Thought I’d start here. On long slow journeys I like a journal to track my own progress and for a little accountability.
As of today I’m currently working through grade 3. The songs I’m working on:
Green Day
Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Longview
Basket Case
Blink 182
All the small things
I miss you
Johnny Cash (I like the Mumford electric version)
Hurt
Britney (working on making a bit my own)
Hit me baby one more time
I like punk, 90,00s grunge and 80s rock . At the moment punk seams more accessible since it’s largely pumping 8s and powerchords.
Also working hard on F-chord changes so I get access to the plethora of four chord songs.
Gear:
Artist AG100 (Gibson SG type)
Old Yamaha acoustic
Squire strat with SSS setup. The electrics need an upgrade and the finger board is delaminating. I plan to make this a bit of a hobby rebuild. So aim to change this to a HSS setup and learn to do it all
myself. It was a cheap beginner kit (with the amp below) so if I don’t get it right then it’s a cheap mistake to learn on.
10W basic squire amp with very little features, it’s also old and getting a bit dodgey. Plan is to replace this with a Boss Katana 50 this year so I have some reasonable sound production and options.
Keen to get a recording down soon to show where I’m at. Any suggestions on best way to do that with my gear would be appreciated.
Hi Rhys. All you need is a mobile phone. Do a couple of run throughs to get the levels right between your amp and a vocal or backing track if you’re using one. Create a YouTube account if you don’t already have one, upload your video to YouTube and mark it as unlisted. That way only people with the link can view it. (unless of course you want to go public). Then copy and paste the link as a new topic here.
My advice would be keep it simple for now. If you’re looking for feedback and advice, you don’t need bells and whistles. They just distract you from what you want to do ie. learn to play guitar.
Yeah, trying to make it simple. Hence just a simple drum beat, rather than looking for backing tracks etc.
Think I got something simple sorted. Think in future it’ll be fun to learn a bit more on building complete tracks but for now just looking for a beat to help keep time.
TBH at the point you are at the moment I would think that backing tracks could be a better option because you won’t have to faff about with finding a suitable drum loop or whatever! It will also give you more of the feeling of being part of a band. I’ve done this in the past to buck myself up and play something that sounded like the real thing; it worked quite well:
I’ve had good results using the DrumBeats+ iOS app playing through stereo speakers from my iPad, and recording on Voice Memo app on my iPhone.
At this point, I find recording audio to be simpler than video. That makes it harder for other people to give feedback on problem areas, but so far I’ve been able to troubleshoot just by listening to myself.
Audio / Video of You Playing category