Self evaluation

[rpjazzguitar]

One of the challenges in advancing as a musician is developing an accurate picture of your strengths and weaknesses.

Most people won't tell you, for fear of hurting feelings. Even teachers won't necessarily share an unpleasant truth.

OTOH, people do seem to respond to something you play well. That is, people seemto be more forthcoming with praise than criticism, understandably.

But what can you do yourself?

Recording yourself in jams and gigs is great to the point of being essential. I suggest a pocket recorder. Turn it on at the beginning and off at the end. If you want things divided into tracks, do it later in Audacity or a DAW. It's easy enough. Don't (as some do) drive people crazy starting and stopping your recorder every tune. Set and forget.

I've recently found another path. Friends have been working, covid style, on tracks. This is where somebody sends around a backing track and then the individual musicians record parts. The "leader" then assembles and mixes the final product.

So, like a lot of people, I've been doing it. More recently, though, I decided to do recordings on my own, playing most of the parts.

The first thing I noticed is that, in my Brazilian comping, I was using my right thumb too much. It sounds good with guitar and voice, but can sound awkward, or worse, in an ensemble. It doesn't have to, if you nail the bass line, but if the bassist has gone away from quarters, you can be in his range and conflict. I also noticed string noise and harshness to the sound, even playing nylon. I re-recorded some parts, avoiding the lowest two strings, and playing more in the upper octave. Also, more sparsely and a little less legato. It will affect my live playing pretty quickly.

For solos, having to listen to the track repeatedly made me aware of the harmonic palette I was employing and the places where I was faking my way through rather than really phrasing with the harmony. Also, every place where my fingers took over the planning process and my brain went on hold.

Playing along with an ensemble and then being able to isolate your track is also educational. What sounds good with a band can sound pretty stark by itself.

The process was like holding a magnifying glass to my playing.

Getting started is surprisingly cheap and easy. Reaper is free to evaluate and cheap to buy. Full featured recording software.

You need an Audio Interface, which will cost a little over $100 for a simple one with good sound. I use a first generation Focusrite 2i2. Works perfectly and is at the low end price-wise. I haven't used any others so I have no idea whether this is the best thing to buy. The Focusrite is popular enough that a lot of the tutorial videos have it. I like that because I'm not dealing with incompatibilities if the teacher is using the same gear.

And that's pretty much it. If you're recording through a wire (and not through the air with a mic) you don't even need headphones. You can monitor with a guitar amp.

Now, this setup isn't going to get you pro quality recordings of ensembles. That would seem to require better monitoring equipment. But, it's plenty good enough to tell you something about your playing.

I also found out that most of the people I play with were already onto this. The few who weren't were perfectly happy to buy an Audio Interface download Reaper (or use Garage Band or Logic) and make tracks.

I'll post the latest one as soon as it's finished.

[pauln]

Conceptually, not grammatically, evaluation of playing is like a transitive verb needing an object. With self evaluation, that object is yourself, reflecting your goals and achievements, and issues and short falls. Part of the challenge of mature self evaluation is in the process of the mechanism itself - realistically avoiding false pride, protective delusion, and the tendency to suppress negative judgement. But I think a greater part of the challenge may not be the process so much as choosing the right context alignment of the end goal. That is, who must be satisfied; yourself, your teacher, your band, your audience, your recording company... ?

I guess what I'm thinking is that ideally all contexts would align on the same vector so any strategy of effort and improvement would be coherent, efficient, and on target with respect to all contexts of one's playing... probably not totally possible, but looks like you know that necessity is the mother of invention.

[ronjazz]

Paulin's points are well-taken. Self-evaluation needs to be done with a producer's ear in order to be really useful. RP seems to have some of that, the balance of the thumb with other digits being noticed indicates this. Of course, the recorded experience is not the live experience, which is where the real learning is, but is useful for detail work.

[Tricky Fish]

I’ve just started recording my playing in the last month or so and uploading the videos to youtube.

Its been a revelation for me. Its reinforced my knowledge of my strengths and painfully highlights weaknesses.

i strongly recommend it.

[waltf]

Same here. I immediately discovered when I recorded myself how sloppy I sound in between chords when my hand moves over the neck and strings. It’s actually very frustrating and something I didn’t realise before.

[jads57]

All points about self evaluation are good suggestions in this thread so far.
The biggest one that will ultimately make you a better player is actually playing with other players. And hopefullybetter musicians than yourself.

You really don't have a good sense of time ,feel or most importantly space until you actually gig. Nothing like getting hired or fired to force you to get it together quickly. The pressure of that is what ultimately counts!

[Lionelsax]

Today I recorded myself and I figured out I was able to play an 11 3/4 bar blues !
That's a performance.

[Gabor]

Listening back ourselfs is usefull using either gig or any other kind of recording, because it really sounds different, when it sounded when we are actually played that in real time.

However I think it is only the half of the story. The real challenge is, that we used too listen ourself in excess... if there is something ugly in your apartment, garden, etc, by time you are getting to used too it, so you will be not aware is anymore. Same goes to musical things too, in very different levels, starting with techniqual errors to the upper levels of artistic concepts...

