Grade 1 Consolidation - David Bowie - Heroes

Community Recordings Audio-Video Of You Playing
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So having returned from time away and then emptying a bedroom and moving all the music hardware into what is now my music room I have finally sat down to put together number 2 of my consolidation tracks which is a version of Heroes.

Inspired by @jkahn recent progress post I feel some backstory is in order :thinking: Feel free to jump forward if you get bored.

I am very jealous of those here that have a regimented and committed practice routine. I read some of the Learning Logs and they are truly inspiring. For me whilst I am currently trying to convince myself that its time for Grade 2 I am also just at the end of Practical Music Theory Grade 3 and now working on Ear Training Grade 1. I also spend some time watching David Bennett Piano as I find the information on Chord Progressions compliments what I am doing in JG. Needless to say my head is pretty full at the moment :exploding_head:

I haven’t yet “memorised” the songs I have worked on, to be honest I don’t thing there’s enough hard drive space left up there at the moment so you will notice that I read as I play, it’s something that I will work on.

At the end though, it is sitting down and playing songs that drives me to pick up the guitar. I enjoy playing songs, I enjoy it even better when I play them well and that isn’t always as you will see from this video. In between everything already mentioned, I practice some picking, bending, and incorporate the Riffs that the JG lessons have taught in an attempt to inch me towards picking and fingerstyle guitar.

Finally, I didn’t play my best in this one but its going up anyway as it is a reflection of where I am at currently, probably a bit like my golf, good days and not so good days :rofl: but as long as its still enjoyable.

I am always happy for some constructive criticism, advice, comments, or otherwise. In particular this version appeared to end on the last vocal line with G chord, but to me it just didn’t sound finished ? So I dabbled and added the additional C, G, D, Dsus2, D to finish off. Happy to hear if you think this is way off base :+1:

This was all recorded through the Dynamic Mic, UMC202, into Reaper and then into OBS using ReaRoute. The Video is from an IPhone USB to OBS using DroidCam. Yes, I forgot to mention that as well as retaining all the music info I am trying to learn I also had to learn the basics of the above mentioned software packages and getting them all to talk to each other :grimacing: :face_with_spiral_eyes:

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The video is listed as private Craig, you need to make it public in youre youtube account :grin:

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Oops, Thanks @tRONd rookie error :face_with_spiral_eyes:

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Hi Graig,
Consolidation was very very very successful , playing AND singing
:man_bowing: :sunglasses: :clap: :sunglasses: :clap:
Greetings,

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Wow!! That sounded awsome Craig! Really nice playing. Awsome singing as well!
One of my favourite songs of all time and i think you did it justice :grin:
The ending you added and mixed around a litlle sounded just fine to me.

Well done Craig :clap:

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Excellent Craig, well played! Well beyond grade 1 level IMHO, lots of good stuff waiting for you in grades 2 and 3.

On the tech side, well, it all came together OK! In OBS you might want to resize your video view to fill more of the screen. And at some stage you might want to add reverb in Reaper. I know how complicated this stuff is though… one thing at a time.

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Craig, that was astoundingly good for grade 1! Grade 2 well overdue I’d say. Well done!

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Thanks for sharing consolidation work. It’s super interesting and quite impressive to see how you’re getting on.

Seems like you’re also really getting to grips with recording too. Though I’m on Grade 2 I’ve still not managed to get my head round it all. May need to google some of this to decipher it!!

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Craig, I had listened to your first grade 1 consolidation video and this is even better. You clearly are skilled enough to move on from Grade 1 to Grade 2. There is no need to hold back until you think you have fully mastered grade1. If you look at the description of the practice schedules in Grade 2, you’ll see that you can practice a grade 1 song as a warmup.
There is a lot of great things to learn in Grade 2, so no need to wait. You are well ahead of most of your peers with the home recording that is not covered until the end of grade 2.

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Thanks to all so far for comments and feedback. I know it’s time to move on but by downfall is I tend to be very black and white and literall, so when it comes to “knowing the notes on the neck” or “memorising your songs” “be able to make a scale sound musical” then anything less is Fail! :thinking::joy:.

Anyway, looking forward to moving on and getting to grips with bar chords, I feel that my lack of these is a major holdup for atm.

Thanks @jkahn i’ve sorted the screen thing. I was using the demo DroidCam that’s limited res, so now I’m happy with it I’ve gone to full version including 1080x720 etc.
Interestingly enough there is some Reverb added, but I dialled it back as I thought it sounded too much and was after a more natural sound. I’ve got another to do so I’ll dial it back up and see how that sounds :+1:

Thanks again everyone for listening and commenting.

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That was spot on Craig. Sounded great and I really enjoyed it. You are definitely ready to move on to grade 2 in my opinion. The ending was good and didn’t sound out of place. Nice work.

I’m hearing you about the internal hard drive filling up. :smiley:

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That was great Craig. Really well played and supported by some nice vocals. You are definitely ready to move on. Enjoy the next step in your journey.

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