Recording as a tool for improvement

[Mattg]

Ok, I just had to share this with y'all, especially the novice players (like me). I recently purchased a compact digital stereo recording device. It's just small enough to fit into a shirt pocket. It records in surprisingly good quality and is easy to use. It has become an invaluable tool to improve my playing ability.

I have carried this thing everywhere including jams and lessons. For lessons, it is obvious that I can retain the content indefinitely. I took it to a few jams to capture songs I want to learn or learn better. I also just play tunes into it to listen to how they sound. I gotta say that it is huge for me to be able to listen to myself play. It can be horrifying or pleasantly surprising. Things that I thought should sound good, did not and visa versa. I found that I was too quiet in some songs, my A strings are out of tune more often than I thought, and I need to pick more cleanly. I also use it to play chord progression loops so that I can jam along and try different ideas.

There is lots of software available on the internet to edit the audio files once they are transferred to a computer. I spent an evening busting up a 3.5 hour jam into individual songs. Some sound quite nice. I've shared these files with my jam pals too. Songs that I’m working on get transferred to my mp3 player.

I got the Tascam DR-1. It has two very sensitive built in mics, an SD slot (got an 8 Gig card for 7+ hours at MP3), a USB hookup and lots of onboard controls. There are many other good ones out there too, the Sonys looked really nice. I don't want to endorse any particular brand, I just picked this one up cause they had it on sale at my local music store.

[Tim Bowen]

As to evaluating the nuances of one's execution, it's my opinion that the recording medium is one's most valuable reference point. Recordings simply don't lie. They tell us what we want to hear, and unfortunately, at least within the short term, what we don't want to hear. But that's education.

I had been recording electric guitars and basses for decades before I ventured into the world of recording acoustic instruments, which is decidely a different ballgame entirely. A sensitive microphone hears everything, that's its job. For starters, I had to re-think my pick attack - those clicks upon the body or pick guard of an instrument that were otherwise fine, quickly became a problem that needed to be addressed. Pick gauge, pick material composition - the microphone hears it. All nuances - picking, slurring, sliding, hammering, dynamic treatment - the mic' hears it.

You decide upon the best M.O. - choice of chair, even choice of clothing (a good mic' will pick up a chair squeak or even the brushing of an overshirt). The more finely detailed the nitpicking parameters are - whether or not they have been decided upon by yourself - the more you learn about how the nuances of your recorded sounds play within the tune at hand. I've been at sessions where an engineer would freak about this or that, and I've had various opinions and reactions as to such; to be honest, I've often disagreed, at least at the time. However, more times than I care to count, I've been reminded of why engineers are engineers.

[Coffeecup]

Recording for self critques is certainly great value but is very useful for practice too. I find it very useful to play along with recorded tracks and have the opportunity to experiment with improvisations.

Off topic slightly, but I don't find it easy playing with a metronome for some tunes. I use Melody Assistant for various tasks and a few days ago made up a midi track of a tune I've been having problems with, the midi having percussion and drone/chords. I find I can play the tune quite well against that. It's rather like a karaoke I suppose. The advantage of this over the recording is that tempo or key changes are just a few key clicks away.

[grassrootphilosopher]

Recording is a valuable source to learning how to sound good. I would also stress the point that putting together a multitrack recording with a band will enable you to see how a musical piece is indeed pieced together. You will become more critical with regards to your (and other´s) playing. Nevertheless allways recording and listening to the outcome will kill the joy of playing. So it´s a two edged sword.

[latentaudio]

There used to be a guy here that ran a monthly song project where everyone would vote on a song to learn, record and then post a recording of the song The whole thing was a great learning experience for me in many different ways.

It probably would be easy to get something like that going again now that you can attach MP3's to messages.