So it is still inevitable to have other people's observations, maybe trick them to believe it is not you on the recording :-) ... or post is here, explicitly asking fellow forum members not to be polite. (I am not sure this is working, so many polite members here, and no one wants to be being a bad guy, and if any, it is not sure that his opinion you want)

[rpjazzguitar]

Today, spent part of the afternoon slicing up a waveform of a guitar comp on a samba tune and moving about half the chords in the tune. And, I had thought it was pretty decent before I started that process. I doubt that there were more than two or three audible flams. But, by the time I finished moving 20 or 30 chords, the groove was clearly better.

The lesson: precision matters, and you can't kid yourself about how precise you are. Most of the chords I moved were intended to be right on the quarter note (4/4). Moving some notes in a samba is harder because some of the notes are properly in the cracks. I did those by ear -- and I still had to move some. Interestingly, some parts of the tune were so much better than other parts that I didn't have to move anything. I had no awareness of that when I was playing. I played it to a click.

[christianm77]

This accords with my experience.....

Soo.... the difference between a master in a given style and a beginner or even intermediate is most often consistency.

The other aspect is - mapping the internal to the external. So, we feel a certain way when locked in. The secret is not to super micromanage our timing because we are not of course androids, but work out what that relaxed precision feels like. We then need to learn ways into it.

Practicing with a metronome or record then becomes not so much an activity of conscious awareness but rather a form of meditation. What's interesting is you then have objective proof of whether or not you were in the zone.

Also - make sure the metronome click or track you are recording with is nice and loud.

[Lionelsax]

Also - make sure the metronome click or track you are recording with is nice and loud.

Absolutely right !

[Gabor]

(please note: in the next lines I am not talking about practicing with metronome, which is obviously a must, I am also not talking record then listen, which is again, a very useful thing, I agree)

...what makes me a bit questioning this metronome recording and also waveform slicing method that many greats's notes are absolutely not in the bar, practically no notes in the bar... and they just sound excellent. Think Dexter Gordon, or Wes, or Mehldau and so on. You just feel they are sooo in tempo, cant help your leg moving.

What I mean, you can not justify anything (neither approving neither rejecting) by observing it is aligned to the metronome in the recording, neither slicing the waveform Regardless if it is aligned or not, it still can be excellent, or can be terribly unmusical...

Of course bossa may have more strict rhythm time contrains than swing or in general a "groove", but I think even in bossa partly my doubt are reasoned, and also in general music genres not just jazz, but especially jazz.

Somewhere I mentioned Rick Beato made the experiment "correcting" John Bonham's drum tracks to be even, and all the magic was gone. They were "bad" when waveform sliced, and also not aligned to the metronome. My conclusion that unfortunately human ear (either self, but better a master), and musical judgement is inevitable in this process, seeing the waveform we can not say anything. If we are lucky we are feeling groove or as opposite terrible things by ear when relistening.

[christianm77]

Yeah. I think there's a separate topic about how relevant metronome practice is to real world music. After a while Stevie starts to sound out of time. When that happens, I know I have left the path of wisdom.

OTOH, you need to be able to record accurately to a click if you want to work.

The listening to yourself approach is pretty good. Also try playing with recordings of your playing. That can give you useful feedback on where your natural timing is at.

But as I say the inner mind-state is what you are after. After a while it seems counterproductive to record gigs.

[henryrobinett]

I used to - sometimes still, make notes of my gig performance. If it was recorded I'd take more notes. I record myself a lot here in my studio with our once a week rehearsals. I post some of those on my youtube channel.

I would design a program for myself or amend my regularly scheduled practice program to fix the problems. Sometimes it was timing. Sometimes it was phrasing. Often munching the melody. Now it's still phrasing but in the sense to stop playing so damned much all the time. This is a side effect of playing alone too much. It happens with a lot of guitar players and piano players who don't have to breathe to produce a note.

The fun thing is going back to notes of a year or more ago and see if I still am having those issues. It's exciting to see when my program worked and I've fixed them.

But recording is important. As an artist I think it's very important to learn how to criticize yourself and not allow others to do it for you, unless they're very good and well meaning friends, or it's your teacher. ART is a self expression. Now as a developing student, sure. Still, you're developing a unique voice. You should cultivate it unless you don't want to have a unique voice. All those little decisions and quirky things you do may end up being a part of that voice. Unless it really is bad.

ALSO - and I think this is CRUCIAL: Don't criticize yourself to the point where it's crippling. And learn how to NOT criticize yourself as you play. Part of the art of improv - I think - is to allow yourself to let it go. YOu hit a wrong note. Great. That was so long ago. Flow. Fix the problem later. Flow. Go. Don't look back.

[christianm77]

I think that's why I record practice obsessively, but tend not to record performances. I figure if I haven't got it together by the show...

I think recording your shows can be useful occasionally; for instance you can spot if there are any 'ticks' or 'habits' on the gig... But on the whole what I'm aiming for on the gig is FLOW - so recording can make you self conscious, and then a bit neurotic afterwards lol.

[tlathrop]

<<make sure the metronome click or track you are recording with is nice and loud>>

Well, I guess the click wasn't loud enough when I recorded this. Or more likely my damaged hearing lost track a few times. Anyway, I liked some of this but refrained from posting due to the rhythmic glitches and my listening cringes. Will probably take it down again soon.

The point: yes, recording yourself is a great way to check out the slips, slides, and sloppinesses.