How I record and why I embraced auto-level (in certain circumstances)

I have dabbled in audio recording for many years with varying degrees of success.  While I once thought that only the direct feed from a guitar plugged in would get a good quality sound I am now convinced that microphones are best.

I have been using a Zoom H1 for a number of years, it is a stereo condenser mic that records to a micro SD card, at the low price end of the stereo condenser mic range. Perhaps one day I will venture out into the more expensive land of mics, but for now, I get more than I can deal with already at this level.

Over the years I've messed around with various filters, apparently everyone loves a bit of reverb. No, I don't. A mic has already captured whatever reverb the room you recorded in offered. I won't muddy up the sound by adding more artificial reverb or any other delay style effects. (Singers - don't hide under layers of delay effects.)

But I am a sucker for getting the graphic EQ "right". Where "right" means what my ear hears, through my fancy closed monitor headphones. Almost without fail I will boost the bottom end frequencies slightly, decrease the mid slightly, and boost the top end. I have many presets I have created but each recording I will listen with the EQ being applied realtime, drive up a frequency range to max to see what it sounds like, drive it down to min to see what it sounds like without it, and then pick an appropriate increase/decrease or leave it as it is.

A pretty common mild EQ I would apply looks like this:

The mid range I have removed here is what I'd call the "AM radio" sound, whereas the low and high ranges give more of the "FM radio" sound.  You can overdo it, and many times I have, so I have to remember to calm down and not "over produce" the audio.

Levels are important, particularly at recording. You don't want to overdrive and clip, but you don't want to be so low that you aren't using up all the dynamic range you have. I've read many times about aiming for a peak recording level of -12db, but you know, I reckon go a bit higher. If the crescendos have a tiny bit of clipping I think that is okay, almost "nice". It's not "pure", but it kinda accentuates the power of the top end of the volume dynamic range. Even when I apply my EQ filters I don't stress too much if it maxes out with a tiny bit of clipping.

That's because you want the end result to fill out the dynamic range of the signal, ie, be as loud as you can get. "Stuff sounds better when it is louder". If someone jumps on to your youtube video and has to turn it up, then you didn't get you final amplitudes right.

But I stop short of compression. Sure, with compression you can max out the levels in frequencies without clipping, create this powerful "wall of sound", but you are heading into over produced land again, like adding reverb and other delay effects. That original signal - the pure sound of an instrument - you want to stay true to that. Get the original sound right to start with, don't dabble too much from there. I'm sure this can be said to distorted electric guitar, I don't do much with them anymore.

And here's where I was when I was inspired to ramble on about this. Your time range dynamics, that is, over the course of a song where it goes soft, then goes loud, that's important. If when you are preparing to record setting up your mic, play as loud as what you intend on playing during the recording and set the level so that is close to the boundary of clipping, lock in that setting, perfect.

But what if you can't do that? Or, things change during the recording session and you can't change the level setting?

I have had this problem several times while recording my kids orchestra and band performances. I will set a level, record, and then later find it was way too low, or way too high, and that ruins the whole recording.

The Zoom H1 has an auto level feature. Where it will ramp up the level if the signal is low, or bring it back if the signal is high. I once believed that this was awful, complete heresy, worse than compression. I don't think that now, because, after ruining a few recordings getting the levels wrong I reluctantly turned it on for the last performance.

The problem being that I leave the mics on stage, and the little kids perform, the big kids perform, guest performers, then everyone combined - no chance of setting a fixed permanent level, even if I could access the mics in between performances.

You know what? The auto level was not as awful as I was expecting. I had two mics set up for either side of the orchestra, a H1 and a H1n and both did a similar admirable job. Sure there was the expected occasional "inrush", where the mic had scaled itself up trying to hear something as the performers were waiting to start, and the first note smashed the level, the mic went "WHOA!" and scaled right back, and it is very apparent in the wavefile.  You know what? Perform an amplitude fade for those few events and you will barely notice.

