90+ recordings and I'm not happy with them

[islandguitar]

Originally Posted by Glennwillow

Well, I do that too. I bet just about everyone does that.

I find that when I am making too many mistakes when I am recording that it's because I didn't do my homework, I didn't practice enough. And part of practicing for me is memorizing the piece. If I'm in too much of a hurry to record something and then I make too many mistakes while recording, I tell myself,

"...well, this is the practice time you didn't put in. So don't get angry about your screw-ups, just put in the practice needed now until you can do the recording right." Sometimes another week or two (or a couple of months!) of working on something is needed to really polish it up. I find that I improve greatly by going through this experience. Yes, recording garbage is humbling, but nobody needs to hear that stuff except you. You can't be a perfectionist about this stuff or you just beat yourself up too much before you give yourself a chance to improve.

I find that shifting my thinking towards looking at the recording experience as a learning experience really helps me not get too frustrated. I'm not always successful at this, but most of the time I'm able to stay fairly even keel by changing my perspective while recording.

Tommy Emmanuel mentioned once that he won't perform an instrumental song in public until he can play the song while carrying on a conversation at the same time. Andres Segovia used to practice a piece for an entire year before he would do it in public. There is a lot that goes on in your head and in your hands when learning to do a flawless job on an instrumental piece on the guitar. I think maybe you are not giving yourself enough time to go through these learning transitions.

- Glenn

Hi Doug!
I've copied Glenn's message as I think there's a lot in there which is helpful to all of us. Glenn among many has been open to giving us hints and details about how much time goes into even one of his songs.......you "sense it", but hearing about it is always helpful to know so it won't seem like someone just sat down and ripped off this incredible recording in a take or two. Sometimes that happens ( I call it when "lightning strikes"!), all too many times there's SO much more!
I too have enjoyed you playing! Kudos to you for opening yourself up to AGF with struggling with this. Perhaps many more than you realize also deal with that perfection/recording thing....it's tough!
Beyond all the great advice, including Howard's thoughts, the only trick I've employed recently is to work out two tunes that could be recorded when you do sit down to make it happen. If one is giving you fits......switching over to the second can make a difference and take the "edge" off or....set you up to go back to the original after a break. As you may know, my stuff is all "best single take" with no punching in. Yes, weeks and months working out a tune.....but then letting some time in to build energy and almost an "itch" to put down a track. I won't record until that "itch" is bursting on me! Any great takes (maybe not flawless!) I've done have been almost like a detached out of body moment because the energy is so high......and certainly a whole bunch of takes to get things toward that moment after all the original prep.
Keep on playing! Thanks for opening up about this.
Fred

[RodB]

Hi Doug,

Just want to say that I have enjoyed many of your recordings, and as for the classic rags I really like for your rendition of Ragtome Criole among others. There are therefore many of your Soundcloud recordings that I hope remain available, including the latest - you have a signature sound.

[Doug Young]

Hey Doug, just spot checked your soundcloud page, and I think you're being too hard on yourself! We're always our own worst critics. Your playing and records sound fine to me.

I think one possible solution to this issue, which I think we all have, is to just be yourself - only play (or record) tunes you really like, that are "you". Ideally, play them your own way - no one else will be able to play things the way you do better than you!

Also, I think people under-estimate how much work goes into the recordings we compare ourselves to. I once asked a fairly well-known guitar player (whose tunes aren't all that complex, actually) how long it took him to get a tune to the point that it was ready to record, and he said anywhere from a few months to several years! And that's not counting any studio editing, etc, that may go into producing the perfect release once he does record it.

It's also a never ending progression - even tunes I have recorded and may have been happy with at the time, I can hopefully play them better today, so maybe I should have waited. Of course I'll hopefully keep getting better, so I'll should probably wait even more. By that logic, we'd never perform or record anything... So a recording, or a performance is just a snapshot in time, where you are today. If you just look at it as sharing your music and your musical journey, maybe it's easier to accept (and keep working on) things that you wish were better.

