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Showing posts with label recording. Show all posts
Showing posts with label recording. Show all posts

iServalan Music School The Power of Recording Yourself Music Tips for Advancing Musicians

 

iServalan Music School

The Power of Recording Yourself

A short, high-impact practice habit for string players and pianists that accelerates progress, sharpens timing, and cleans up intonation.

Today’s focus: simple phone recordings ➜ rapid feedback ➜ smarter practice.

Listening Back Reveals What Playing Hides

  • Fresh ears for intonation: You’ll immediately hear notes that are consistently sharp/flat (especially at string crossings).
  • Timing awareness: Spot rushing/dragging once you’re not busy playing.
  • Technique check: Weak fingers on piano, heavy thumbs, lazy bow arm, tip-of-bow drop-off — they all show up on playback.
  • Faster progress: Build a fix-list every session; you’ll improve in a fraction of the time.

How to Record Without Overwhelm

  1. Practice normally for 10–15 minutes.
  2. Pick one short passage (30–60 seconds) you want to check.
  3. Hit record on your phone, then listen back immediately.
  4. Note one win + one fix to guide your next practice.
Tip: Phone audio is compressed (lower ambience/reverb), but that’s perfect for hearing pitch, balance, and articulation clearly.

For String Players

  • Open strings first: If they’re out, everything else will be out.
  • Bow contact: Keep the hair perpendicular; listen for scratch vs. core tone.
  • Weight map: Are you too heavy at the frog? Too light at the tip?
  • Gear matters: Old bow hair or harsh strings = harsh playback. Try the same tune on one string, then another, and compare.

For Pianists

  • Finger equality: Which finger is always soft (pinky) or heavy (thumb)?
  • Directional accuracy: Missed notes often come from approach angle and excess force.
  • Acoustic vs digital: Acoustic pianos must be tuned regularly; digital is set-and-forget.

Today’s Practice Challenge

Record one verse of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” (Suzuki Book 1). Then write:

  • 1 win (what sounded good)
  • 1 fix (what needs work)
  • 1 plan (your next step: e.g., slow string crossing, open-string tuning, bow-weight drill)

What’s Next

Tomorrow: Piano & Cello — whole-bow control, relaxed tone, and clean phrase endings using Twinkle as our canvas.

Members get structured lesson plans, bonus practice trackers, and access to iServalan’s full music school archive.

Recording Advantages for Advancing Music Students iServalan: Music & Method

Hello musicians, welcome to the show. So just a short broadcast today about the advantage and how to details of recording yourself as a musician. Now, even if you have just started, you know, and you're playing eeky screechy strings or you're really slow or your timing's a bit out, as soon as you start recording yourself and and what I recommend is if you want this to really benefit, right? And it it makes an amazing difference if you record every practice that you do, don't you don't have to record the whole thing because you'll end up just with, you know, hundreds of recordings. 

It' be a pain. just you know have your practice and then if your practice is 10 minutes long at the end of the practice decide what you're going to play the how you think you've got on maybe it's one piece you've been doing a couple of phrases you don't have to you don't even have to do the whole lot at this early stage record yourself use your phone now the problem I suppose about recording on a phone is it it does sound pretty grim so even you know as a podcaster I know that when I play back some of my recordings They sound awful on the phone. It's because there's no um there's no sort of resonance. 

The systems that that record things on your phone and you know like your podcast or if you're recording for Facebook or any of these places is they compress the files and this is so there isn't sound going everywhere and it they they also level it out. So they level out the volume so it's all the same. And that way when you scream, if you screamed or if you played a really loud note, the the people who are listening are not going to be scared or frightened or or you know crash their car because people do listen while they're driving. Hopefully uh a stable phone that they're not touching. It's all voice controlled. So I'm not lecturing, but you know, you should never um be distracted by the phone. 

But, you know, listening to podcasts about learning music while you're driving is a really good way to learn if you've got a a long old drive. And also, it's a great way to listen to stories and um you know, music, to listen to some of the most fantastic music in in the in the massive history of the world, you know, all these different countries and all these different styles. Anyway, we'll talk about those in another broadcast. So, recording yourself on the phone has innate issues, right? The files are compressed. There's no ambience or reverb or, you know, and if you, in fact, if you recorded yourself in a hall, all you'd hear would be the reverb. 

So, the reverb is completely and utterly controlled by this sort of compression. Um when you record for a a record um you know a professional recording a produced recording um you know all of these things would be sorted and the file would be uploaded in a web file but um for things like YouTube and you know other places the audio is turned into a a much smaller file and it compresses stuff. So, you lose lots and lots of the actually quite interesting but completely out of control bits and pieces that the the podcast platform or whatever doesn't want to have to um you know share with the world otherwise none of us would be listening to YouTube at all. 

