Recording yourself to catch the rushing
Okay. Last time we hummed the tune before writing it down. Tonight we're going to record that humming, or whatever you've got so far, and actually listen back to it.
I know. Nobody likes the sound of their own voice on a recording. I don't either. Never have. But this is the single fastest way I know to catch a problem you can't hear while you're inside it.
The problem you can't hear from the inside
I told you a couple weeks ago that I recorded myself on my phone once just to check my timing. I want to go further into that tonight, because it changed how I do everything.
I played back that recording expecting to hear... I don't know, myself. What I heard instead was every chorus coming in early. Not by a lot. Just enough. I'd been doing it for years and had no idea, because when you're playing and singing at the same time, your brain smooths it over for you. You feel like you're right on the beat. You're not always right on the beat.
That's the whole reason for tonight's lesson. Your ear lies to you a little when you're the one making the sound. A recording doesn't lie. It just plays back what happened.
How to do this at home
You don't need real equipment. Your phone is plenty.
- Play your song through once, start to finish, even if it's rough, even if you're just humming half of it. Don't stop to fix mistakes. Let it run.
- Set the phone down and forget about it. Don't hover over it. That changes how you play.
- Walk away for a few minutes before you listen back. Go get a drink of water, look out the window. You want a little distance so you're hearing it fresh, not still hearing what you meant to play.
- Listen with a pencil in hand. Mark anywhere you flinch a little. That flinch means something. You don't have to know what yet.
- Listen a second time just for timing. Are you rushing the chorus? Dragging the verse? Speeding up every time the words get easier to sing? That last one's common. When the words feel natural we tend to hurry through them like we're in a rush to get somewhere.
That's it. Five steps. You can do this in the time it takes water to boil.
What you're listening for
Mainly two things. One, timing — are you rushing anywhere, and if so, where does it start. Usually it's not the whole song, it's one spot, and once you find that one spot you can fix the whole thing.
Two, the parts that make you wince. Everybody's got a place in a rough recording where they think, oh, that's bad. Write that down. Don't fix it tonight. Just mark it.
Why the happy ones don't get finished
My grandson asked me once why all the old songs sound sad. I didn't have a good answer for him that day. Thought about it for a week.
Here's what I landed on. I think the happy songs mostly don't survive because nobody bothers to finish them. If your life's going fine, you don't feel the pull to sit down and work something out. It's the hard stuff that makes people pick up a pencil and actually finish the thing.
I bring that up tonight because it applies here too. It is tempting to record yourself, hear something rough, and just... not go back to it. Let it sit unfinished, the way most songs sit unfinished. The recording did its job, it showed you the rushing, but only if you actually go back and fix it. A flaw you noticed and ignored is worse than one you never noticed at all, because now you know.
An opinion, while we're at it
Cut it down if it's dragging. I say this every module and I'll keep saying it. If your recording shows you three verses where two would do, or a chorus that repeats one time more than it needs to, take the extra out. Nobody has ever complained that a song was too short. I've never once heard that complaint in my life.
One caution
Don't record with headphones in if you're also trying to play guitar and it's your first time doing this. You lose track of your own volume and end up hollering into the room or plucking at nothing. Set the phone on a table a few feet off, play normal, and let the room do the mixing. Good enough for what we're after.
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Before next time: Record your song once this week, listen to it twice — once for the flinches, once for the rushing — and bring both notes to class. Don't fix anything yet. Just find it.