[TBman]

Doug, I'm in the same boat as you are, as are many of us.

I had gotten in the habit of rushing through a song just to record it and share it as the whole process is fun, not really paying attention to the quality of the recording (like last night's post of River, lol) or not paying that much attention to the quality of my playing.

I think what you need to do is more "play along" work. I work through the tab of a song and then as I get it up to speed I'll start to play along with the original tune and try to play it exactly as the original artist plays it. Then once I get through the whole song I will do my own little things with it. But.... just getting through the song as a play along isn't enough. You have to live with the song a bit and let it settle in. I've found that a month on a song seems to be better for me. You'll have to experiment and see.

Another thing that might help is using GuitarPro or something similar that will let you input parts of a song that are giving you a hard time (or you can do the whole song). I will do this and slow the tempo of the song/section way down and bring it up over time.

Time is the key to the whole thing. Don't rush and keep it fun. Its not a contest.

[bufflehead]

Originally Posted by J-Doug

Plus I really shook my foundation over the past few years trying to learn some classic ragtime tunes. They were way above my abilities and totally wiped out my confidence in my playing.

Ragtime. Yikes. I spent a year working on a challenging rag, and even then I could only play it cleanly about once out of every three or four attempts. It's one of those tunes you only want to jam after midnight when everyone else has been drinking.

For me, the takeaway was not to do any more ragtime. Not because it's too hard, but because I'm too much of a perfectionist. When I hear really solid ragtime players these days I notice that they're all making mistakes here and there, but they play through them because that's the nature of the beast with ragtime. I could never get happy with performing that way, and I realize that this is my problem, not the genre's.

[Methos1979]

Lol, you are suffering from 'Average day of a musician' syndrome... See the green zone below!

[muscmp]

well, not as hard core as you, but, i sure feel that i could now do all of them better in recording , arranging and performance . as long as we are striving to do better--remember, we are our own worst critics, so keep it up since it at least it gives therapy for our work/life woes.

play music!

[DCCougar]

Originally Posted by N+1

I tried a Focusrite interface with my laptop and Cubase, and trying to make ANY recording at all with that outfit almost destroyed my will to live. So I went back to the Tascam.

I stuck with the cubase (elements) through the focusrite scarlett. I just love to multitrack, but I'm much more a (instrumental) player than a recording engineer. Still, I'll often play 3 or 4 tracks of the same part, then cut and paste the best parts together. Same with the other parts. I don't really care if you think that's cheating, LOL. Makes it a little less stressful when that red light goes on. And I've got to record a rhythm machine track first, so everything later is on time. You don't even have to use it in the final mix-down. I usually bring in the rhythm after a few bars.

I've found there's something to be said for simplicity in music. Look at Petty's Learning to Fly - four chords over and over! But it's a great song! Took me about six months working on Embryonic Journey, and only part of it at that. I've become much more minimalist in my old age.... A taste...

[jrb715]

Doug,

Just listened to ten or so of your recordings. They generally sound too careful to me: as if you are playing to get the notes right, as if you are trying to get them to be correct. The problem is that I hear the trying and as a result they seem slow, and you don't seem to be on top of the beat.

I think quite a few of the posts give good advice. I think it's probably right that you don't know them quite well enough to perform them unselfconsciously when you record them. I work with actors as well as singers and most have a tendency to perform pieces before they are truly learned, before they are deeply memorized. Deep memorization allows the actor or singer to be abandoned and genuinely expressive. It's the same for any musician.

I also like the advice that you might try and find the Doug in the piece. For singers this is the difference between karaoke singing and really singing the song. You can certainly play the pieces, but the art always seems to me to be an expression of the particular player. And if that means there are occasional flubs--so be it.

I understand the discouragement, but there's a lot of fun waiting for you with a little less worry and much more just owning the music.