Looking at this sample stereo wavefile the first song is louder than the second, so it's not like the mic is constantly hunting to have every moment at a pre-designated amplitude. If I was to guess, and I'm allowed to because I write control algorithms for a living, I would say the Zoom will work in a range where it won't change the level until an extreme high event comes along where it very quickly scales down, and it's only if it's not hearing a minimum signal will it scale it up. So most of the time it is doing nothing, just leaving the level setting alone.

Which is exactly what you want in the situation I just described!  Yes; you will get a few glitches but fix/hide them in post production. That is nothing compared to ruining a recording by fixing a level that is not appropriate.

Mind, changed. Key learing: do fix the audio level if you know what to expect; if the unexpected is expected and you can't change the level as it happens, then turn on auto level and deal with the very few issues you will get in post.

Zoom H1 versus H1n

Recording sound quality is upmost important for music. I used to consider the plugged in sound feed, direct from a pickup, the highest quality sound you could get from a guitar. But many years ago I bought a Zoom H1 stereo condenser microphone/recorder, and it blew my mind. The sound is *so* much better! It makes sense, you are capturing all the other subtle nuances that a pickup misses. I had already gone to dual pickups in the guitar, one that captures the soundboard as well under the saddle, which is great, but a quality microphone; that is hearing like your ears do; so much better!

The Zoom H1 has done me well for a long time, and I have an application coming up where I want to use two microphones, to capture an orchestra sound from both sides of the stage. I was going to buy another Zoom H1 but I noticed the new Zoom H1n is available, the upgraded version.

I has a lot more "stuff" like dubbing and playback at different speeds and other things I don't need, about the only feature I thought might be useful for my purpose was the limiter. However, it's only $20 more than the old model, and perhaps the microphones themselves are improved or something, so I bought one.

As a test I put them both in front of me playing guitar, one to the left, one to the right, and recorded both in the same mode being 48kHz 24bit WAV.

I attempted to match the levels at recording time but I didn't get it very close so I adjusted amplitudes in post, I also applied the same graphic EQ to both. I always apply some EQ to drop down the mids and boost the lows and highs a bit. Makes the sound more punchy and less AM radio. Or maybe that is just my tinnitus speaking. I do all this listening through Sennheiser HD280 Pro monitor headphones with a quite flat frequency response, so it should be pretty accurate.

What did I find, what was the difference?

The visual look of the WAV files showed some differences, like the H1n was maybe slightly more sensitive? But listening, no, they sound the same, other than a difference due to the location of the mics; you can tell they weren't in the same place.

...which was part of the reason I didn't have them next to each other - even though they are stereo microphones, if I combine the two files how would that sound? The answer - clearly better than either one! I went with 50% left on the H1n and 50% right on the H1 (100% either side seems excessive). I wasn't sure what putting stereo on an already stereo signal would be like, but I can tell you, I will be doing that from now on. A little bit more work, but it adds another layer of depth to the sound.  Here, check it out:

Zoom H1 demo:

Zoom H1n demo:

Mixed demo:

For interest, that was a sound grab from an arrangement that popped into my head last week, Bob Dylan "It's All Over Now Baby Blue", although I gone with more of the Graham Bonnet 1977 more rock less folk as that's the version I remember, more my era. I will probably talk about that more another time.

Enjoy!
JAW

What's happening October 2018

What's happening in no particular order:

• I've been continuing to play as a duet with an amazing violinist, who continues to amaze me. We both have kids in a private orchestra, we both pick up our kids, when we realised we could play as a duet we headed into a vacant music room 45 minutes before end of orchestra practise. He has a strong love for latin jazz, ragtime, blues, oldies - and he is far more organised than me so he brings books and I try to keep up with suitable fingerpicking chord progressions. He's a properly trained musician so it's been really great to duet with him.
  
  I feel I let the side down but he's happy just to be playing. It's the same story - he was heavily into playing in orchestras/ensembles but then with life and kids it falls by the wayside. Eventually as that chapter of life gets easier (in some ways, not others!) you get back into it. I never let it go, hung onto playing guitar at least a few hours a week, through all chapters...but I get it that people will let it go. So long as you go back I reckon!
  
  I will record one of our jams sometime and post it here for interest sake.
  


