Why Does My Recording Sound Bad?
Recently a reader asked, “Why is it when I’m playing guitar to myself and practising I sound fine, but when I record it sounds awful?”.
This is a very common experience for beginner-intermediate guitarists, and there are a couple of reasons for this, so let’s look into them and what we can do about it.
Limited attention
When we are practising guitar, we are working on something new (remember the distinction between playing and practising that we discuss in the book.
When are are working on something new, our brain is thinking about:
- Where to put our fingers on the neck
- How to strum/pick
- Where we are in the music (verse/chorus etc)
- What part of the beat we are on
- Do we need to add bends/vibrato etc?
and all of that is a lot for the brain to process.
As a result, when our brain is doing all of this, it is actually quite difficult to also focus on how we sound which, ironically, translates to “are we doing any of this correctly”.
Now when we record something and listen back to it, we are 100% focussed on how it sounds, so we can spot all the little mistakes that are taking place.
So the problem isn’t our recording - it’s our playing. There are weaknesses in our playing that are “slipping through the cracks” and we need to fix.
And the way to do this? By recording!
The benefits of using recording in your practice
Recording is a great way to improve your playing for the reasons we listed before - you can find out exactly what your weaknesses are and where you are making mistakes.
The first few times you do this, you may find it quite upsetting, as you’ll be hearing all sorts of flaws in your playing for the first time.
But don’t give up!
Choose one aspect of your playing that you want to improve, for example a chord change, the timing, or the tuning of a string bend, and spend some time with your practice working on improving that.
There may be other mistakes, but ignore those and pick one thing to improve, then try recording it again.
Once you fix one mistake, then move onto another.
How to use recording as part of your practice
The more focussed we can be with our practice, the faster we will improve.
Recording gives us a great way to laser focus on what we need to improve with our playing.
Let’s say you are putting 30 minutes of practice time into working on a song.
You could use the following routine to incorporate recording into your practice:
- 5 minutes to warm up on what you already know
- 10 minutes working on a new section
- 3 minutes recording that section and listening back and choosing 1-2 things to work on
- 12 minutes working on correcting those mistakes
Conclusion
When we first start recording ourselves, it can be an emotionally brutal experience, but if you can stick with it and use it to your advantage, you’ll quickly be able to focus in on your weak areas… and improve them, becoming a better player.