Week 1: Going North! 
Welcome to the Main Thread for the first week of the Landslög Challenge
Share your progress updates here and help each other out by commenting on other member's submissions!
- Make sure you've read the guidelines before replying (<- click)
- Watch the kickoff livestream! (<- click)
↓ Happy Sharing! ↓
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Wow, my first Tonebase community challenge! To give it a start I practiced the first two pieces this evening. With all the mistakes, noises etcetera, it was fun. Beautiful music! I share them with you so that you know you don’t have to be a pro to participate here.
And now I will work hard to improve!
Regards,
Bart
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David I'm far from being an expert but I've tried a lot of things in 2 years... depending on your budget, the best bang for the buck are the Line Audio CM4 as proposed by Martin in the Recording course and they are indeed fantastic. As for Audio Interface there are a lot of choices out there but the Scarlett 2i2 is also kind of the best bang for the buck. Once you have your setup and workflow in pace it doesn't take too much time to get ready to record, but it takes some time get used to that stuff.
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Bart Versteeg Great work on these Bart!
For the first one, I noticed in the lesson that Gulli did for this piece that he suggested taking an extended pause on the fermata at the end of m. 14. He said to take your time getting into position for the beginning of m. 15. Yours sounded a bit rushed. The whole piece actually sounded a bit fast to me. Maybe try letting it breathe just a bit more?
For the second one, it sounded like the tempo slowed down considerably at m. 18 to the end. I haven't recorded this one yet, but I've worked on it, and I know it's hard to be patient with those whole notes in the first half of the piece.
As for the recordings, like Blaise suggested, it would really be great to see your technique. I think for these forum posts just a simple video recording with the mic that is built in to your phone should be sufficient. There are also a number of very good mics you can plug right into your phone. For example, I use the SHURE MV88+.
Keep up the good work!
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Steve Pederson I am trying to decide on a way to enter the recording aspect to more fully participate in this forum. Blaise’s recommendation is great. I also looked up the Shure package you mentioned. Have you found that the sound is much better than that of the phone (I have an iPhone 8) ? This sounds like a simple, portable option to get started.
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David I have an iPhone 13, which has a really good mic to begin with. I'm not sure how the iphone 8 compares with the 13. As for my SHURE mic, it's not that the sound is that much better than the one in the phone, it's just more direct. The mic that comes with the phone picks up the entire room, so it's a bit more ambient. The SHURE mic I have has a more narrow and focused range. I would just try recording something with your phone as is and post it to the forum to see how it turns out. I'm assuming you have a YouTube account that you can upload it to? You can set the video as "Unlisted" - that way the only ones that can see it is us.
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David for sure your iPhone microphone is more than good to share content over here and it's easy to get started with. I'm also curious about the Shure MV88+, if it sounds good it could be a great easy way to make on the fly content.
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Steve Pederson ok great you own a Shure MV88+, do you have shared some content using it over here? I would like to hear it because I'm interested in a quick and portable solution to produce on the fly content.
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Blaise Laflamme yes, in all my videos posted in these forums I have used the SHURE MV88+
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Steve Pederson ok great, that definitely sounds better than the iPhone microphones to my ears! Do you use the Shure App to set some DSP processing for the recording, I think it has some presets available?
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Blaise Laflamme Bart Versteeg There is an app - actually two apps - that come with the microphone. They are called MOTIV Audio and MOTIV Video. I have not used them in any of my recordings. I just use the iPhone camera app with the Shure microphone.
I have done a video comparison of the built-in mic with the Shure mic in both the camera app and the Shure app. I did not manipulate the audio at all in post production.
You can check it out here...
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Steve Pederson hey wow... thanks for the side-by-side comparison! That's definitely the difference between omni and cardioid... but I wonder why there's a volume drop when using the MV88+, have you checked out the settings in the Motiv app? According to what I read there's a basic EQ and presets like for vocals or instrument.
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Blaise Laflamme Yes, that is correct. There are several different settings within the MOTIV app. I'm not sure if those settings would effect any other app that might be using the microphone. I adjusted a couple of those settings, but it's not something that I've played around with. I will have to explore that more. For this recording I had it set to an acoustic guitar preset, but I'm sure I could adjust the input level as well.
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Steve Pederson at first hear both Camera app and Motiv Video app seems to sound the same when using the MV88+ then I would say the preset works for both, or not working for both
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I started to practice Landslag I a couple of days ago.
What I found hard: Forming the chords and transitioning from one to the other. So that will be the first order of business for me. I am not surprised because the chords in classical music are very different than anything I learned before.
Thanks martin for the kick-off call today. Especially found your explanation about transitioning between chords very helpful in my practice today.
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Jim King welcome to the challenge Jim! You're right that the approach to chords are a bit different when you learn classical guitar and music, at least for my own point of view, as a foundation they are shapes but as you learn more they become more like fluid transitions composed of multiple voices.
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joosje , martin , Blaise Laflamme , David Krupka ,
Thanks for your kind comments. The video shows the “polished” results and it was rewarding to put it together. I spent the afternoon listening to the other 8 pieces to choose something to work on this week. Man, #11 is a whole different level!
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Rick Lord I'm also looking to select a few of them while I'm reading through them... but #11 definitely worth the effort IMHO!
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Blaise Laflamme
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Blaise Laflamme Blaise, glad you’re reading through these. #11 is a steep climb IMHO
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Rick Lord you're right about #11... lets see how it goes in the upcoming days and weeks
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I worked on I. & II., I was hoping to get to III. because I really liked the sound of it when Martin played it, but I'm not very good at sightreading and it took me a long time to get through each piece. What I found hard was just sightreading in general, it's always been a very slow process for me. What I found easy was appreciating the sound of the pieces, just wasn't able to get them together in a way that was very cohesive, so I didn't record myself playing them. Looking forward to improving my sightreading and learning these simple yet beautiful pieces. I think this will be a good challenge for myself.
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Austin Flemming there's no rush to learn them fast, some like Eric have great sight reading skills, and others less or even more! As long as you commit yourself to practice at least just one of them but everyday, you'll get results by the end of the challenge for sure.
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Today I studied nrs 3 - 11.
now I know where the challenges are for me:
- 9th position harmonics on the low strings (since I play play without thumb nail I must play these with i/m
- polyrithm: never played this before.
- the speed of nr 11.Scooby Doo, We got work to do!
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Bart Versteeg Hi Bart, what do you mean when you are saying '' play these with i/m"
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Andre Bernier Hello Andre, I play those with i or m fingers of the right hand (of course combined with a left hand finger on IX position. But these harmonics are much quieter than those on V VII of XII position.
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Bart Versteeg for sure harmonics there need nails to sound like something
... for #11 I also see, combined with speed, coordination and transition.
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End of the Year Challenge: Finish Strong!