• I continue to teach two girls guitar, we had a long break with holidays but we are back into it. I'm not super organised about it, but at the low low price of free, I don't think I need to be :-) We are still progressing through the classic Aaron Shearer red book which I still think is a fantastic start for fingerpicking, but these days I jump around teaching some chords and some other songs, particularly if they are working on something in school. One has advanced further than the other, which makes lessons more challenging, I'm not exactly sure how to deal with that. It's hard enough to find duets as it is, let alone with two suitable parts! Sometimes the more advanced girl is there by herself, I have attempted to show her my more "freestyle" approach to fingerstyle which she seems to both like the sound of and have a natural talent for, which I was really pleased to see. I hope to progress that more


• I played at one of my mate Shaun's open mics. I have recently been adding to my Dark Side of the Moon some of the spoken parts, "I've been mad for years, absolutely years..." "And I am not frightened of dying, anytime will do I don't mind..." and the like. It is challenging to speak while playing reasonably complex fingerstyle, but more daunting is speaking it into a microphone. But I decided I had to do it, so I did. Face fears and all that. My play through of the album was not amazing by my own standard, and I think the spoken words didn't make sense to the audience. I will re-record it and put in the spoken parts for youtube, another chapter in the project, but not sure I will do it again at a gig.
  
  I also knew it would be a mistake playing the album as one pass - we were in the beer garden, the guitar was initially cold, and after around 5 minutes in it would be warmed up and would go out of tune. And because it is a noisy environment when I switched to drop D halfway through I wasn't really sure I was properly in tune, so I was stressing the whole time about not being in tune.  Lesson - always start with a few short songs so I can retune in between as the guitar comes up to temperature, and it will also relax me for playing such a challenging and lengthy piece.  After Dark Side, I played two rockin' numbers and I was happy enough with the play through on both.
  
  I hung around to watch another fingersyle player and chatted to him afterwards, he thought my Dark Side arrangement was amazing; I thought his ability to sing while playing fingerstyle was amazing. He threw in a complicated solo fingerstyle rendition of Billie Jean which he executed well; you can tell the guitarists who have seen some solo fingerstyle, loved it, and determinedly learnt one. That was the start of my solo fingerstyle. I think I had to determinedly learn the first 10 arrangements from tab, then arrange 20 of my own, and then keep doing that for another 10 years before it started to become natural. But I could see based on his solo fingerstyle piece why the first fingerpicked songs with singing he made look effortless. If you bite off a huge piece and persist for hundreds of hours the rest of your guitar playing is brought up as well. I reckon I could fingerpick any pattern you like in chords all day; and it's because the attention I paid to solo fingerstyle that makes that happen.
  
  It's a good scene though, the open mic scene. Everyone is supportive of each other and there is some great talent. I wrestle with the concept however, where is the line between someone who is going to make a career out of music, and some who is a really talented hobbyist? There are some guys and gals who clearly do it as a hobby, but some who would be looking to take it further. Is the open mic scene a pathway to a career or a place where 9-to-5'ers can enjoy their hobby? Who knows, but it's a good scene :-)

Orchestra fill in...well kinda

All my kids are in bands/ensembles/orchestras. It's great, I never got that when I was a young aspiring musician. Playing in groups teaches you good skills. My youngest daughter's string orchestra, in which she plays cello, recently invited parents to join in, whatever instrument you have. Why not eh?

A few of us turned up, a clarinet player, some violinists and me on guitar. I pulled up a chair next to my daughter, but cello is bass clef and I can't read bass clef fluently. I moved back a little, and hit violas, they have that other clef. I can't read that one at all. Pulling back further, violin 3. Treble clef. All good, I stand a chance of reading that.

The music was new to the orchestra, first time seeing for everyone, they are all primary school kids and novices, but it wasn't "simple". Check key signature, there's an F# and a C#, okay, I'm pretty sure that means it's in some key, I will remember to play those notes sharp. A bunch of quarter notes, interspersed with eighth notes, oh, it's 3/4 time; it's a waltz.  Yeah, I got this.

Off goes the conductor, yep, I'm good. 4 bars later whoa, the conductor has slowed down...no wait, I'm speeding up!  Oh, oops, that was three eighth notes and then an eighth rest then a quarter note.  Uh oh, where am I? Looking for a hook back in...looking...looking...

