Im a little frustrated...

  1. Guitfiddle Mike
    Guitfiddle Mike
    I've been playing bass and guitar in bands for nearly 30 years. Can count the times I've even been the least bit nervous on one hand. I have been practicing The Flowers of Edinburgh since it was posted and I think I have a basic beginner version down pretty well. But, when I turn that camera on I can't get through the A part without crashing. Its the darndest thing. Anybody else experience this?
    Mike
  2. HonketyHank
    HonketyHank
    YES! STILL! It does get less severe though.
  3. Mark Gunter
    Mark Gunter
    Definitely get the camera jitters. Y'all will never know what cool sounds I can make on my own, LOL, you only get the jittery versions!

    Hey Mike, try to relax and play on through the crashes, though. Do a bunch of takes, pick the best one, and post it. We probably won't see half the problems that you think you're seeing. Also, after a week or so, re-watch your videos. They may not seem "as bad" to you after you've had time to put some personal distance between yourself and your performance.
  4. bbcee
    bbcee
    I second what Mark says - you probably notice that a lot of people post here with a bunch of qualifications - me for sure. I don't really hear other people's "issues", and a week later, I don't hear mine either.
  5. Guitfiddle Mike
    Guitfiddle Mike
    Thanks guys, I try to play through but are crashes, not just little hiccups...Im going to post up something soon. Its just funny what that camera does to me, not to mention adding 100 pounds or so and taking all the black out of my hair!!!

    Maybe I need a new one!
    Mike
  6. HonketyHank
    HonketyHank
    Don't forget also that it is probably the mandolin's fault. No time like the present to take a flying leap down that slippery slope and start looking to make an upgrade.
  7. Sherry Cadenhead
    Sherry Cadenhead
    Some good suggestions here, Mike. Based on my own teacher's instruction, admittedly in a slightly different context, I suggest you slow down in your video. Try playing at a slower pace. Once you've mastered the piece at that speed, ramp things up a bit, continuing to do so until you reach the desired speed. I bet you'll reach a point that you're pleased with the results.
  8. Bunnyf
    Bunnyf
    Mike, I hear ya! That's why you never do your more complicated stuff when you start performing. I always suggest that folks do a dead easy song. People wont really realize it's easy, but they will know if you pick something harder and crash and burn. Stuff is always easier when you're on your own and relaxed. As soon as you turn the camera on, something happens. I even get that reaction when I put on the metronome. It kinda throws me a bit. People say this happens to them when they go to lessons too. Their playing falls apart in front of the teacher.
  9. Jess L.
    Jess L.
    I sometimes just turn the camera on & let it run for the whole practice session, assuming I have sufficient battery & memory space.

    That way I get used to the camera being on, and after a few minutes I almost forget it's even there.

    Camera/recorder or not, it takes me a while to get in the zone, to where I'm playing better. The first few minutes when I sit down to play, typically don't sound as good as later on during that same session when musical ideas flow better. (No, I don't drink anymore, so any perceived musical improvement is *not* chemically induced.)

    Anyway, having the recording device(s) already on, saves from interrupting that music flow to tinker with knobs & switches.

    Then later I listen to the whole mess, with lots of fast-forwarding through the many, many less-than-stellar parts.

    Sometimes, somewhere in there will be a several minute contiguous segment of somewhat-ok playing, that I can put into a video for YouTube.

    Other times, especially with tricky or brand-new tunes that I don't quite have a handle on yet, the recording might not have any usable material at all, in which case I delete the whole recording & try again some other time.

    There are a few stubborn tunes that I've never managed to capture a good recording of, for instance the otherwise very pretty & very basic fiddle tune "Nancy". Over the years I've tried recording it probably 10 or 12 times on various instruments. While I'm actually playing it on the instrument I'm thinking "yeah this sounds good," but listening to the recording, it sounds not-so-good after all. Maybe there just aren't enough notes in the tune? (slow tunes are sometimes the most difficult to make them sound musical... all those quarter notes instead of the usual eighth notes... perhaps I should play it faster or add more notes - or not.) I listen a few times, curious to try to figure out why it sounds non-good... the notes are all in the right places, but I'm just not getting the 'vibe' I want, in the recording. "Delete". Lol. Something for the future I guess.

    Occasionally, there are other tunes where everything just sort of smoothly falls into place, usually after sufficient practice, but not necessarily involving much conscious 'effort'. Predictably, those ones result in better recordings.

    Anyway... as to apps... I first started doing videos using Windows Movie Maker, which let me trim off a long video's beginning & end (after zooming in for better accuracy), so that I could have the video be just the middle part where I had managed to play for a minute or three without making a bunch of errors. Nowadays I'm using a different video app, but the principle is the same.
  10. Bluegrasscal_87
    Bluegrasscal_87
    I'm right there with you Mike. It took about 9 takes for me to get the version I was able to post. I can run away with the mandolin, until the camera comes on, haha.
  11. sportsnapper
    sportsnapper
    Me too!!! Just spent the last hour or so trying to get a decent recording for the Flowers, and I'v got lots of good A parts, and a few good B parts, but nothing that looks like a whole performance. Unless the camera is off. :-( Thought I could edit them together I guess that's not in the spirit of the thing!!
    More practise - though Mrs Jones is beginning to become tired of the tune!
  12. MikeZito
    MikeZito
    I have never tried to make a 'live' video of myself - but I have performed on live local television numerous times. I think the key to forgetting about the TV cameras was to look at somebody in the studio who seemed to be enjoying the music - this way it was more like a regular live gig than a TV show. Perhaps if you had a person, or a few people, in the room while you played, you could perform for them, instead of the camera?
  13. Kevin Stueve
    Kevin Stueve
    "No, I don't drink anymore", do you drink any less? sorry, i can't help myself
  14. Jess L.
    Jess L.
    MikeZito wrote: "... I think the key to forgetting about the TV cameras was to look at somebody in the studio who seemed to be enjoying the music - ... "

    That works.

