Originally Posted by rayc
Originally Posted by Bass Thumper
[quote=mrgeeze]
Right now I'm recording a catalog of 60s and 70s Pop and Rock favorites from my youth and having a blast trying to figure out how they sounded so good.
Practice for some may be fine and good, and if it works great!
But I picked up music late in life and want to record the most I can, knowing that none of it will be perfect, but it sure is fun smile
Yeah, I can go with that. I didn't start late but I didn't put any effort into it either so I was a poor student running along happily with what limited chords and minimal bass theory I knew from 76 until about 2000. After 2000 I took up cello and had a tutor for my lessons. I'm easily bored PLUS my tutor was young and adventurous so I turned by lesson sessions into recording sessions. I'd learn a bit, prac that for a week and then apply that to a song I was recording. I managed to get the tutor into it ...she sang and played cello on the tracks as well. We even wrote four or five songs along the way. Even now I learn new guitar or bass things to use in a new song I'm writing recording. Recently I wrote a song that pedaled chords and then varied those chords by inversions or one note changes like from A to A2 then Am etc. Learning the inversions, shell chords and how to play pedal bass without getting bored or boring was good too. Learning with a directly applicable purpose is what works for me as opposed to piling in the knowledge and then using it later.

Ray is spot on. Get a cheap hardware multi track recorder and play songs and record everything. I didn't get serious about playing until I heard myself playing. It's the most motivational exercise I've ever found. Honestly, it's a lot like dog training. If you go out and the dog is struggling, you go to something easier and build the dog's confidence, eliminate frustration and boredom. Recording can have those same benefits. You go to play a song, can't get into it, struggle, start getting frustrated, use your recorder to bring up a song you know and just enjoy playing that day. Work on variations, new strumming patterns and such. It's more fun to play something you know when you can't yet play what's in front of you.

If you're a Beatles fan, there's no better YouTube Tutorial teacher than Mike Pachelli. He's a very gifted jazz guitarist, an excellent teacher, and a huge note by note, song by song, YouTuber. Here's a link to one of his recent lessons: I'm Happy Just To Dance With You

With 2025 BIAB including the new Stim-Splitter feature, you can import Mike's sing along version he does at the end of each video, extract the drums, bass and vocals and learn to play the guitar parts he teaches while playing along with his stems.

BIAB 2025:RB 2025, Latest builds: Dell Optiplex 7040 Desktop; Windows-10-64 bit, Intel Core i7-6700 3.4GHz CPU and 16 GB Ram Memory.