I spent a long span of my life just playing other people’s songs on my old el-cheapo guitar. Often, poorly. Occassionally I’d write something and I’ve probably forgotten 99% of what I’ve written. With the advent of inexpensive digital recording, my world opened up. I started recording on my Mac in 2001 using a free version of ProTools. It was amazing–I was finally able to do multi-track recording! Since then I’ve purchased a new acoustic and a new electric guitar and found that my playing abilities improved. I moved to Logic Express and have learned more about the recording and songwriting process. How? Aside from listening to a lot of music recorded over the past 100+ years, I’ve also watched every episode of Classic Albums. Some of them twice. Others three times. This series takes you through the recording process of numerous classic albums, often with the original artists and producers giving their commentary. I highly recommend watching this series either on VH1-Classic or by renting them.
December 16, 2008
3 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL
it’s amazing what a new / better guitar will do for your playing, isn’t it? i’d been playing on a low-end Fender acoustic / electric (a DG-10CE) with the chunkiest neck known to man. it was cool to tool around on but hard to really play and learn a lot of stuff - barre chords are almost impossible past the 4th fret. but then i got an electric fender telecaster hybrid that is just amazing! what an incredible difference in sound, playability, etc. i love it.
now, how to come up with the money for a high-end taylor acoustic…
Comment by rustypants — February 17, 2009 @ 8:57 pm
Wow–it’s been 2 months since this was posted and I just noticed it. I should probably watch this more closely!
A good guitar makes more of a difference then I think most people give it credit. In the past I’ve blamed my technique or lack of practice for not being able to hit certain harmonics or to easily play in a certain style. Since buying a good acoustic and good electric, I can play just about everything I’ve tried. I’m sure that there are a lot of kids who get frustrated while taking lessons just because they are playing some el-cheapo guitar. Of course, I don’t think that parents should be buying their kids Taylors and Gibsons if their kids want to take lessons, but there’s something to be said about a good guitar.
Comment by tim — April 20, 2009 @ 6:58 pm
Hi, cool post. I have been wondering about this topic,so thanks for writing.
Comment by AndrewBoldman — June 4, 2009 @ 5:20 pm