I bought a Fostex MR-8 digital recorder and a set of studio monitors to go with it yesterday. I laid down my first 2 track recording tonight. Mixed it down and created a mp3 and posted it on my website. You can get to it at

www.allenrwhite.com/mp3/caviar1.mp3

It's a little over 4M file.

I pretty much suck at playing and singing, but I don't really care. It's fun and it keeps me out of trouble. Anyway, give it a listen and tell me what you think.

I also bought a Roland AC-60 acoustic amp recently. It's got a guitar input and a mic input and sounds pretty decent. I'm embarking on becoming a singer/songwriter guy. I need to work at both of them a lot, but you gotta start somewhere.

Regards,
Allen

Great first recording! Nice and clean and no performance turds. The guitars sounds great, but it sounds like a pickup. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

My production comment would be to add a bit of variety. At least a little different strumming on the chorus.

I would also warn against confusing the cavier and cocaine. Coke is OK on crackers but cavier up to nose is a bummer.

Thanks man! I've listened to it a few times today and decided it ain't half bad for an over 40 bum who had absolutely no musical experience up until 5 years ago.

The song is a cover of a Charlie Robison tune. Charlie is a Texan and is married to one of the Dixie Chicks. He is also the brother of songwriter Bruce Robison who is married to the gorgeous Kelly Willis.

The guitar is my Collings OM3 with Baggs M1 pickup run through a Baggs Gigpro preamp and then into the recorder. I do need to work on making my playing more interesting. I typically just play straight chords whether strumming or fingerpicking. I'm working on learning scales so I can learn to play lead melodies so I can do fills between verses and such as well as learning more about bass runs. One of the reasons I want to record my playing is so I can analyze it and improve it.

As for the voice, I need to work on singing with more emotion. I also need to get more comfortable singing into a microphone. All my singing to now has just been to myself so I don't always project as well as I should. I'm hoping the recording and the Roland amp I got will help me there. I do seem to stay in key pretty well so I guess I am improving from where I was just a few years ago.

Other technical things I need to look at...I think I might need to preamp my mic. Also, I need to find some software that will let me take the raw wav file for each track and do the mastering and mixdown on my computer instead of on the recorder.

I'm totally impressed - singing and playing at the same time continues to elude me. Guitar sounds very good, singing is better than lots of other people I've heard - you're in tune, man and that's far easier said than done! My guitar teacher says his singing sucked until he learned how to breathe - sounds like one of those simple thoughts to keep in your head while you're doing it. Probably would help with both projection and nerves.

We'll expect a live performance at the gathering!

David