Be kind, y’all. Aside from the recording I did with my wife awhile back, I’ve not recorded myself playing anything. I’ve been working on Tom Petty’s “It’s Good to Be King” for quite some time and I wanted to record that one as my first solo recording.
This is a fun arrangement. My guitar instructor gave me most of it, but I made some adjustments to his ideas.
I had high hopes of recording myself singing along to this. But that traumatized me. I certainly wasn’t going to subject anyone else to that. My voice did not sound good. Guess I need to work on that. Original plan was not to record the original but given that I decided not to record my voice, figured it would be a good idea. I spent a LOT of time trying to get the offset between the backing track and my recording dialed in and it’s pretty darned close. I think I spent 90% of my time this afternoon trying to get that into “good enough” territory. I think it’s finally close enough to save a recording from and maybe I’ll dial it in a little closer later.
That was great! Good job getting your first up and done, it’s a big step. Great song and you played it well. I like the fast chord changes during that one progresssion. They sounded good and It looks like it took some practice.
That is hilarious.
Singing and Playing is tough, it seems each song I take on for that has its own set of difficulties.
I am glad you posted, each time will be a bit easier.
That was great Nate. I’m still trying to work out how to record myself to do my first AVOYP. Indeed singing and playing at the same time is my main problem at the moment.
The mix between backing track and your playing was good. What setup are you using for recording.? Just asking as I’m looking into getting setup for that.
Great job Nate, lovely clean picking on the intro and tight chord changes. Sounded really good. If I were to make one suggestion it would be to work on keeping a constant steady rhythm with your strumming hand whether you are strumming or not, it will help you lock into the rhythm of the song and stay on beat.
Good job there Nate. Clean chords and a steady tempo.
Keep your strumming hand moving as mentioned above and keep an eye on that ‘flying’ index finger and try to tame it.
Well done.
It’s a simple enough mix, even though it doesn’t really seem that way once I write it out.
So I’m recording the guitar off of both its piezo pickup AND a condenser mic (an inexpensive Mackie). That runs into a Focusrite 2i2 audio interface (I have headphones plugged into the monitor output for that, too). I control the levels of each side of that input through the AI’s physical knobs. I bring that into Reaper, where I have the ability to add an amp sim and other fx, though I did not do any of that for this. Reaper then sends the signal to OBS for recording because of the video.
My video signal starts with an old cell phone. Even though I have an external webcam that has decent video quality, the field of view is much too wide for that. That old cell phone captures better video than my even older DSLR camera, so I use the phone. So I clamp the old phone into an adjustable holder that clamps to my desk. I use the Camo app on my phone and on my PC to get the video signal from the phone to my PC over wifi. I can grab the video from Camo using OBS to combine it with the audio signal.
The video and the recorded audio both sync up well in OBS and I don’t need to do anything further with them.
Adding the backing track introduces a lot of fiddling that I hope I don’t have to mess with much anymore. OBS handles the backing track, also. It starts playing as soon as I press the record button. There’s a good bit of lag of the recorded audio/video as compared to the backing track (which is an mp3), which I need to account for. Which involves a lot of trial and error. I got to where I did by increasing the time offset of the backing track into the positive digits a little bit, record a short bit to test, then going back and repeating until I was happy with it. Took several hours for that part.
Then, to add a little touch of flair, I use a Bluetooth page turner pedal (AirTurn) to start/stop recording. That’s kinda important for this version of this song because the very first sound is picking that note. The studio version of this song has a little drum fill to prep you. On this one, it’s a pretty short time between starting the playback and the first note. Not gonna pull that off by using the keyboard or mouse to start. But with the foot pedal? It works a treat. I can be ready to go, tap the pedal, and then with some practice, I can time out when to hit that note (I still have some work to do on that). I think I set the volume of the backing track at 30% in OBS (same spot I adjusted the offset). Could probably reduce the volume a little more so you can hear my own playing a little better.
But all of that lets me do recording and then immediately put the recorded video onto youtube. I don’t have to worry about recording myself reaching somewhere to start/stop something. I don’t have to edit my recorded video to trim stuff off the start/end or add my backing track back in (which I’ve done before when I got frustrated with the fiddling to set the offset of the backing track). The silly little watermark on the video is inserted by Camo. It seems to insist on putting SOMETHING on the video, so I chose the owl as something fairly innocuous yet original.
What got recorded was WAY out of key when I tried singing. I don’t know if I’m always that bad (sure doesn’t sound like it) or if I was that bad this time because I usually don’t sing with headphones on and I wasn’t hearing whether I was in key or not. I had enough I was messing with that I didn’t want to add a layer with also trying to figure out if there was a way that I could actually sing in key.
Well yes, your explanation is enough to put anyone off recording themselves.
My system is iPhone, move it about until the video framing is good, then sing louder/quieter, strum louder/quieter until you’ve got the balance about right, press the red button, job done.
Thanks. It’s the 50th anniversary Taylor GS Mini. The little extras they put on it are nice but not ostentatious. It does really sound lovely, too. I’ve met a lot of people with various other versions of this guitar and the only one I think sounds nicer is the Koa one.
Funny story about the recording setup. My wife is the one who wanted upgraded recording gear (above what you are using and what she had been using). But then she didn’t like that it involves more work/steps than what she had been doing. So she immediately went back to using the phone. I don’t strictly have to use Reaper as a software step. But it does let me adjust things in more detail if I need that so I wanted to learn how to make it work.
I kinda feel like I have to justify keeping the extra recording gear because she sure isn’t going to be using it.
Well done, Nate, really good mate, cheers HEC, and it is nice to meet you, Michael, it might be good for you to go to introduce yourself and let everyone meet you, cheers