Ha ha. I got a bit better on the second and third play through, and then better still in the next song, but wow! These kids are doing better than me! I thanked the conductor afterwards for the opportunity to join in, and for reminding me my ability to sight read is poor, and my tempo is even worse.

Bottom line is when you are largely self taught, and have only ever played solo, jumping into a band or ensemble or orchestra does not come natural. I said to one of the mums afterwards "If I grabbed a heap of pieces and sight read them playing to a metronome for a while I would get much better at this...but what would I do that for?" :-)

I do however encourage you to play in a group, and learn to read music as part of your musical adventure, especially if you are not getting tuition. I do feel like I missed out not playing in groups.

Not to be perturbed, I sat down later that night, turned on the mic and played Dark Side of the Moon through. I do this at least once a week, I really want to keep it at a good level and develop it further. I stuffed up and restarted twice during Great Gig in the Sky, which I edited out of the audio, but the rest is all warts and all like you were sitting with me. I record stuff occasionally to listen back to see how I sound, helps me to know what expressions and dynamics to concentrate on. I should be able to _play_ it to start with, the icing on the cake is putting the emotion into it.

So here it is, not because I recorded something beautiful that I want you to hear, but because I had already put it on the web so I could listen to it at work, and adding a link to a blog is pretty straight forward.

Enjoy!
JAW

FotM 8 Aug 2018:

June 2018 was video recording month

I got a bit excited in June and re-recorded a few songs for my main youtube channel. Over the years I have recorded videos using different cameras, audio capture techniques, framing...my ideas of what people want to see changes, but I've always wanted the highest quality video and audio. Since I'm cheap/tight I've never really spent the big bucks required for high quality, but the tech has been in place for quite some time to enable good quality. For several years I have collected what I needed...and kept working on my videography.

For some time I thought that people wanted to see the whole of the subject framed, "who is this person I'm listening too?" But since I don't get many views on youtube anymore, and most people who look now are guitarists, they are more interested in seeing what my fingers are doing.  So I now mostly frame closeups. My personal favourite closeup is looking down the neck from the headstock, "guitar cam" style. I have two mirrorless DSLRs, when you frame a closeup you introduce a depth of field, so you can tradeoff focus primarily at the left hand or right hand. Depth of field makes the video "look fancy" but really, people want to see clearly what is going on. To do that, you need to adjust the f-stop, but then you are letting less light in, so the ISO will go up and makes the picture noisier. I deal with this by introducing a lot of light, and forcing the focus mostly near my left hand but a bit further out so the right hand isn't a blur.

Since I have two of these cameras, I have the option for a second vantage point. Right hand looking up at left hand isn't a good angle, so I opt for a tightish front on, framed at the extents of my left and right hands.

Really, the difficulty in getting an asthetically pleasing video increases as the quality of the equipment you are using increases!

Audio I started using a stereo condenser microphone years ago and haven't looked back.  I'm using the budget end "Zoom Handy H1", I'm sure the higher end ones do a better job, but the H1 is really quite good.

But just as important, if you want to chop between camera angles you need a bit of software that keeps it easy. For years I used Virtualdub, one video feed, all one take no cuts, and resynchronised the audio feed from the microphone, with the EQ tweaked a bit.  Now I use PowerDirector (I have tried several video editing programs over the years, this one suits my style the best, it's not exactly what I want, but it's closer than the others). I can synchronise the two video feeds and the audio feed quite easily, and chop between the cameras for effect. It's still much easier if I play through a song in one take, but if I get halfway through and muff it, then play out the end, ie, do the song in two parts, it's not too hard to work that.  More than two parts, nup, too hard, easier to replay the song and get it right :-)

Anyway, 5 videos released this month which would be a record, 2 never seen before though. And here's what my setup positioning looks like - it's hard to have bright lights angled so that I don't have killer reflections on the guitar from both cameras!

What's happening May 2018

The not-much-to-report report. You'd think with the days getting shorter and colder and wetter there'd be more focus on guitar related stuff, but no.