So, they're they all the sound sounds pretty much the same. So, that's the first thing but this is just for you say. So, um you know, I guess different phones have different recording um standards, but trust me on this. A phone is never going to record you as well as um a couple of really goodplaced microphones. So, that's the the one thing to bear in mind. You're not getting the full beauty of a recording on a phone, and you never will. But what it does pick up, and it picks up really well, are things like being out of tune. 

That's the the first thing it shows really obviously because when you're actually listening and you're concentrating so hard on this, you know, Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, say. Um, that's what we're doing this week. We're going to do cello tomorrow, by the way, for chists. And we've already done the uh the bass and the viola. Um, so when you know when you're playing that and you're in the thick of it and you're really concentrating very hard, you can go out of tune really easily. And what you'll find actually by recording yourself, you'll think, why do I always go wrong at this point and you can look at it and you can say, you follow it with your finger and you can say, ah, it's every time I cross a string, I'm too flat or I'm too sharp. Sometimes you don't know whether you're too sharp or too flat. 

You just know it sounds horrible. But what happens then is you can actually work on that. So something that you didn't know before the start of this recording and something you do know at the end of it is that you know you've got this thing where when you cross over you're a bit flat or a bit sharp. The other thing is it's quite easy to be out of tune on your open notes. And if you're out of tune on your open notes, you're going to be out of tune whatever you do. So you really need to to check that. And it it's quite a good idea to um record your open strings because for some reason when especially with a viola or actually with a double bass as well, you know, you've got this big noise and the reverb of the body and everything and the vibration. It's very exciting, but it can stop you pinpointing the actual vibration of the string. What it, you know, the actual sound in your ear. 

It's a learned skill. So, it takes quite a long time to get good of that good at that. Um, but I'd only recommend doing that, you know, if you if you know you've got a massive problem with tuning, then you need to work on it. Okay. We're going to be covering tuning all this week and next as well. So, panic not. Um, so that that's just one thing. Now, what what else? Well, you know what? When you hold the bow, if you're slightly off and it's not quite perpendicular, you're going to get icky screechy. And it's actually quite easy to pick up icky screechy on the viola because it's right next to your ear. But on something like the cello or the double bass, it's a little bit harder. It's a little bit harder to see. 

These instruments are bigger. It's it's harder to understand where you're going wrong. Are you pushing into the string too much? Are you not putting the weight of the bow onto the string and therefore not getting good contact? You need really good contact with the string. That's really important. Is your bow rubbish? Not just the way you hold it, but the actual bow this, you know, the horseair on your bow. Is it rubbish? Funny enough, I just played my um acoustic viola and I I've I haven't mislaid, but I've got several places I play music. So, my my bow for the electric was was in another room, but I had a cello bow, so I just played that um on the on the acoustic viola and it sounded rubbish. And that's probably because horsehair is better for um acoustic instruments. 

I I'm using vegan bows for the electric, but they they are actually much better. Um, and even I mean I bought a Mongolian horsehair bow and and even that can sound slightly better than a a synthetic one. So, you know, something to think about. Now, you'll hear this if you if you're listening to your recordings, you're going to hear things that you don't like. And by a process of elimination, you can work out what it is. Is my bow rubbish? Are my strings rubbish? That's the biggest one. I mean, when I first started playing, I just had the strings that came with the instrument. They were absolutely horrible. I thought I kept thinking, why don't I sound good? Why don't I sound nice? What's wrong with my string? I mean, this is another way to look at it. Just just play, you know, notes are we we understand the spacing between semmitones and whole tones. 

You can play a whole tune down one string. It's quite hard, but it's doable. Um hopefully, I mean, I won't go into when you have to swap strings, but try if you try and do that. Play a whole tune on one string and record that. And then perhaps you've got a different type of string on another um key uh on another note rather open string and it it was a more expensive one and it sounds so much better when you play that that tune on that string then then you you know don't you you know it's the string I don't like the string. Some people swear by not having a mix of strings. 

Personally I like to have a mix of strings. Um, having the same strings on each one does mean you kind of get how it's going to respond, but I always think definitely with the A string, you need a different style of responding really than than with the deeper strings. So, you know, that's something else that you'll learn as the years goes go by. You know, the other thing is when you listen is your timing because you're not concentrating on actually playing. So you can hear if your timing's out or if you're you know what I do I do a lot I I put a jazz improv in there that doesn't belong just doesn't belong. But because I like to concentrate on single notes at a time and I the beauty of the single note and I love practicing with the whole bow. Um it's one of my favorite tasks each each practice. um you know it really helps you learn about your contact with that string. 

