Hello everyone. This old dog hits 80 in two months and it is time to post a recording!!! Yikes!
I’ve gotten my repertoire up to 20 songs. 14 that I can play and sing without a sheet of music in front of me. Some of them I am going back to and beginning to add some improvisation. One of them I rewrote with my own lyrics.
What APP should I be using to record my music? I have a camera and external mic set up on my computer. I have an acoustic guitar.
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That should be enough to get you going. No app needed.
Experiment recording with that basic set up. And you can just upload the video recording to YouTube.
If you are singing and playing you will need to explore the best position for the mic between your guitar sound hole and your mouth, just try and find a good balance.
Feel free to experiment and post a video in this thread for folks to comment on the recording to start with,
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Well you need some kind of software to record the webcam…
I assume you have a PC, ClipChamp is a freebie for Windows, or webcam recording software might have come with your webcam e.g. Logitech Capture.
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Hi Barry. I assume you have a mobile phone (everyone has one now don’t they? 
) That’s the simplest way to go.
Set it up in landscape position on a music stand or similar so that your upper body and guitar are in the frame. Experiment a bit with the height/distance between the camera and your guitar and the camera and your mouth until you get a good sound balance between the two. Press the red record button and you’re off!
A modern phone is capable of producing results that are more than good enough for posting here.
Clearly there is more advanced video/sound/mixing/editing equipment that can be used if you are that way inclined but that becomes a whole other thing as you’ll see if you search through this forum!
Once you’ve made your recording you upload it to YouTube (you’ll need a free account for that) then you copy a link to the recording into your post in the AVoYP category here and you’ll get lots of support and advice from us all.
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Hey Barry, I use Debut video capture software. It has some great features. Great for saving and marking your improvement over time. Enjoy the journey, and good for you for playing. Hope to see a video of you playing soon.
Hello Barry,
As others said, if your computer runs Windows, you don’t need external apps, just open your “start” menu and type “camera”, there’s a camera app pre-installed (same goes for Mac computers, but there I can’t show you the specifics).
You need to click the icon to select video capture, and then to start recording you just hit “space”
One more detail to watch for: the external microphone may or may not be selected as your default audio input device. Especially if your camera also has a microphone (likely an inferior one), that might be selected by the Camera app.
To fix that, go to Settings (open Start and and type “Settings”), search for “Audio Settings” and once there, select the correct audio input device from the list:
You may have to close and re-open the camera app for it to respect this selection.
Also, if your microphone does not show in the list of input devices, you may need to install a driver from the manufacturer (less likely to be necessary these days, but wanted to mention it)
Where is the video saved? you’ll find it in your “Pictures” folder in Explorer, under a sub-folder caller “Camera Roll”
After you play with this simple setup you may want to consider more advanced options (or not, nothing wrong with keeping it simple!)
Good luck and as suggested, post some tests here.
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I agree – this is the easiest way to get started.
On my iPhone, I just go to the camera app and select “video”.
The video is automatically saved into photos. If you wish, you can do limited editing in the photos app, such as removing false starts at the beginning, and turning off the camera at the end.
I assume you can do similar things with any reasonably modern android phone.
Thank you everyone for your help. I am trying a few of your suggestions out. It’s not a complicated as I thought it would be. Thank you everyone for making it easy for me.
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