#5 Joining the Community and my first recordings
One of the things I decided would help my focus was to share what I was doing, ups and downs, and progress with friends, primarily at work … but now I tell everybody … it helps to hear myself saying what I am doing and have a achieved.
One of those influential people is danmaree, who you of course now all know after I finally persuaded him to join the Community and share his original music.
Another, Verna, is also musically inclined and earlier in the year she was taking some singing lessons. One evening she messaged me after her lesson and imagined her singing to my accompaniment … she believed more of me than I did of myself … the song … Hallelujah. Could I play that?
I had no idea but quickly discovered Justin’s lesson. So I started to try it … damn that 6/8 time … one evening it just clicked and I found myself managing to fit the words and changes together in a way that sounded OK to me. So I thought, why not try and record it and share that with Verna … I was very pleased with myself
I made this first recording using a USB headset and Audacity. I positioned the mic of the headset in such a place that it was picking up both my singing and guitar and made the recording. I shared it with Verna and Daniel (danmaree). They were both so encouraging.
As an aside, Daniel then shared his song (the one entered into the competition). I don’t know what I expected, the deprecatory way in which he framed it. I was astonished, not what I expected at all … a song that I think is a small step away from being radio ready and sounded like the work of a signed up band to me.
Anyway, then I started humming and hawing … should I or shouldn’t I … become visible and active on the Community. And I made a great decision … to join. I posted my Intro, discovered the need to post 5 posts and finally decided to post that first recording … a seriously scary moment.
[ I have subsequently deleted the recording from SoundCloud and can’t find it on the PC … probably for the best ]
And of course the comments were so encouraging, some suggestions about capos and playing then singing to give both attention.
And by that time I’d decided that I’d probably changed the time signature (apologies Leonard), Richard aka Close2u confirmed that for me, but in such a gentle way … I felt OK … sure it was not right. But it sounded OK and I was up and riding so to speak … onto the wave (ooooh lovely mixed metaphor on wave … surfing … music) and haven’t looked back.
The next recording I tried the “play first/overdub vocal” approach. I could position that headset mic closer to the guitar. And then stuck the headset on to hear the guitar and add the vocal. Much better I think. As I recall I also played this with a metronome going in the background. Still on Audacity.
[ That recording is also lost … thankfully. Rest assured, later there’ll be more than enough examples of recordings made that reflect where I was at the time ]
And that’s enough for this post … the story is long, hopefully at least a little interesting, maybe even entertaining and most hopefully a little encouraging to those of you out there wondering about recording and what is possible …
Next time we need to talk about the early onset of GAS …