, on the other hand, rarely fails to surpass my expectations. Perfectly usable alternative words pop out of the pages in bunches, offering more choice than you can imagine thus breathing life and colour into one’s writing.

What are you talking about?

If you have never used one of these, or have never undertaken any serious writing, let me offer an example scenario:

1. You read back along a recently written paragraph, only to discover you have used the word ‘disgust‘ in each of the three sentences. The word fits very well in the context of each.
2. Your choice is to completely re-write two of what are already excellent sentences, or, you reach for your Synonym Finder.
3. Under ‘disgust‘ you see: nauseate, sicken, turn one’s stomach; satiate, glut, surfeit; offend, repel, repulse, outrage, scandalize, shock; gross out; cause aversion, dissatisfy, annoy.
4. You discover at least two words you can use to simply swap out two instance of ‘disgust‘, and you may find a word or two that suggest a little more than you had originally written providing the inspiration to expand on your first words.

Many sentences in TableRappers has been saved from the cringe reaction as a result of this book, and it will therefore remain a critical part of my writing arsenal.

Now it is at this point I would normally provide you with a nice, clean Amazon link so you might delve further and make a purchase. Sadly, this book is not easy to find, and the majority of copies available will be used to some degree (thankfully the one photographed above, that arrived in the post today, is almost as new).

The place I would start is AbeBooks.co.uk. I have purchased from these guys a couple of times now and have been extremely happy with the speed or service, and the pricing of books. They list rare and out of print book, mostly used but some are brand new, from across the globe. Obviously costs for shipping will be higher if the book you want is coming from another country, but you can often find appropriately located copies to keep costs down.

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I’ll not go into detail on the spec – you can get that here. This is both a stereo recorder and a 4-track recorder in one, with – and this is what lifted it up above its competition for me – standard jack and XLR inputs, with 48V phantom power, in addition to its in-built stereo mics.

I knew that it had the ability to take a guitar input straight in, but was not prepared for just how great it would sound when recording a guitar through its range of preset simulated amplifier models. It took a little fiddling due to the small screen, but within a few minutes I had recorded a couple of tracks of rhythm and lead guitar, each sound modelled differently and mixed using the built-in mixer. It even has it’s own guitar tuner and metronome. This device is going to be a lot of fun!

On the podcasting front, it can either record (WAV or direct to mp3 with adjustable settings for each) to an SD card, or as a direct USB audio interface into the Mac – or PC of course – using its own mics or any connected to the inputs. Built-in Limiting or Compression helps to dramatically increase quality, and it has a number of mic model emulation settings for different audio environments (not played with those yet, more on that sometime).

Pretty much each time I pick this baby I discover something new. It is always a delight to be happy with a gadget purchase only to realise it does far more than one anticipated, does it well, and opens new possibilities previously not considered.

For an example of what it does, I’ll be recording the next MinorTechnicality podcast with the H4′s own mics rather than my usual AKG condenser and Tascam interface combi.

UPDATE: some hiccups using this unit as a straight audio interface into the Mac. Haven’t figured out exactly what the issue is, but Übercaster was not happy. I’ve come across Übercaster fitting over an audio problem then creating all kinds of problems with audio thereafter until a reboot sorts it out. More info to come as I experiment.

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