The MAONZE project investigates change over time in the pronunciation of the Maori language. This is the first such investigation of sound change in an indigenous language currently undergoing revitalisation and is made possible through the existence of recordings of speakers born in the late 19th century. The MAONZE corpus contains recordings of the Maori and English speech of three generations of speakers of Maori whose birthdates span 100 years. This article outlines the background to the project and gives details on how the corpus of recordings was compiled as well as giving information about two related corpora: the Tuhoe corpus and the Maori English corpus. We hope that the details provided here will encourage others to record older first-language speakers of Maori and develop corpora similar to those described here. A companion piece will describe the transcription protocols and the use that has so far been made of the recordings.