WEEK 1: What we've learned!!!
WELCOME TO THE MAIN THREAD FOR THE FIRST WEEK OF "End of the Year" PRACTICE CHALLENGE!
- Select Your Piece(s): Choose one or more pieces that you've learned this year. It could be something you've practiced through our live streams, a personal favorite, or a challenging piece you've conquered.
- Record Your Performance: Film yourself playing your selected piece(s). Quality doesn't have to be professional – it's all about sharing your progress and passion.
- Share Your Journey: Post your video in our community forum under the "End of the Year Challenge" thread. Include a brief write-up about your experience learning the piece – what challenges you faced, how you overcame them, and what this piece means to you. If you don't want to record yourself, show us a video of a piece you plan to take on in the next year!
- Engage with Others: Watch, comment, and encourage your fellow community members. Share your feedback, experiences, and celebrate each other's progress.
↓ Happy Sharing! ↓
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THIS IS ONE OF THE FIRST PIECES I'VE LEARNED WHEN I STARTED PLAY GUITAR SERIOUSLY, SINCE I SUBSCRIBED TO TONEBASE (ABOUT 3 WEEKS AGO) I STARTED TO WORK ON THE INTERPRETATION WATCHING SOME VIDEO, THIS IS ONE OF THE PIECES I'M WORKING ON
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BRINA Beautiful, Brina! I am curious about the guitar you are playing. Can you tell us anything about it?
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BRINA Beautiful, Brina. Your phrasing and tone are very good. Welcome to Tonebase.
Since you are playing Romanza - would those be Love birds in the background?
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Jack Stewart THE BIRDS ARE SOME PARROTS, I HAVE THEM SINCE LAST YEAR, THEY ARE VERY FRIENDLY BUT A BIT NOISY SOMETIMES
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Jack Stewart
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BRINA Very beautiful and lovely tone. You made this old classic come to life. Thanks!
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BRINA Beautiful Brina and I love the birdsong accompaniment!
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BRINA Nicely played
it's such a lovely piece -
BRINA beautiful Brina, I enjoyed your version a lot and the guitar story is very interesting. As a side note I suggest you to not defer the thumb and «a» playing on 1st beats (or when played together) each time but to choose carefully where to apply this technique (like on start or end of phrases, harmonic tension, ...) to amplify the effect it provides. Bravo great playing!
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BRINA the parrots look cool, thanks for bringing them to the challenge!
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BRINA Well done Brina. Great performance, bravo
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BRINA I love the way, you play, very warm and with ease
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Eric Phillips HELLO, IT'S AN OLD HANDMADE GUITAR FROM SOUTHERN OF ITALY (ACIREALE-CATANIA). I RECEIVED IT SOME DAYS AGO AS A PRESENT FROM AN OLD MUSICIAN WHO WAS A PASSIONATE GUITARRIST
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BRINA It's a beautiful instrument! It looks and sounds great.
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Do you guys edit the sound after recording? I'm still trying to get good audio quality, I don't have a mic yet and I'm annoyed with all the background noise I get while recording.
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I add some reverb and do loudness normalization with Audacity, a free sound editing software I downloaded. I use an inexpensive USB mic with my laptop.
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Nijwm Bwiswmuthiary for a better sound you should try to get better at the source first and then edit after. If you're using your phone microphone it would mainly record in Omni and it pickups everything in the room, you need a cardioid one to focus straight to the source. As Eric said he's using a cheap USB microphone and he gets amazing results so if you have a tight budget I would say start this way. Then yes I edit audio after mainly to apply high and low filter pass, a bit a EQ, a bit of reverb and a limiter. Can you tell us a bit more about what you're using and what's your workflow and what you have available to work with?
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Eric Phillips and you get great results with your setup!
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Blaise Laflamme Thanks, but your videos rival those of the best professionals making classical guitar videos today (starting, of course, with your outstanding playing and musicianship).
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Nijwm Bwiswmuthiary Blaise is a master. He can guide you much better than I can. For what it is worth, my microphone is a Samson Go Mic. I bought it for $40 US dollars. Here is a picture.
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Blaise Laflamme I'm a complete dummy when it comes to recording. In fact, I'd never thought of recording myself until I participated in the Sor challenge last month. I don't even know how to sync audio with video.
I bought a cheap shotgun mic which hasn't done much for me. I remember you mentioned Eric using the Samson USB mic, and I noticed him using that with amazing sound quality. I'm tempted to try it as it's quite affordable for around 36 dollars here in India. I'm also tempted by AT2020, but it requires an interface, XLR cable, and it's not quite in my price range.
I've watched some of the 'recording' lessons on tonebase, but I kind of lost track amidst all the jargon and technicalities. Perhaps I need to rewatch them, try the advice and see what happens. It'd be really helpful though if you or Eric Phillips could do like a short tutorial on how to record with decent sound. I'm asking much. But always grateful for your help.
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Eric Phillips That's available for around 36 dollars in India and I'm tempted to try it. You've got such incredible sound quality with it. Do you connect it with your phone, laptop or digicam? And how do you sync audio with video?
Is it just plug and record both audio and video at the same time or do you record video with camera while plugging the mic into a PC and then sync them later? Too many dummy level questions and apologies if I've posed questions on the wrong forum, but I'm desperate to be able to create some decent sound quality.
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Nijwm Bwiswmuthiary Well, I will explain what I do, but I doubt it is the best or most efficient way. I am not a very technological person. (To give you a sense of my backwardness, until a year-and-a-half ago, I still used a flip phone. Now, I have upgraded to an iPhone 7.)
To make my videos, I plug my mic into the USB port on my laptop. Then I open the video camera app that came on the computer. I put the mic about 2 feet away from the guitar, pointed toward the bridge (I read somewhere that is the best spot). Then I hit the record button and play. This creates a video file (MP4 I think). For a long time, I stopped the process here, but in the summer of 2022, I figured out how to add some reverb. And so ...
Using an app that was also built into my laptop called VLC media player, I create a sound-only file (MP3) of the recording. After opening the video file, I go to the "Media" tab and choose "Convert/Save" and follow the directions. I think I found a video tutorial on how to do this.
Then I open Audacity (which I downloaded for free) and open the sound file. Using the effects tab, I first add reverb (which I usually set at 40 or 50). Then I do the "Loudness Normalization" (also in the effects tab) set to 20. I then export that, saving it as another MP3 file.
Then I open DaVinci Resolve, which is a free video editor I downloaded. Using that, I put the original video (which I mute) together with the new sound file. I then trim up the ends and put a fade in and fade out at the ends. I then export that new video file, which I upload to YouTube. It was a little complicated figuring out DaVinci, but I eventually got used to it. There are many YouTube tutorials for it as well.
martin does have several livestreams on home recording, and I think he may be doing another one soon. As I said, Blaise Laflamme is a true expert as well. I just mess around and hope something decent comes out. I am also very cheap - I hate spending money!
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Eric Phillips That's very comprehensive and seems easy to understand and doable for me. Thank you so much. I'll follow up and see what works for me and let you know
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Nijwm Bwiswmuthiary I wish I knew how to make a tutorial video showing exactly what I do on my computer screen. Hopefully you can figure out my wordy descriptions of everything. It took me a lot of trial and error, so be gentle on yourself.
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End of the Year Challenge: Finish Strong!
