The Justin’s Rock Songbook project of @alexisduprey and @jkahn inspired me to buy the book and start my own journey. Just like them, my long-term goal is to play and record all of the 15 songs of the first section of the book.
Watching student performances from @alexisduprey and @jkahn was a useful learning tool for me. It gave me cool ideas and helped me having a better idea of the “final result”.
Hopefully, this thread will plant a seed for other JustinGuitar songbook projects in the community. Acoustic songbook anyone ?
I recorded the first 3 songs in November and December 2023. And I’ll update this table when new songs are coming.
Always amazes me the range/types of music people like to hear/play. I’ll be honest and say that I have never heard any of the 5 songs that you have listed, and in fact have only heard of two of them.
@jkahn@alexisduprey Let’s go guys. You can do it ! I can see the finish line
@roger_holland Really nice of you. By the way, I enjoyed your cover of Yesterday on the Student Performance page.
@Stuartw You are right. It’s actually funny that you say that because I had never heard the third song, but it is actually the one that I had the most fun recording. Layering 2 guitar parts (acoustic + electric) was fun.
@Jwaters Awesome thanks, I’ll keep an eye on your posts
Three very enjoyable video’s there Mathieu and three great songs to cover.
A couple of things I’d noticed. Try and keep your string muting tight if you can, so there aren’t extra notes ringing out and when doing your F barre chord, make sure you’re placing your index finger down first. I used to play it how you do and had to relearn the process.
I could tell you where really enjoying playing all those.
@SgtColon Thanks for your comments Two interesting avenues of improvement.
I’m glad I recorded myself because otherwise we would have never noticed the delay with placing my first finger for my barre chords (F and Bm in another song). When playing, it’s hard to spot it, I never noticed it in the moment. Indeed, sometimes I may even strum before reaching the 6th string.
What technique did you use to relearn ? One minute change ?
Yes, Moise is a cool software for backing tracks. Isolating the differents instruments to remove guitar and also changing the key of the song to avoid changing tuning between pratice sessions.
The backing tracks for the first 2 songs were tuned 1 semitone down (Eb, Ab, Db, Gb, Bb, Eb) and I use Moise to put them in standard tuning. I’m probably not the only one that doesn’t like changing tuning to pratice only one song for 10 minutes.
That’s pretty awesome! Great challenge to work on and have fun with it. I’m not gonna give you any piece of advice as I’m myself a beginner but I can tell by the look on your face that you really enjoy playing and that’s what made me watch the three videos. Keep it up!
I also like the way you record your videos with the backing tracks. I want to start recording myself but I still don’t know how. What do you use to record video/audio and play along the backing tracks?
The hardware you’ll need… you can start with the video camera on your phone.
if you want to get a bit more professional you’ll need an AI ( Audio Interface ) so that you can record your music to a PC or Mac, a camera (most use a webcam), a microphone, and various leads and cables.
Software: Like many (possibly most) regulars here, I use OBS (Open Broadcast Software), which as the name suggests is free to download and use, for recording video. For the Community Open Mics I just use OBS and Zoom, for AVOYPs I record the audio through a DAW where I perform any tweaks and/or add FX and/or backing tracks, record the video in OBS, then merge the audio and video in a video editor (I use Shotcut, another open source program). Some DAWs including Reaper, the one I use, claim to have video editing capability, but I’ve tried it in Reaper and didn’t like it, hence my using a dedicated video editor.
Don’t worry if all this sounds too daunting, you’ll find a plethora of useful information and advice in this section of the community. Be warned, this can be as big a rabbit hole as actually learning to play the guitar.
Thank you so much! I really appreciate all the information. I recently purchased the scarlet 2i2 bundle but I didn’t do any recording yet. I have been learning how to use ableton and there’s also a lot to investigate.
I didn’t know where to start with the software so I will take a look and get ready to do some recording soon.
For recording, you received a great answer from @theoldman66
I got the same audio interface as you I used the mic and the headphone from the bundle. Also, if you don’t have a good webcam, you can turn your phone into a webcam in OBS with a simple app Droidcam OBS.
I like Davinici Resolve for video editing as it has an option to automatically synchronize the audio track from my DAW (Reaper) with the video from OBS.
I am making progress in my rock songbook project. Here are 2 new songs. I am now at 5 songs out of 15 done. 1/3 done.
I actually recorded song #5 (In Bloom - Nirvana) 2 months ago. It turns out well because I’m getting confident with power chords songs.
However, I needed more time to work on song #4 (La Grange - ZZ Top). The riffs are quite fast and they involve some techniques like hybrid picking, muting and finger stretching.
Honestly, the first riff felt impossible at first. But, as we say never give up. La Grange became easier and easier after some pratice. So I’m glad I persevered
Also, one day, I’ll probably revisit La Grange to play the 1 minute guitar solo at the end which add a lot to the song.
For backing tracks, I use the original track with guitar removed with AI software 
