Cover Failed Successfully

On the third week in a row without a cover, some might be wondering if something has happened.

That makes us 2 or more, depending on how many people read this post.

Has it ever happened to you that you can't achieve a recording on the day you set for it? I think this isn't a first, but the way it happened was annoying. And I thought for a second my hands should go below a falling cinder block, just to see if that way they could work better.

The reasons behind this failure might be related to the lack of on-camera practice. There's a magical thing about the recording anxiety that returns you to the most basic levels of your performance. Phrases have bumps. Tension build up. Insidious thoughts get in the mental music sheet. Everything is a mess. The worst part of the deal is that professional musicians have the same kind of problem. That's why their videos have all those cuts and different takes.

Contrary to them, I can only make a few cuts to get something decent going on. I don't have a team behind my performance. It's just me and myself.

So, after maybe a 100 attempts, I did my best to go over all the phrases keeping tempo and traying to make them as smooth as possible. As I was playing, the low battery message was on the screen. And it didn't seem to matter. But then, while I started editing, I realized the video was a mess. The audio and image where out of sync. And that makes it even harder to edit.

Et tu technologia

Thus, all these attempts to record were failed successfully. And that's another opportunity to do some other things. For example, the piece for that cover was something my teacher had suggested we did in collaboration. That way I could do the solo and also get to play the harmony while does the former. It seems like a better idea than just going over it myself.

Ah, yes. A silver lining. This is usually out of character for me.

Nonetheless, this doesn't ease the feeling of failure one bit. I guess I'm too used to doing things right in less than a hundred takes. It gets even more frustrating when I have been studying the piece for weeks now and it still isn't in the proper shape for recording. Maybe what I need is a routine to trains myself in front of the camera, just like I do with vlogs. Seems like a logical resolution. Besides, that's another interesting way to have some self-critique input. It could help a lot.

And there it goes. The mind wandering on the opportunities carried by failure.

There were also some technical issues during the whole recording session. First, the shape of my nails. I don't always get to keep long nails. They wear down in the workshop. But when I'm not sanding much, they have room to grow. I had to file them to make them round. Their usual squared point shape gets in the way of playing and also gives too much attack in the response of the instrument. Round tips do a lot to keep the attack in reasonable levels and they don't get hooked on the strings when you pull them. Second, some phrases weren't clear. The ambiguity of the tuning makes for a problem when one is looking for the easiest way to make a chord melody. There's a lot of shapes for chord, but only a few of them have synergy between them. Part of the work while studying is understanding which shapes work together. Third, the tension. It's too easy to build tension in the shoulders and back when you're trying to record something over and over.

All these issues are solved by taking a deep breath and going in a different direction from ego. Then, all things start going well. Except when technology betrays you. There's no way around that one.

At least my failure was a success. There were even more lessons, but those one are for myself. And it will for sure allow me to come with something even better to my original idea.

• Thumbnail 🖼: by me, made with Canva.

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