I have been saying for a sometimes I would post up a fingerstyle song so here it is. It is the first one I learned, a cover of John Denvers ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane’ using a simple inside outside pattern as Justins lesson.
It is a while since I played it, so did a quick refresher earlier this week, the chords I remembered but some of the lyrics were a bit vague. Anyway, got all the gear out, last night and got going. I adjusted the balance, by recording small parts, see more later and then just launched into it and recorded it in one take and then packed up the gear. With my limited experience of playing solo and with the guitar club in front of an audience, I like to do one take warts and all. There were some errors on chords and few bits of the lyric that were not quite right but playing ‘live’ you just have to keep going and hope the audience don’t notice or mind.
In terms of gear used a condenser mic for guitar and dynamic for vocals, going into 2i2 and recorded in OBS on my laptop. It was recorded as a combined single input from the two channels, so I adjusted the balance with the gain knobs on the 2i2. When I listened to the MP4 file on my PC it sounded fine but in the process of getting it onto YouTube the volume of the guitar seems to have reduced and not sure why.
All comments good or bad welcome.
Michael
Hi Michael, I thought it to be a nice performance overall, even if I agree the volume of guitar is a bit low. I didn’t mind/noticed the errors. Maybe I would add a bit of dynamics in volume when you get to the chorus or I would experiment with some strumming for the chorus to make it stand out and bigger than the verses.
Keep going is really a valuable skill to develop, I myself still need to work a lot on that, just let the music move on. Well done for this, I can see how much playing live at the guitar club is helping you in your development.
Thanks for sharing and bringing my attention to this beautiful song.
Nice job Michael and I tend to agree with Silvia @Silvia80 on experimenting with some dynamics which would bring the song out and make it pop when it needs to. Thanks for sharing!
Silvia @Silvia80
Thanks for the comments. Always lessons to learn from a recording and perhaps I should do more. Yes lots of ways to improve things and that is perhaps I need to give that more attention such as dynamics etc. Keeping going is a key part of playing Infront of an audience which I like to do things in one take, but it might also be worthwhile for my own benefit in multiple recordings and trying different things.
Really not sure why the guitar was so quiet when the original MP4 file was fine, need to look at different ways of getting onto YouTube.
Eddie @Eddie_09
Thanks, yes need to look more at dynamics.
A bit pitchy on the vox. One thing you might try is pushing the words forward in your mouth as you form and sing them. I think if I heard it right you trend a little low and the above tends to bring up the pitch a little. Worth experimenting with…
Well done for sharing Michael. The commitment you made and the setup you used to record deserved a better result in terms of guitar sound level, shame about that. Nonetheless what I could hear was fine. Keep on keeping on!
Thanks John @Willsie
Not sure what happened with the low guitar sound. It was ok in direct monitoring through the AI and also on the recording on the pc, but not when uploaded. I am in the process of working on playing with different balance in the recording and different routes to get it onto YouTube, to make sure I can avoid this in future.
Michael
Well done, Michael. Looking at the Stats for nerds it seems that you’re -14dB which suggests that the audio when uploaded was way below youtube’s standard and they don’t increase the volume. @DavidP is better at explaining it.
Thanks James @Socio
You do learn something everyday, absolutely knew nothing about this facility. The info does explain a lot, I think it means what I am sending to YouTube was not loud enough.
Michael