Emergence from BLIM2

Hello all! I introduced myself earlier in the year on the Community Hub and I noted in that post that I was busy with the BLIM2 course and had started attending the JGC open mic sessions.

Well, BLIM2 has now come to an end and I am emerging into the broader community area to see what’s out here and post some videos of my playing in advance of the first timers open mic session in August.

I thoroughly enjoyed the BLIM course and really appreciated the diverse set of lessons and tasks you got to focus on from month to month.

I managed to get a recording done for each blues standards that featured on the course but some were a little more polished than others. No singing from me and most of my recordings were rhythm parts only but I was really pleased with how these particular tracks came out:

Worried Life Blues

The Thrill is Gone

I’m A King Bee

Mary Had a Little Lamb

I am glad the BLIM materials are available for life on signing up to the course as I have so much to revisit and further develop!

Any constructive feedback on my recordings would be much appreciated and I look forward to engaging more with the wider JustinGuitar community :slightly_smiling_face:

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Hey David, it’s nice to see you more often in the broader community from now on!
Great playing!!!

Oh-oh… I see I’ll have to go practicing now… and do more… and quickly! :slight_smile:

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David

Superb performances of all the pieces: your playing is very clean; very good changes and good voicing of the chords and riffs - particularly on ‘The Thrill Is Gone’ - and some subtly effective dynamics. There seems to be a problem in the synchronisation of video and audio on all your recordings. Your performances are some of the best I’ve seen on here.

Brian

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Hey David

Glad to see you. Lots to explore over here. One of the cool things are the clubs.
The club sessions have some great live stuff. the first few were not recorded but after a certain point they were.

Richard and Lieven have great advanced stuff. Lee does cool songs geared to the beginning students, he does always give a good tutorial overview of the original ways to play the song also. some cool stuff for sure. Obviously Justin regular stuff.

Great videos and what a journey these last 6 month have been.
:smiling_face_with_sunglasses:

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wow, great playing! really enjoyed your videos.

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Hello David,

really great samples and playing. I can feel the vibe. :slight_smile:

I also like your guitar and you have also t shirt Fender too. :smiley:

Those recordings are telling me more and more, that one day I will jump into this course too. I am too beginner for that now.

Only “bad” thing I noticed is in your “Worried Life Blues”. The tune is great. But I had audio shift like 1 second maybe? It was strange. :smiley: Other samples does not have this.
It did not spoil my joy watching that. :slight_smile:

Thanks for share

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Is that a Texas Tea Ultra tele?

Great playing. You’d definitely be one of the more advanced guitar players on the community.

Go ahead and register on the other thread. There are no competency requirements etc btw (for you or anyone else reading!)

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Yup, I reckon so too, an Ultra II if I’m not mistaken. Nice!

Great playing, David.
Are you hiding a pick in your fingers, or are you playing with your fingers all the time?
I’d be interested to know how you’ve progressed through the Blim course?
I’m guessing you knew a thing or two before you started!

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Well done David, I am glad to see you posting here. Now, everyone could see where I stole those rhythm fills for “The thrill is gone”. :grin:
Good luck with the OM debut, I am sure you will be great.

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well done David nice to see you playing great stuff cheers HEC

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I’m not sure how well you could play before BLIM, but one thing’s for certain, you’re a very accomplished player now! Super playing David.

Seeing you pick with your fingers so well is inspiring!

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Many thanks for the various comments, queries and information that people have provided in response to my BLIM2 recordings. Hopefully the following replies give some further useful information and context:

@domi7 Good to see you, Dominique! There’s always more practice to be done :grinning_face:

@beejay56 Many thanks for your feedback, Brian. I am aware of the video/audio synchronisation issue and it seems worse in some of my recordings than others. My rather amateur approach to recording has been to prop up my mobile phone on a box in front of me and use the free ‘Music Pro’ app, leaning in to press the red button to start and stop the recording, a laptop next to that playing the backing track, and my guitar running through a Positive Grid Spark 40 amp directly behind me.

Annoyingly, the phone app records videos rotated 90 degrees so on transferring files to my laptop I have been opening each one in Microsoft Clipchamp, rotating the video to the correct orientation, and then saving as a new .mp4 file with the video the right way up. I assume the small delay in the audio is coming in while doing this second step, the raw video file seemingly not being affected. I could share the raw .mp4 files but you would need to lean your head over to watch them sideways!

One of my goals now that BLIM2 is over is to investigate other recording options and look into purchasing an audio interface and relevant software for my laptop. The mobile phone recording approach includes all the acoustic noise in the room, including my breathing, foot tapping, unintended pick and finger hits on the pick guard, and the occasional police siren going by outside, which possibly adds some interesting vibes but can be a distraction when listening back!

@Ontime Hi, Jason. Thank you for the information about the different Clubs. I have actually been in attendance during most of the Vintage Club and Motivation & Inspiration Club sessions since the start of this year, along with attending all the BLIM2 specific sessions. I do not currently have a YouTube account to join the live chat feed and post while a live session is taking place but I have followed the chat each time and spotted several BLIM2 classmates, including yourself, posting and asking questions.

