Your Recorder, Your Teacher
Every time you practice your guitar, you’re self-teaching. I’ve written about lots of ways to improve your ability to teach yourself well, and I hope you’ve benefitted from some of that wisdom. But have you made a practice of listening to yourself the way a good teacher would?
I’m talking about engaging in deep, focused listening without distractions. It’s an important thing to do regularly, and the best way you can do it is by recording yourself.
The Challenges
As important as it is to do, recording own playing has its challenges. For starters, hearing yourself without adornments or distractions can be painful! But your recordings serve you in the same way your mirror does, reflecting what you like and want to continue projecting, as well as bringing attention to the things you want to improve.
You won’t believe how much better your songs sound—and you feel—after you’ve worked on the areas that trigger embarrassment. But your emotional response is not the only challenge you’ll encounter. Unless you’re set up with the technology you need, you may also struggle to establish an easy and quick way to make your recordings.
The solution is to keep it simple. Use anything that lets you record sound, no matter how basic it may be. In fact, a low-budget, technologically limited recorder can help you avoid the trap of focusing more on the sound quality of your recording than on your playing. I’ve always made a point of working and reworking every song with a small, cheap recorder before taking it public. Trust me, it’s an invaluable tool in self-teaching.
Backing Tracks
In addition to recording finished songs, it’s a good idea to record your own backing tracks for practicing scales, melodies, and improvisation. Sure, there are lots of good backing tracks available and I recommend using them. But, in addition creating the most relevant tracks you can get, making your own tracks will teach you a lot of skills that you need to play with other people.
When you record your rhythm track, include the sound of the metronome. Record one or two measures of clicks before the beginning of the song so you’ll know when to come in when you play back with the recording. If you’re plugging your guitar straight in to your device, you can record the lead-in beats by tapping the strings in time to the metronome for a measure or two before playing the chords.
If you make a mistake in your playing and have to drop out for a beat or two, be sure you come back in on time. It’s important to re-enter without adding or dropping any beats and to land on the appropriate chord. If you can’t make an acceptable recovery, start over.
If you have to start over more than a few times, go back and practice with the metronome before trying again to record. It may seem like you’ll never be able to get a clean recording, but you will. The first one or two songs you do are by far the hardest and most time consuming, so stick with it and you’ll be glad you did. And remember—even though you want your recording to be correct, you can ignore a squeaky string or a muffled chord or two and still have a good practice track.