• My two students continue to do well. I'm stressing the classical style, starting from good technique - which has a bit of do as I say not as I do - but have branched out into teaching some basic chords. I need to keep it interesting, I'm naturally excited about it, and I'm not faking, but the reality is if the student doesn't fall in love with it then you can be excited all you want, it's not going to get you anywhere.

• I continue to be obsessed with my Dark Side of the Moon fingerstyle tribute.  I play it through maybe 4-5 times a week, so more than an hour. I added an extra 4 bars into the solo in "Time"; the middle parts have very high notes, you can't hold onto a low F# and play much above an A on the top string, so I improvised a creative few measures in keeping with the feel that actually segued nicely to the solo outtro. Previously it was a bit rushed through the middle, feels better now.

• I'm on a foray into playing standing up. I have proven to myself a while back that tied off at the headstock is awful, I had installed a pin in my steel string acoustic neck heel years ago but I don't like the position I put it. Thus I'm not in a rush to drill holes into my nice Esteve without being really sure. Over the years I have looked into it, various classical players have various concepts. So to hone in on what will work, I've ordered in a bunch of suction cups (some people use Velcro stick on). The suction cups are heavy duty, I'm going to put them in various spots and see what I can do. I'm taking most of my advice from one guy who talked about how he rests his right arm heavy on  the top, and how that causes the bottom to pop out, and how he attached a second strap to his belt to stabilise it.
  
  Why am I trying this? Years ago as a teenager I abandoned the classical stance because "it doesn't look cool". I learnt to play on the right leg, with the neck only slightly up. But I twist my wrist to compensate, because the reality is you want that angle for fingerstyle. Luckily I haven't done any damage to myself with a bad wrist angle. Also, when I've played in gigs, it would give me greater freedom to stand up, I do move around a bit given the chance (I have been walking around the house of late standing up with my arm squeezing the guitar, not easy, limiting, but I'm starting to re-like standing up). Standing up on stage for gigs also is a better look. But more importantly, I have found that standing up leads me to use a higher neck angle reducing the wrist twist, with less of the guitar-out-on-the-right style, and I believe it will help me get back to a more natural classical positioning.  I've been cross at myself with my inaccurate right hand fingering recently (shows up while playing DSOTM) yeah sure it's perfectionism and I'm against perfectionism, but, ARGH! So a push back to better posture albeit standing up - I'm going to experiment with it.
  
  ...and rather than teaching my students with guitar slung across my right leg while they sit in a correct posture classical stance :-)

Why do I keep playing the guitar?

I've been playing the guitar for a long time. Here at April 2018 means I'm celebrating 40 years since being presented a 3/4 size Yamaha classical guitar on my 7th birthday. Out of the 40 years there would be maybe 2 years total gap, where I hadn't touched the guitar for months on end, mostly around the very early teens. But since around 16, non stop. Ask my wife, she's known me for 29 years of those 40 years...

I've spoken to a lot of people who played musical instruments to a high level when they were kids, but stopped a long time ago. So why have I kept playing guitar for so long, and why do I keep playing?

I think one of the clues is that, as an engineer, I have a teensy bit of OCD. Other engineers are nodding with me right now. So the obsession and the compulsion are a driver. But if I was to sit a test with a psych I doubt I would be diagnosed with "official" OCD, I'm more "high functioning OCD" - so it's not just about OCD.

I suspect that playing the guitar is a coping mechanism. Let me put it this way - when I'm playing guitar I'm using up a lot of brain CPU power, and thus my brain isn't able to spend any time ruminating about the woes and stresses of life. While I'm playing, it's all good, and that makes me feel good. So I play.

...which leads into addiction, I guess. My brain knows that when I play, I get feel good feelings. So to keep getting that hit I want to play guitar. Like any other psychological dependence I guess.

Interesting. There's also my personality traits of stubbornness ("No way will I stop playing guitar, not for any reason!"), competitiveness ("I *will* conquer this song, the next song, and the next!"), pride ("Look at meee! Wheee!").

So is it a bunch of "bad" things the reason why I have played guitar for so long, and why I continue to play?  Yikes!

