Guitar Arrangement: Winter Walk

Playing

It’s still difficult for me to play a F chord in C-Shape with partial barre on the 5-th fret. My grip is not precise nor firm enough for that chord – I’ve rarely used it before. Probably, it will take another month or two of practice until I will be able to play it clearly and with confidence. It was interesting to note that I didn’t have any issues with that chord on a nylon-string classical Takamine TC132SC guitar with the wider neck and softer strings than ones on Takamine TF740FS. Strange, isn’t it?

Recording

This time I continued my experiments with video recording. Here is my setup:

Video:

• Zoom Q3HD video recorder, 1920×1080
• Nikon Coolpix LS110, 1280×720

Audio:

• Zoom Q3HD, 96Kbps, 24 bits

I also experimented with recording sound from guitar pickup & preamp into portable recorder Zoom H1, but wasn’t able to get a decent sound and didn’t use it in the mix.

I processed audio in Cakewalk Sonar. Here is what I did:

• EQ:
  • lowered mid frequencies a bit
  • cut the frequencies below 60Hz and above 15Khz
• Compression: applied 2:1 ratio (it’s barely noticeable)
• Reverb: I took “Short and Sweet” preset in Sonar’s Sonitus Reverb and made it even shorter
• Final touch: applied Cakewalk’s ”Increased Width” effect in the Channel Tools

Even though Zoom Q3HD was capable to record with higher video resolution, Nikon gave me better picture due to better lenses. I know that the picture is still not so good, primarily due to the bad lighting, but I’ll address it in the later sessions. It’s still my hobby recording at home, so I’ll improve it step by step.

Finally, I merged audio and video in my video editor and added titles in the beginning and at the end of the clip.

Please leave your comments – what did you like and what you didn’t on that video?

Thanks!