The Steel Guitar Forum

A small, inexpensive hand-held cassette recorder can do wonders to help train and develop one's ear during informal, lo/no pressure practice sessions.

Just turn it on and let it run.

Don't even attempt to play it back for a 'listen' until several hours later. What you hear is what your audience is getting.

A lot of great things have been discovered this way.

I have a Boss RC20XL looper wired into the "effects send/return" out of a mini-mixer. It's not on all the time - gaak - but I can hit it's own power on, and record anything that stands out as an outstanding noodle. If you can't record "it" FAST, by the time you wire yourself up, "it" is sometimes already gone. Double-gaak. The fun part comes when you go back the next day or more, and find that you've played things you can't remember, and have trouble even figuring out! Ah, maturity....

I use a Vestax recorder to hear every thing we do. Very good advise

I hope you are well.
It's always nice to see your threads here.
They are always interesting topics you choose.
Thats is good advice for someone learning and for someone who is teaching then their student can go away with something to remember and listen too whenever they wish.
I think cassettes are few and far between now.
Pc, digital handhelds, and iPhones and webcams etc are today's formats I think.
Me, personally, I do record my practice sessions, as the only time I practice is when I decide to record a backing track and play steel to it and stick on the camcorder too. YouTube it, then watch it from time to time, then I always think, why did I play it that way, when I could have done it this way. I think everybody should use the YouTube as it is there forever, dated, and looking back on some of mine from a few years back, I still learn from listening to the way I used to play it to the way I do now. We all change our 'ear' as years go on. I think all players should do this, play it, if your happy, broadcast it, you and others can look back and learn from the videos. I watch a lot of others, of all different abilities, and it's good to watch. We all started somewhere, we all progress at different levels, and it's amazing how each of our ears hear how something should sound, .

So in conclusion, yes, we should all record ourselves, and listen/watch ourselves back.

I really don't know why I started a new line with every sentence when I started typing in this reply. It must be an iPad thing. Talking of which, there are some great recording apps for iPhone and iPad, 4 track, multitrack pro studio quality recording at just a few dollars. Look at the peavey ampkit ! And iRig..! Great for inputting your steel into a handheld multi tracker.

Cassettes, remind me what they are?

Many regards to you Ray.

Hope to see you again soon.

David

About the cassette comments...........

Sally happened to be at the local thrift store last summer, or before, I can't recall now......

anyway, she found a couple of those little 3-drawer things for cassettes. Since I had several dozen cassettes lying around I told her to buy all of them that were there.

I'm now thinking of selling off some of my 'drawers' as, like you mention......the BIG popularity failed to materialize and here I sit with a corner on the market. Oh well.........

Thanks for your response. Sorry I didn't get to see you in St.Louis this year.

Ray,

I'm going to be recording more of my practice sessions then I have in the past.
When I do record, I use my pc with Sonar PE version 4.

This is a little device that has my interest lately.
You might find it interesting as well.

I'm amazed at how "inexpensive" recording has become.

http://www.americanmusical.com/Item--i-ZOO-R16-LIST

Rick

I keep saying I'm going to start recording my practice sessions, and also record other instruments to play over so I can practice connecting all the dots.. I'll let you know how it goes when i finally start!

Hi, Ray ...
I've been recording my practice sessions practically since I started playing steel. I have a large suitcase full of tapes that go all the way back to when I'd been playing only a week and a half.

Recording my practices really helped me in a lot of ways. But there was one real "adverse" effect it had on me ... I became my own worst enemy.

In critiquing myself, I became so critical of my own playing that nothing I play on tape or video feels "good enough" for me ... every time I hear myself on tape or see it on video, I seem to see only the stuff that needs improvement or could have been done better (which, to me, has been pretty much most everything I play).

I'm not sure if it's all the recording and critiquing I've done that's made me so critical of myself, or if it just goes with the territory of trying to always improve and get better. Regardless, I still record or video my practices and critique them regularly. I think it has helped me overall in my playing by keeping me striving to constantly improve all the time.

The good thing about leaving the recorder on is that you can stitch together one good performance out of a dozen...

It's a lot easier now that it used to be using reel-to-reel, Scotch tape and a razor blade.

I always record our practice sessions so I can take it home and polish/learn my part better. I use a $10 mono cassette recorder/player I purchased at Walmart.

Bill