JAW

What's happening March 2018

A bunch of smaller things happening this month, in no particular order:

• The other side I have noticed to using d'Addario EXPs is that the silkiness of the string actually reduces the scrape sounds as you run down strings heading for a new chord, where you aren't specifically lifting your fingers off. You can't always avoid it, and it's not always bad, but reducing it is A Good Thing(tm).
• My classical guitar teaching isn't terrible.  I have two girls that can now sight read treble and open basses to an acceptable level. I teach out of the old Aaron Shearer red book, that I learnt from, which is fantastic if not a little dry.  I supplement with other stuff from the internet.
• Fingerstyle of the Moon is going well, I have played it at a few gigs and I am still excited playing it at home to myself.  It's fairly consistent; usually comes in around 23-24 minutes of play time, I can play it fairly reliably without too many critical errors. It would be nice to have somewhere to play it weekly, where I can really hone it and make it "amazing"...perhaps I will play it on a big stage when Dark Side of the Moon turns 50 :-)
• One of the ukuleles in the house had a broken string, I replaced it with a set of uke strings I had purchased on the last string order.  It was a slightly fancy set and I was surprised to find it had a wound 3rd string! (This is my tenor uke). I was so fascinated with the new sound that I have been playing it a bit more recently. I fully cheat; I just play my guitar songs on the top 4 strings, so the key is transposed 5 semitones.  Like wearing a capo on the guitar at the fifth. I had previously found that my brain doesn't do well trying to map out fingering for 4 string fretting from fingering 6 string fretting, like the "extra" fingers want to do something but don't know what, but I am getting better at it.  My repertoire isn't only "Here Comes the Sun" anymore.
• Both my daughters play stringed instruments; my son plays a reeded instrument but I still love him anyway. Recently the girls have really stepped up a notch in their playing ability, hats off to their teachers.  But what I really appreciate is the eldest is in 3 bands at school, the youngest in 1 band at school and 1 outside of school. And it really really helps musicianship. I've played solo for so long that I don't play well with others.  They pretty much have only played with others.  And I see it when I occasionally play along with them.  I am terrible at maintaining a tempo, and at fitting in - I only really have the ability to be the dominate "Everyone follow me", and then fingerstyle by it's nature is trying to be a one man band so there is also "Stop it, that's my part." I have really missed out not being in a band, I'm so glad the kids get to experience it. But I don't feel too bad, at one gig I was chatting with the audience "I've been playing solo too long, I don't play well with others" and one dude said "You've missed nothing - rather than waiting on other band members to show up, them not having practised, nobody agreeing on what to play, looking for new band members when they quit - you haven't been held back and have been able to hone your craft."
• Warm season is basically over. I don't have any upcoming gigs. I'm very busy with the family this year so it's not a bad thing, but gigs is why I bother*.

There you have it, all updated!
JAW

*not specifically true, playing the guitar is so ingrained it's like breathing, I can't _not_ play.  But playing the guitar to people who dig what I'm doing is the highlight of guitaristry.

String manufacturer poll

Out of the 17 people that got back this is how the votes came in:

Augustine     1
D'Addario    13
Ernie Ball    0
Hannabach     1
La Bella      0
Martin        1
Savarez       4

So it would seem that D'Addario rules the street. Unfortunately I forgot to add "Other" as an option (smacks forehead), once a poll is underway you can't change it. The list was compiled from best sellers info on the internet.

I will throw a set of Savarez on sometime though, that still nearly a quarter of all respondents, see what they are like.

Interesting, informative, thanks all!
JAW

Cello Bridge Carving

I've got my youngest daughter on a secondhand cheap 3/4 cello. The bridge had warped, and it started falling over from time to time. Getting a new bridge fitted by a music shop was going to be maybe half the value of the cello, and besides, getting someone else to do the job isn't very JAW-like, so I took on the job myself.

Some internet search revealed that you could straighten a warped bridge by steaming over a stove for a long time, clamping back in a straight position, and letting it dry. I called that Plan B. Plan A was to buy a bridge blank and carve it to the right shape.