I share your same sentiments about my own recorded work. I'm a decent enough sound engineer, but I hate my playing and singing -- way too stiff.

But here's the thing: To the listener, your song is an entire thing. It is complete. There has been no process, as far as your audience is concerned, and so none of the decisions and effort and angst that went into the final product are at all apparent. It's just there, where there wasn't anything before. So they are going to have a completely different experience listening to it than you are, and to presume that they will even hear the same things you do is egregiously unfair to your material.

Think about when you listen to a new record. If you're like me, you just hear a song. Not a performance. Just a song. And you either like it or you don't, but probably not because of the performance or the recording. After 38 years as a songwriter and musician, I have come to believe that we are all too close to our own material to be reliable critics of it.

So let it go. Put it out there. Let it be what it is, not what you think it is.

[bickb]

I used to be really nervous for a recording as well, but since I started playing live that completely dissapeared.. Noone cares about the mistakes you make except yourself !

And if I were you I would start recording simpler pieces/songs that you can play all the way through without many mistakes and flluently to get the confidence back up!

[N+1]

Originally Posted by DCCougar

I stuck with the cubase (elements) through the focusrite scarlett. I just love to multitrack, but I'm much more a (instrumental) player than a recording engineer. Still, I'll often play 3 or 4 tracks of the same part, then cut and paste the best parts together. Same with the other parts. I don't really care if you think that's cheating, LOL. Makes it a little less stressful when that red light goes on. And I've got to record a rhythm machine track first, so everything later is on time. You don't even have to use it in the final mix-down. I usually bring in the rhythm after a few bars.

I've found there's something to be said for simplicity in music. Look at Petty's Learning to Fly - four chords over and over! But it's a great song! Took me about six months working on Embryonic Journey, and only part of it at that. I've become much more minimalist in my old age.... A taste...

Sir, I take off my hat to you. To make any recordings at all with that Focusrite/Cubase combo raises you to the level of near-genius in my eyes. Further, I'm listening to your recording 'April', and we are operating at entirely different levels, you and I, in all respects. That is a superb recording and performance. Congrats.

[SalFromChatham]

I record often... probably as often as you Doug. I never worry about getting things perfectly. I think im the king of getting 85% there...

I always love your playing. I personally think you are too hard on yourself to the point of missing out on why we all play. It’s not about perfect; it’s bout love and sharing and feeling.

If you have a buddy you can jam with, I bet it will mix things up for you and that you will have more fun.

It’s a shame to see a guy with talent and dedication not enjoy the darned thing.

Hang in there!

[N+1]

Originally Posted by J-Doug

What gets me down is my performance while recording. I make mistakes, get lost, flub fingerings and my timing goes completely awry. When I record I'm totally stressed out and my performance greatly suffers. You'd figure this wouldn't be the case after 90 recordings but it still is.

I take some comfort from a quote by John Ruskin:
"The demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art."
He doesn't mean we should be sloppy. He means, first, that any artist will always be pushing close to his point of failure (as you say you are); and second, that imperfection is an essential sign of life - of progress and change - so we should expect some imperfection.

From which I draw the overall moral that the thing to aim for is not the perfect strum, or the perfectly played sequence of notes, or perfect rhythm, but vitality. If the music is alive, if you're loving the playing, if you're fully immersed not in making the recording but in playing the music, then the flubs won't matter that much.

[DCCougar]

Originally Posted by N+1

Sir, I take off my hat to you. To make any recordings at all with that Focusrite/Cubase combo raises you to the level of near-genius in my eyes.

Heh. Yeah, it certainly did take some figuring out. And I'm still probably only using, like, 20% of its capabilities. But like any system, once you figure out how to get it to do what you want to do, it ain't so tough.

Originally Posted by N+1

Further, I'm listening to your recording 'April', and we are operating at entirely different levels, you and I, in all respects. That is a superb recording and performance. Congrats.

Wow, thanks, N+1. I really appreciate that!