I realise I am preaching to the choir, here. It is after all the member recordings section, but hopefully it will motivate others who visit.
I have played piano and guitar all my life, and getting to the age where who knows what may happen from here on in.
I have many piano recordings that I have made over the years, but very few of guitar.
My guitar style is mostly finger picking, which over the years I became fairly good at.
Over the past year or so, I have developed a problem with my right hand index finger, which has made guitar playing all but impossible. (I am left handed, so my right is my fretting hand)
I have very few recordings of my guitar playing, which I now regret.
It was always easier to just hit 'record' when playing a digital piano, than to go through the hassle of setting up a mic to record guitar.
I have lately been compensating by playing and recording all my favourite guitar songs using guitar VSTs with the digital piano, but it can never be quite the same.
So basically, what I am saying is, whatever your chosen instrument, please record as many performances as you can, as you never know how long that ability may last.
The importance of recording
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Rob Over the past year or so, I have developed a problem with my right hand index finger, which has made guitar playing all but impossible. (I am left handed, so my right is my fretting hand)
I'm a lefty too -- at racquet sports - tennis, badmin, squash, table tennis etc ... and lefty for tenpin and for throwing ball and rocks. But am right-handed with writing and baseball bat, cricket bat etc. I use left hand for holding bow for bow string instruments, and archery ... the power stuff ...with left hand. My trigger finger is left-hand for rifles.
In your case ... have you tried fret with left hand?
SouthPark I'm a lefty too -- at racquet sports - tennis, badmin, squash, table tennis etc ... and lefty for tenpin and for throwing ball and rocks. But am right-handed with writing and baseball bat, cricket bat etc. I use left hand for holding bow for bow string instruments.
We are identical in all of those activities!
But I think it would take me too long to re-learn, even if it were possible.
Rob I'm sorry you're having a problem with your finger! I hope that you recover.
Thanks for the great advice about recording. I spent eight years taking piano lessons in the 90s and I learned a lot of great pieces. I would love to have recordings of my performances! I think I have one or two on cassette somewhere but I don't even know where to look to find them.
Because of the ABF recitals I have recorded my playing quite a bit over the last couple of years and I really like having the recordings.
rogerch Thank you for your concern.
Many years ago, a band and a duo in which I played, had access to a commercial recording studio at a local radio station.
We recorded there several times. The engineer was an ex- Abbey Road engineer. We would play in the 'live' room, and then go into the control room where he worked his magic. In there, it felt like we we listening to a completely different band! They were great times. We had tapes of the recordings, but sadly they have been lost down the years.
Thank goodness for instant digital recording and cloud storage these days.
Rob Since we don't know the nature of your index finger problem, I might be way off the mark to suggest you visit with an orthopedic doctor and/or a physical therapist. If it turns out to be a chronic condition, you might consider relearning the guitar as a "righty".
My wife is a lefty and when she began guitar lessons, as an adult, she chose to use her left hand as the fretting hand, and her teacher was amazed at how fast she developed a feel for chord construction, faster than right hand students who had started about the same time, both young and old.
A good friend of mine, who was once Natalie Cole's touring guitarist, is a left-hander who plays right. He is also a professor of guitar and jazz studies at Winthrop College.
IPhones make excellent video and audio recordings and are easy and quick to use. My old iPhone 5s, no longer viable as a phone, makes for a handy camera and audio recorder. And, any audio recordings made with the iPhone can easily be imported in GarageBand for editing or whatever.
For guitar recording, these days, I use a Behringer audio interface into my MacBook Air, with either one of the Tele-type guitars I've built, or my Yamaha Silent Classical guitar. Quick, easy setup, with good quality results.
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PianoMonk
I recently had an ultrasound scan on the finger, but it seems that not much can be done other than cortisone injections short term relief. It is mostly age related, and 20 years of abuse, teaching guitar everyday.I have been doing some exercises which have made some slight improvement.
For recording, I also use a Samsung S22 ultra as a wireless camera, fed into OBS, and a Shure SM57, or large diaphragm condenser through a Komplete Audio 6 interface, into Cubase so I can capture audio and video simultaneously in OBS
I don't like the sound of my acoustic's transducer system.
For electric, I use a cheap Swiff Audio wireless system to avoid getting tangled up in a cable in my small study/studio.
It is great that you have built your own guitars. I wish I had those skills!
I've been accumulating some decent home recording equipment and making the occasional "music video" here and there. It's definitely nice to go back and listening to something and remember my accomplishments. I don't necessarily share them that widely. I'm not on Facebook or the like, and I don't have a serious YouTube channel: I upload my videos there, but I leave them unlisted and only share them with a few friends, family, and sometimes at a discussion forum such as here! Mostly they're just for me.
Enthusiastic but mediocre amateur.
TC3 It is good to upload to YouTube or similar, just for the 'posterity' aspect.
I have some unlisted material there, just to share with family or friends.
Mine are also basically for me, but I mentioned in another thread, that I have uploaded to streaming services, Spotify, iTunes, Amazon etc. I like to ask Alexa to play them from time to time.
Rob Darn near 30 years ago, I made some very low-quality home recordings of a handful of original rocks tunes. This was when I was playing electric guitar and bass more. I still enjoy listening to them from time to time. Except the awful lyrics. I'm no poet, that's for sure!
Enthusiastic but mediocre amateur.
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I am on the opposite end of the recording spectrum - I record everything I play, including practice. This is because with a permanent recording equipment setup, it is actually easier to just press a button to start recording at the beginning of every practice session than to think do I need to record this or not.
After about 6 months, I now have about 200GB of video. So the problem now is how to pick out the useful moments from hundreds of hours video footage. I have a trick for that. I am recording with OBS Studio, which has ability to add realtime overlays. One of the overlay I added is a live digital clock (date and time). Then, during practice, if I realize a moment that's worth coming back to watch, I just need to note down the date and time. I could do it with a small notebook. Because my piano is digital, and I use Pianoteq, it's even easier. I just save the last recorded MIDI segment - the file name by default would be date-time stamp (of the beginning of the pieced played) and the number of notes (a good way to tell what the piece is). So now, my MIDI file folder contains a list of interesting moments which I can easily find in my video files.