You can source cured/dried Maple machined bridge blanks from China (Ebay) for next to nothing, I had 4 delivered for $AUD13(2017). The slow boat from China to Australia is around 3 weeks, so you have to plan ahead. I figured 4 should be enough, gives me the chance to break 3 first :-)

Sally over at https://trianglestrings.com/newcellobridge/ gets two thumbs up for her very thorough tutorial of how to do it. From her many pictures and discussion you can tell she's an experienced craftswoman, whereas I'm an engineer, so I simplified things a bit. There's no point in me recreating her tutorial, go check it out, I'm just going to talk about the different hacks I used, given that I have only basic tools, a modicum of handworking skills, and some basic understanding of what we are trying to achieve.

First up, to get the feet of the bridge to mate to the face of the cello, I used sandpaper. Place sandpaper on the face, hold the bridge on sandpaper, move slightly back and forward in the area the bridge will stand. This seems very sensible to me, rather than carving the feet to attempt to match the face and constantly checking how you are going.

A leg spreader may or may not be absoltely necessary. I made one out of some bolts and scrap metal with my arc welder and angle grinder. When fitted, the pressure of the strings will push the bridge legs outwards, so pre-spread the legs by around 2mm, sand the feet to mate to the face while spread, then when it's all back together the feet will be a perfect match to the face. I don't think this is really really necessary, I think it is better to do it, but I think you'd be fine without spreading. One of the main reasons I made it is so I could show it to my wife and say "Normally you'd just use a bottle of wine..."

The bridge comes as a blank, you need to remove wood until it is the right shape. Proper luthiers carve carve carve the bridge to shape using knives, planes, chisels. I had a crack. Dried Maple is harder wood than you'd think. My knives, planes and chisels are not top quality, it was hard going. However, angle grinder and die grinder loaded with sanding disks make it really easy going. You can find the dimensions for the right shape with internet searches, but some depend on the installation.

For instance I particularly liked Sally's approach of first getting the feet fitted to the face, installing the bridge straight away although waaay to high, putting the strings roughly in place, measuring the string height at the end of the fretboard, subtracting that from the desired string height, placing a template on the bridge in that position, and cutting off the excess with a jigsaw. Genius.

I fitted the bridge several times, sanded it down some more to get the string heights rights, it was tedious. The last time I took too much off on the high string, I was impatient. Moral there is don't be conservative to start with, because you will get annoyed and be less conservative to end with and stuff it up. Measure twice, cut once. I ended up having to glue a small piece of wood back on. Don't do that.


Another good tip I found on the internet was rather than gluing some parchment on the top where the strings go - or doing nothing at all - just put a dob of superglue there and let it soak in. It dries rock hard, strings slip past it nicely and won't cut into the wood.

I fancied up the look with a knife, took the excess wood out with my die grinder and wrote my initials on it, you can see the difference between the blank and my finished product in this photo. It took me the better part of a day from start to finish, but I learnt a lot. I would imagine if I ever had to make another it would take me around 2 hours.

Another skill added to the list. Don't be afraid to try it if you are in the same predicament as me - and violins, violas, cellos and double basses are all similar. Read Sally's tutorial, watch a few youtube videos, and use some of the hacks I mentioned here. Good luck out there!

String choice update

There are so many strings to choose from. So many manufacturers, string types from those manufacturers, tensions, materials, it's enough to do your head in. And that's just nylon strings! And if you only change strings a handful of times a year, and don't take notes, you'll soon forget what you liked and what you didn't like.

I've talked about strings before, several years back I locked in D'Addario as my manufacturer of choice. Across the board they make a bright sound for a reasonable length of time and are well priced. I have tried medium (standard) and hard tension, and settled on standard tension. Sometimes standard tension is too floppy, but not as much as sometimes hard tension is too stiff.  Standard tension is the best compromise for me.

Finally now I have run through all the different material variants and arrived at a verdict. The EXP45 set.  Well, not quite, I prefer the trebles from the EJ45TT set and the basses from the EXP45 set.  But that is too hard to deal with, so I am sticking to the EXP45 set out of the box, the trebles are okay. But I've taken to only changing the trebles every second set change.  Trebles hold their tone for a lot longer than wound basses, but take so much longer to bed in.