    A personal sort-of-example, although not on TV: One of the first times I was on stage, playing lead fiddle no less (fiddle is really easy to screw up! lol), after walking out onto the stage I was so nervous that I might play wrong notes or play out of tune (no frets on those darn things) or screw up the bowing and get screechy sounds... When you're the only fiddler on the stage (I had a guitarist for backup), if you make a mistake, people *are* gonna notice, there are no other similar instrument sounds to 'hide' behind or blend in with. But I tried to focus my concentration on the rhythmic aspects of my playing, of course the rhythm is *the* most important aspect of a fiddle tune anyway, gotta have that 'bounce' for the tune to work right... so with that thought in mind I started on my first tune...

    A few seconds into the tune, I saw some people in the front row tapping their feet in time with the music, and I was like "Aha, I got them," just knowing that someone was enjoying the music, was all it took to make the nervousness go away. After that, I wasn't worried about screwing up, I could relax and "just play", it went good.

    I should also give credit where credit is due, that backup guitarist I happened to get that day, was fabulous, he could have probably made almost anyone sound good or at least better than usual. Good backup makes a world of difference both in improving overall sound as well as helping the lead player to feel more confident.

    (Incidentally, this is one of the reasons why nowadays I like to do my home-practice playing along with backing tracks, they serve sort of the same functionality as good backup musicians do, to help the player relax and "just play" - even while learning a new tune IMO it's still easier when playing along with some sort of backing.)

    So anyway, yeah, I agree with what Mike wrote, sounds like good advice.

    Kevin Stueve wrote: " "No, I don't drink anymore", do you drink any less? sorry, i can't help myself"

    Lol! But we might have to invent a new word: "anyless"... or something like that...

    A trivia tidbit that I just learned today:
    Seems that the one-word usage of "anymore" = "any longer", is a historically-recent U.S. thing; apparently it isn't used in the UK... at least that's what someone wrote at a StackExchange page:

    [Question] "I wonder if it could be a US x UK issue. I have always learnt and used 'any more' (two words) in all contexts, and come from a British family unit, attending a British School. So we would have: John doesn't live here any more (UK) John doesn't live here anymore (US)"

    [Answer] "Yes, I believe this is a US / UK difference. I've never seen any Brit use the one-word form "anymore" (except for when MS Word's grammar checker has "corrected" it, IMHO incorrectly)."

    [Commenter] "The single word form... seems to be quite a recent Americanism"

    Anyway, I always enjoy word puns, so thanks Kevin for the chuckle.
  15. Sherry Cadenhead
    Sherry Cadenhead
    So is "learnt" British also?
  16. Jess L.
    Jess L.
    Sherry wrote: "... So is "learnt" British also?"

    I'd always assumed so, as the only place I ever see "learnt" is from British writers. Here's a brief StackExchange discussion, and here's what the BBC World Service has to say about it:

    "Originally, in British English, everyone would have spelt the past tense of learn with T - I learnt to drive, I learnt to cook, but you'll find more and more people in the UK now using the ed ending.

    "The same is true of verbs such as spell - as in I spelt it incorrectly - with a T at the end. ... This is probably due to the influence of American English coming into Britain because in the US the ed is used for learn, for spell, for dream for example - I dreamed it with an ed at the end. And you'll find that this US spelling is starting to replace the original British spelling in British English.

    "The main thing to remember is that both of these forms are correct. However, the important thing for you to do is to choose which one you would like to use, and to use that one consistently. So try to avoid mixing the ed and the t endings. Try to use just the one, but it's up to you to decide which one you want to use."

    Not sure about other parts of the English-speaking world, but I was thinking that British English is (or at least was, historically) pretty widespread in many nations besides just the obvious UK. I used to listen to foreign radio broadcasts from various countries (even where English was not the native language they'd have an English version of the broadcast), and I always found the voices interesting, where the speakers often had a combination accent of both their native (non-English) language *and* a heavy British accent on top of that. (Took me some getting used to, to be able to understand what they were saying.) So they'd apparently learned British English as their 2nd language, rather than American English... I suppose that's logical, given the historically strong British influence in many areas of the world.
  17. Sherry Cadenhead
    Sherry Cadenhead
    Interesting! And it certainly changes what I was thinking when I first saw this spelling used in the Café!
  18. Mark Gunter
    Mark Gunter
    I love language discussions, I'm a bit of a philologist, and had to really refrain from gushing out a bunch of stuff pertinent to the last few posts
  19. Guitfiddle Mike
    Guitfiddle Mike
    Mike Z said:

    "Perhaps if you had a person, or a few people, in the room while you played, you could perform for them, instead of the camera?"

    My wife is so tired of hearing me play that song that she (and the dogs) head to the other end of the house when they hear me tuning up.

    Its not quite as bad as the time I borrowed a banjo to give it a try. She actually returned it to the owner herself without telling me.

    Mike
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