Listen to yourself in the 3rd person
Do you play well?
Or do you think you suck?
How do you know?
The first time I realized I was playing rather poorly was when I happened to hear myself on a recording. It was pretty shocking. My impression had been that I played OK in general with some minor glitches.
What is the reason for this discrepancy?
Everybody will agree that it is strange to hear your own voice in a recording. Right? It sounds like the person speaking is someone else. Plus, you find it a bit forced and irritating whereas everybody else sounds exactly the way they do in real life.
This is very normal. When you speak, your perception of your own voice is shaped by two factors:
1- Your voice reaches to your conscious mind via your ears plus bones. Therefore it is not the same as if you were hearing yourself in the third person.
2- Your feelings and intentions shape the way you evaluate your own enunciation and tone. In other words, you hear what you want to hear.
Therefore, the person you listen to in a recording as yourself is literally another person. If you wish to rehearse for a presentation or interview, record yourself with a camera and watch the outcome.
Very similar perceptual rules apply when you play guitar. Primarily you don't hear yourself quite the ways others hear you as the guitar is facing away from your ears. Nowadays luthiers open sound portals on the guitar to alleviate this problem to a degree. Secondly, and more importantly, your physical effort and intention to play the piece well seriously alters your perception of the performance.
What do you do then?
Quite simply record yourself. Any smartphone with a half decent camera and a mic will do the trick. I would say record the sound only, but why not also capture the image? You can evaluate your technique much better that way. This is the only way you can hear your own playing in the third person.
It is possible to develop an objective self-perception. It happens in time, after watching yourself thousands of times on video. I have seriously improved my self-listening skills since I became a youtuber. Now when I play the guitar I feel as if I am watching myself in a web browser :-)
Once you get used to playing for camera, start saving your clips in folders marked with the date of the recording. This is a great way to keep track of your progress. I sometimes check out the videos I posted 4 years ago and see that I have made several adjustments to my technique. Now, you may also decide to start a public youtube channel where you share your videos with the internet folk. But giving the troll-ridden world of the worldwideweb access to your vulnerabilities requires many other adjustments to your psychology. I don't recommend it until you feel you have developed a thick enough skin to ward off evil comments.
If you wish to go slightly beyond the smartphone by the way of equipment, let me share with you my own recording set up. I recorded myself (both audio and video) using the ipad until very recently. I'd take the clip from the ipad and process it through Adobe Premiere Pro. I desaturate the video and crush the grey tones by narrowing the grey-scale range with the levels tool. The I slightly boost the bass and treble ranges of the sound with multiband compressor. This compensates for the loss of range in the sound due to the crappy mic.
I have this little miracle of a microphone. It's called Apogee Mic.
http://www.apogeedigital.com/products/mic
The great thing about this inexpensive mic is that it plugs directly into your device through the lightning/usb port. This way, I don't have to change my setup; I simply plug in the microphone and hit record.
Or do you think you suck?
How do you know?
The first time I realized I was playing rather poorly was when I happened to hear myself on a recording. It was pretty shocking. My impression had been that I played OK in general with some minor glitches.
What is the reason for this discrepancy?
Everybody will agree that it is strange to hear your own voice in a recording. Right? It sounds like the person speaking is someone else. Plus, you find it a bit forced and irritating whereas everybody else sounds exactly the way they do in real life.
This is very normal. When you speak, your perception of your own voice is shaped by two factors:
1- Your voice reaches to your conscious mind via your ears plus bones. Therefore it is not the same as if you were hearing yourself in the third person.
2- Your feelings and intentions shape the way you evaluate your own enunciation and tone. In other words, you hear what you want to hear.
Therefore, the person you listen to in a recording as yourself is literally another person. If you wish to rehearse for a presentation or interview, record yourself with a camera and watch the outcome.
Very similar perceptual rules apply when you play guitar. Primarily you don't hear yourself quite the ways others hear you as the guitar is facing away from your ears. Nowadays luthiers open sound portals on the guitar to alleviate this problem to a degree. Secondly, and more importantly, your physical effort and intention to play the piece well seriously alters your perception of the performance.
What do you do then?
Quite simply record yourself. Any smartphone with a half decent camera and a mic will do the trick. I would say record the sound only, but why not also capture the image? You can evaluate your technique much better that way. This is the only way you can hear your own playing in the third person.
It is possible to develop an objective self-perception. It happens in time, after watching yourself thousands of times on video. I have seriously improved my self-listening skills since I became a youtuber. Now when I play the guitar I feel as if I am watching myself in a web browser :-)
Once you get used to playing for camera, start saving your clips in folders marked with the date of the recording. This is a great way to keep track of your progress. I sometimes check out the videos I posted 4 years ago and see that I have made several adjustments to my technique. Now, you may also decide to start a public youtube channel where you share your videos with the internet folk. But giving the troll-ridden world of the worldwideweb access to your vulnerabilities requires many other adjustments to your psychology. I don't recommend it until you feel you have developed a thick enough skin to ward off evil comments.
If you wish to go slightly beyond the smartphone by the way of equipment, let me share with you my own recording set up. I recorded myself (both audio and video) using the ipad until very recently. I'd take the clip from the ipad and process it through Adobe Premiere Pro. I desaturate the video and crush the grey tones by narrowing the grey-scale range with the levels tool. The I slightly boost the bass and treble ranges of the sound with multiband compressor. This compensates for the loss of range in the sound due to the crappy mic.
I have this little miracle of a microphone. It's called Apogee Mic.
http://www.apogeedigital.com/products/mic
The great thing about this inexpensive mic is that it plugs directly into your device through the lightning/usb port. This way, I don't have to change my setup; I simply plug in the microphone and hit record.
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