So, why the EXP?  Bottom line is I want long life.  New strings on nylon take too long to stretch in, and the very act of changing strings takes time, so I want to change as infrequent as possible. Yeah, I'm lazy. But the tone has to be to a minimum level - once they sound too dull, they have to go (only beginners will only change strings when they break!)

The EXP is that best compromise; it has the brightness in the basses that lasts the longest. All the D'Addario strings have a nice brightness to them, varying levels, but the EXPs last longest (given that you wipe down the strings after any long sweaty workout, which I always do.)

Done. Finished. End of story.

...except now that I know I prefer coated/medium tension/brightish strings, I should look across all the manufacturers to see what their range is in that space. Argh! But that sounds like a good time to start a new poll! :-)

Below is my findings summary:

EJ45 Pro Arte Standards, $6USD(2018).
  Good comfortable string, they will sound a bit dead after 4 weeks of 
  my normal playing regime.

EJ49 Pro Arte black trebles, $7USD(2018).
  Same as standard with black trebles, no difference. Only for looks.

EJ45TT Pro Arte Dynacore, $11USD(2018).
  The dynacore basses sound good, an improvement over standard. The
  "titanium" nylon trebles are also an improvement over the standard brightness
  but same thickness as standard.

EXP45 Pro Arte Coated, $10USD(2018).
  Basses are the same as the EJ45TT but coated and they do actually hold
  their tone quite a bit longer. Trebles are standard.

EJ45FF Pro Arte Carbon, $13USD(2018).
  The basses are the same as the EJ45TTs, the trebles are super bright
  and quite thin.

2018 New songs new recording style

During my two weeks off over Christmas I tackled two new songs from my "to-do" list, Cyndi Lauper "Time after time" and Daft Punk "Get lucky". Cyndi, because my wife likes that song. Daft, because years ago a mate challenged me to do it, which I did not take up, but moreso while adding Gareth Evans to the fingerstyle database as suggested by a reader I came across his arrangement and it inspired me.

But, I talk all about it in the video, no need for a transcription here.

I have only played both these songs for a few hours each, so they are rough-as, and not really ready to put out there but I had an alternate reason for recording them...

A month ago I recorded the end of year concert for my youngest daughter's orchestra, which was actually a tad stressful, that it needed to "be good". I recorded two hours (several orchestras performing), using a fixed camera and roving with a second camera to get different vantage points.  I own two of Canon mirrorless DSLRs, the EOS M, which I bought to do some 3D video work with years ago, they are old now but still okay. It's handy to have two for different angles when you aren't using them for stereoscopic vision.  Unfortunately they blew out the brightness levels - it was a big auditorium, mostly dark with well-lit performers, the cameras didn't know how to capture the levels very well and I didn't know how to tell it to do better.  So lots of washed out faces - but not totally terrible. . I used my stereo condenser microphone to capture audio which worked out pretty well.

It forced me dust off my video editing skills; normally I use virtualdub and simply trim/put on a logo/replace audio/re-encode. But for multi camera angles you need a multi-track video editor. When I first started out in video editing in 2001 I used Ulead Video Studio and got quite used to it.  But somewhere along the way they were bought out and the resulting software went in the wrong direction for my liking.  So the next time I had to do video editing I trialled the big three and settled on Cyberlink PowerDirector. It irks me constantly learning new software, that's part of my day job. So for the concert video I shelled out for the latest version and although it easily took me 10 hours to produce the resulting 80 minute video, I was quite happy with the software again.

So I decided that I could put the similar effort into my guitar videos, seeing as I was all up to speed again.

And so brings me to this video, where I set up my two DSLRs and an older handy cam that takes a tolerable video, for a three camera shoot!  It was easy to set up, although I don't like the low camera angle, I'll do that different next time. From start to finish ready for youtube slightly less than 2 hours. So, doable as a regular event. I experimented with some pans and zooms - swapping between fixed cameras is better than only a single camera, but some subtle movement during the shots brings the different camera angles to life. Most of the movements were random tests, I watched it back afterwards and worked out what I liked, but left it as is.

So here you go. I'm waffly and word stuck in places, I should plan these things. Oh and the playing was awful. But...

...it's practise for some proper videos I have in mind to record soon :-)