The Power of Recording Yourself

Have you ever wondered what you sounded like to others or how different rooms affect your sound?  By recording yourself during practice and performance you get an opportunity to hear yourself as an audience would hear you.  Many smartphones have recorders on them now and many computers and tablets do as well, so it’s fairly simple to do.

Recording yourself is a powerful tool in being able to refine your sound.  Just as a writer would edit and clarify his/her statements in an article after re-reading it, we as musicians get an opportunity to edit and clarify our musical statements by listening back to ourselves in a recording.

Some of it we will like, some of it we won’t and listening gives us an opportunity to see how to add or take away certain things.  Say for instance we play too many notes when we solo and there are not enough pauses.  We can try to add more long tones and space things out more.  Conversely if there is not enough excitement in our solos then maybe we need double up more and learn how to play faster lines.

Maybe there is too much vibrato in how we play the melody or maybe we hit one note out of tune. Maybe we like a lot of the things we are playing.  We may not notice these things unless we record ourselves and listen back to it. Give it a try and see what you discover about your playing that you never knew.