I have already learnt a lot from Richard and Lieven from the Club sessions I have listened in to and look forward to attending more in the future. The last 6 months were indeed a great journey and I look forward to that continuing :slightly_smiling_face:

@MollyT Many thanks for your comment, Molly!

@Carreta Thank you for your comments, Michal. BLIM was certainly good fun and I am sure it will still be around for when you feel ready to take it on :slight_smile:

As noted in one of my other responses above, the video/audio synchronisation issue is something I am aware of, I am just not sure how to fix it within my current recording workflow. Any new hardware/software I pick up once I have investigated the different options available will hopefully resolve this in the future.

@jkahn JK, yes, the guitar is a Texas Tea Ultra Telecaster with a roasted maple neck, the neck wood choice being a Fender Special Run (FSR) for the store I bought it from. It turned up in May last year and it is the only guitar I have played since it arrived (I have two other guitars in my collection that are struggling to cope with a year of neglect).

To your other point, yes, I will be signing up for the August open mic soon :slight_smile:

@BurnsRhythm David, the guitar is an Ultra rather than Ultra II, but well spotted :slight_smile:

There is no pick hiding going on. While I would like to go full Chris Buck or similar in terms of being able to swap between fingers and pick by keeping a pick in hand, I am currently one or the other with a preference for finger style. Any swapping between the two styles requires a pick to be on the table in front of me!

With regard to prior experience, I have been playing guitar since I was a teenager so I have a lot of playing experience but there was relatively little understanding of what I was playing until I discovered JustinGuitar a couple of years ago and then started the BLIM2 course 6 months ago. Over the last year I have chosen to focus on finger style playing and have also gone back to basics to develop my understanding of music theory. On my list of things to get done are a BLIM2 before and after post and I will try and complete that task soon.

@Boris1565 :rofl: If it sounds good, it is good! It has been great to see your videos appearing during BLIM2 and to watch others you have posted on the wider forum. Great job on your open mic playing!

@DeltaTyne Many thanks, Hec. It was good to talk to you online earlier in the year following the February open mic event and I hope to do so again :slight_smile:

@twistor59 Many thanks, Phil! Finger style playing has been my focus for a while now and the investment in practicing that technique has resulted in all sorts of what were initially very odd right-hand and left-hand movements to mute unwanted string noise slowly become more automatic. A worthwhile time investment and, if it is inspiring others, that is a great motivator for me :slight_smile:

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Great playing David.
Its both a benefit and a joy having players of your experience in the community.

Looking forward to more, as there’s always an increased probability of me being able to steal some licks, lines and ideas …:smiling_face_with_sunglasses:.

Re the sych issue; a simple, and quick fix, and one I just did in order to watch your recordings.

Open your media file in a program like VLC Media Player (open source, brilliant multimedia software), go to the audio sych menu and hasten or delay the audio as appropriate to match the video. Done.

Cheers, Shane

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@sclay Hello Shane. Many thanks for your feedback and for posting information about VLC Media Player. I have that programme as default software on my laptop and opening my Worried Life Blues recording I can adjust the audio track synchronisation to -0.3 seconds and it is a much less jarring watch!

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Those all sound great.

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If I can have one more question about BLIM overall… have you participated in first year too?

I wonder if BLIM numbers means you must start on 1 and go on or it goes like every year is the same in structure? If so it wont make much sense to me people are going for same course again (paying following year), because they have lifetime access. :smiley:

Thanks anyone for clarification. :slight_smile:

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@Carreta BLIM runs over a period of 6 months and, while I was aware of the first BLIM class that ran from June through December last year, I only attended BLIM2 that ran from January to June this year.

The numbering is purely to differentiate the class groups and it does not relate to a progression from one course to a new one. I have no doubt that Justin will make some edits to videos and course materials each time BLIM comes around but my understanding is that it is the same course each each time.

With regard to paying again to attend another round of BLIM, while the materials are the same and you do get lifetime access, during the 6 months the course is running you get access to a BLIM specific forum where appointed JustinGuitar teachers provide feedback on videos and answer any questions raised, while you also get access to attend monthly live sessions with Justin and enter submissions for BLIM challenges.

Justin has offered a large discount on the course price for repeaters and there were several people who completed BLIM1 present for BLIM2. I have not signed up for BLIM3 myself but I am sure there will be a few people signing up who were members of one or both of the previous classes, to enjoy the benefits that brings.

I hope this information is helpful.

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David - it is wonderful to see you transport some of your BLIM recordings out to the wider community and express your intention to emerge from BLIM and engage out here in the wild world.

:slight_smile:

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It’s probably ClipChamp (without knowing ClipChamp).

Your recording workflow is pretty simple, and most phones record videos with audio in sync. Potentially your phone is recording in a variable bit rate video format and the video editor on your PC messes it up when re-encoding. I had that happen to me a while ago when recording with my iPhone - the PC video editor I was using at the time (Adobe Premiere Elements) caused video and audio to drift apart.

Try using DaVinci Resolve to rotate the video instead of ClipChamp. It’s also free, and much more powerful. Downside is that it’s more complicated than ClipChamp.

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