Playing issues while recording
- Thread starter Dan Shipway
- Start date
It may sound funny, but record everything until you get used to it.
It’s like pictures. “Back in the day” you had a roll of film that gave you 24 or 36 pictures, and it would cost you $15-25 US to develop all those pictures. As a result, people were stingy. They were careful to line things up, and make people pose, or whatever. You got one, maybe two shots of a given situation, and you waited days or weeks to see if anything was any good.
Now, we have digital cameras. You can blast out 150 pictures in 2 minutes. Look at them right away and delete and retake until you get the good one. Shoot 100 quick shots of an action scene and pick the best couple to keep. It’s all free. Take a thousand if you like. It costs no more than taking five if you delete the crappy ones.
Same thing. Record for 10 minutes every time you sit down to play. Listen back to it shortly after. Keep it or delete it. Keep one a week so you can track your progress. It doesn’t matter. Just whatever you don’t want and it costs you nothing.
Think of it that way. Record everything and trash most of it. The more you do that, the less it feels like OHMYGODIHAVEONECHANCEOGETITRIGHTDONTFUCKITUP!
It’s like pictures. “Back in the day” you had a roll of film that gave you 24 or 36 pictures, and it would cost you $15-25 US to develop all those pictures. As a result, people were stingy. They were careful to line things up, and make people pose, or whatever. You got one, maybe two shots of a given situation, and you waited days or weeks to see if anything was any good.
Now, we have digital cameras. You can blast out 150 pictures in 2 minutes. Look at them right away and delete and retake until you get the good one. Shoot 100 quick shots of an action scene and pick the best couple to keep. It’s all free. Take a thousand if you like. It costs no more than taking five if you delete the crappy ones.
Same thing. Record for 10 minutes every time you sit down to play. Listen back to it shortly after. Keep it or delete it. Keep one a week so you can track your progress. It doesn’t matter. Just whatever you don’t want and it costs you nothing.
Think of it that way. Record everything and trash most of it. The more you do that, the less it feels like OHMYGODIHAVEONECHANCEOGETITRIGHTDONTFUCKITUP!
You don’t realise how much you “suck” until you have to record yourself. You start paying attention to every little detail and everything needs to sound great but you realise that you are doing a lot of mistakes and that it’s gonna take a while to nail it down. When I recorded a guitar for the first time I literally recorded over 1700 takes!!! Because i thought that everything needs to be perfect to sound good. But the more and more I recorded i realised that those minor mistakes don’t matter because they actually humanize your guitar but ofcourse if it’s played awfully then you need to record again. So don’t get nervous when you start recording, just press record and start playing, if you mess up don’t stop recording, just start again until you get comfortable and eventually you will get that perfect take and then you can just cut it and save it and delete all the previous takes.
Thank you so much Ed, I will definitely try to record everything I play as the problem that I could see was that nothing seemed to he clean or played as well as I know it can be. You really live up to the title of captain!
Filip- Isn’t that the truth, playing through DI hs brought up lots of different issues that need to be sorted. I feel as if it was a bit early to post this as I have only been doing it for a few days but it is better imo to sort it out from the start.
Filip- Isn’t that the truth, playing through DI hs brought up lots of different issues that need to be sorted. I feel as if it was a bit early to post this as I have only been doing it for a few days but it is better imo to sort it out from the start.
I think that Filip and Ed have have said it all!
I do strongly agree with them.
It is like when you are learning to play the guitar and start using the amp on higher volumes. You tend to get used to the feedback that you get, or the type os noises that you can get from your playing.
When you record yourself it is the same thing! You will get used to it, i have no doubt about it!
And like Filip, I sometimes record the same riff 100 times – And it is fine.
I hope you get used to it!! Hoping to see your recordings on the riff page!
I do strongly agree with them.
It is like when you are learning to play the guitar and start using the amp on higher volumes. You tend to get used to the feedback that you get, or the type os noises that you can get from your playing.
When you record yourself it is the same thing! You will get used to it, i have no doubt about it!
And like Filip, I sometimes record the same riff 100 times – And it is fine.
I hope you get used to it!! Hoping to see your recordings on the riff page!
J
Jak Angelescu
Guest
Dude I know exactly how you feel! That’s why sometimes it takes me so many times of a take in order to post something up on Instagram or up on here 
. Believe it or not, when my singer and I played together she doesn’t ever mess up until we are recording lol! And one time when I kept messing up I asked her “why the h*** do I keep messing up now?” And she said “it’s because we are recording” lol! It’s very nerve wracking because you have to make sure you get the whole thing through. There’s a lot of stress and tension to make sure you make the take solid all the way through because there is no cut and paste when you are recording quickly on your own like what we do. If I could give any advice, it would be to just keep the recording device going constantly. And then if you feel like cutting and taking out your best take, there are many apps on the computer and many different apps on a phone that you can do to do that. I usually just hit record on my phone and let myself play over and over again and eventually I forget that the phone is recording and I can cut out my best take.
. Believe it or not, when my singer and I played together she doesn’t ever mess up until we are recording lol! And one time when I kept messing up I asked her “why the h*** do I keep messing up now?” And she said “it’s because we are recording” lol! It’s very nerve wracking because you have to make sure you get the whole thing through. There’s a lot of stress and tension to make sure you make the take solid all the way through because there is no cut and paste when you are recording quickly on your own like what we do. If I could give any advice, it would be to just keep the recording device going constantly. And then if you feel like cutting and taking out your best take, there are many apps on the computer and many different apps on a phone that you can do to do that. I usually just hit record on my phone and let myself play over and over again and eventually I forget that the phone is recording and I can cut out my best take.
If you take a look at the making of of afterlife, right at the beginning you can see Syn, ya know, not being happy with a take. The one thing i can tell you is that like 95% of all artist that goes into studios or record need multiple takes. Its very rare to get z one shot perfect recording though it happens. A true studio recording and arranging takes a shit load of edit. Even avenged im sure need a little edit from time to time. there is rarely an artist that doesnt need any edit. So yeah, everyone screws up while recording. No exception regardless of the experience. You just screw up less and less the more you go hahaha
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