Practising Tips #1 (Recording)

Whether you're a guitarist, vocalist or a drummer, one useful practising tip that could be generalized over all these roles, and more, is to record your playing and listen to it. The point of doing that is to be able to assess your performance objectively and more importantly have a record of how you play and sound prior to a training program you're starting so that you could keep track of your progress. Even if you're not starting a specific training program and you're simply trying to learn riffs off your favourite song or a lick from a solo, it's useful that you try to make a recording every now and then.

That being said; there's an important concept that I'd recommend you keep in mind while going about this whole process. Don't be afraid to go out of your comfort zone (techniques you've mastered, songs you play well etc...) or to see (or hear in that case) your shortcomings and flaws of your playing. Practising is mainly about improving your skills rather than testing them. There are no guitar genes (as far as I know); so pretty much like everything else, don't be afraid to "suck" when you're practising. You're supposed to find some difficulties, otherwise, what would be the point of practising?

I recommend using Audacity to record your playing. All you need is a shield and a converter to connect your guitar to your sound card, and you're set to go. Audacity is free, light and easy to use. You can also save your recordings as MP3 and upload it on your mp3 player.

If you can't connect your instrument or device to your PC you won't be able to record your playing using Audacity, obviously. In this case you might want to try using an old fashioned Cassette or if you could afford a couple of hundred pounds, a Zen Mozaic.

Zen Mozaic is an mp3 player produced by Creative that besides playing music also has some other cool features such as a photo viewer, video player, built in FM tuner and a voice recorder. The voice recorder doesn't endure much decibels before distorting the sound but it does fairly okay for recording vocals and/or an instrument or two. You could buy a new 2GB version for around 300 pounds, and it's worth every piaster.

Unfortunately I didn't get the chance to upload a sample of my recording on Audacity but I will soon. In the meanwhile, happy recording and good luck! Most importantly, enjoy!

Update (4th of April, 09): Our good friend Eslam Salem was asking if this tip applies on bass guitars and I thought it was important to answer this question. It is, of course possible to record bass tracks using Audacity but be very very careful to use headphones (cheap ones that you don't mind getting screwed) as sound output. The reason I say that is because your laptop speakers, Sub Woofer or whichever output source you may be using is not designed to amplify bass sounds and probably won't last long if you decide to use it anyway. I learned it the hard way, so don't blame me now that you are warned =P !