So if you if you um record that you can hear you know as you're coming down to the tip are you getting lazy of elbow is that wobbling a little bit because you're the note as you come down to the point is getting it's weaker because you're falling into it too much maybe. Do you see what I mean? You need to lift that elbow up probably. Um, what about the other extreme? You know, when you're starting at the bottom, um, what what does that sound like? Is that Are you too heavy on there? Especially with the viola, I find you've got to be really light, really very light. Um, it's quite difficult coming from uh different instruments because the weights are very different. 

And I always have to practice, you know, at least half an hour before I do my proper practice because I have to remind myself how my body and you know the the space around me is going to engage with this this instrument. Um and this different strings, complete different sounds, resonances, you know, different strings, different wave patterns, just different everything. Uh, and and the more you practice with each one, the better you get and you can get into that zone more quickly. 

Do you see what I mean? Um, so yes. Now, what about piano? You might think, oh, you know, there's no talking about strings all the time. Piano's a little bit different because it's already tuned for you. Hopefully, you're using a digital one is probably the best bet um in this day and age. Um, but if you've got an an acoustic piano, you really need to be on the ball and have that regularly tuned, which is, you know, difficult to be completely on it all the time. Um, but uh, recording yourself digitally, it's going to show you other things. It's going to show you've got a lazy finger. Why is Why is that one that note always a bit weak? Oh, look at that. It's my pinky. 

No wonder. Do you see what I mean? You can hear it. Do you can hear that? It perhaps it was slightly quieter. Why is my why is that note so heavy all the time? Oh, it's my thumb. I need to lay off that. I need to be a bit more a bit lighter or have a different energy as I as I fall into the note. When you fall into a note on the piano, instead of a bow, you have your hand. 

But it's the same sort of principle really. You have to be directionally correct. You have to have the right weight. Um, and you know, if you get either of those two things wrong, it you can miss a note and you can catch the the next note or worse still play two notes at once. Do you see? So, it's a really good habit to get into this um recording yourself. And if you're, you know, I mean, we've all got phones nowadays. You literally have your phone on your music stand at the end there. 

Press play press record. Or if you've got a bit you're not sure of, press record then have a listen back. What am I doing wrong? Ah yeah, I can hear it. I can hear it. It's absolutely fantastic. I guarantee that if you do this technique from the beginning, you will find that you master your instrument probably in half as much time as somebody who didn't do that. As well as all the other tips and tricks I'm going to give you, of course. Right. I hope you enjoyed that um that talking podcast music lesson. 

Um so tomorrow we're doing piano and cello, Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. We're going to start at book one with the old Suzuki. And if you want to sign up for free access um memberships, you have to pay a membership fee, but you get free access to all of my supplementary material and all of these lovely lessons and the the lesson plans for teachers and students as well, which is basically everything I've talked about, but put it in a lesson plan. So, it's just really organized. 

It's not loads of me rambling on. Um, so if you pop over to iserverland.com, you'll see the music site on there. I'm also on Gumroad. Iserverland.gumroad um.com that is sorry. So yeah, pop along and and sign up and you can have loads and load so much supplementary material. It'll be coming out your ears and that's just another way to get really really good, isn't it?

SHOP

Press Kit

Press kit for iServalan and her work with Tale Teller Club Publishing, with a focus on her homotech music, The Book of Immersion, and multimedia innovation. It’s formatted for printing or PDF use, and you can add links/logos/QR codes as needed. Please feel free to copy and share.


🎼 iServalan – Homotech Music Artist

A sonic visionary blending AI and human creativity
📍 Tale Teller Club Publishing | www.taletellerclub.com | @iservalan


🔊 Artist Profile

iServalan is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, and sound artist working at the bleeding edge of human-machine collaboration. As a founding Homotech of Tale Teller Club Publishing, her work fuses traditional instrumentation with AI-assisted sound design, creating haunting, futuristic scores for film, immersive literature, and experimental performance.

She coined the term “homoteching” to describe her hybrid process: a blend of analog recording, glitch art, algorithmic composition, and emotional storytelling. With each track, iServalan explores how machines can enhance—not replace—the artist’s voice.


🎬 Featured Project

The Book of Immersion

A multimedia sci-fi epic blending audio books, experimental animation, and AI-fused music scores. iServalan composes each Strata soundtrack with a unique emotional and philosophical tone, guiding listeners through themes of identity, loss, evolution, and machine consciousness.

Notable Chapters:

  • Strata 1: Arrival – glitch drones & digital rain

  • Strata 5: The Drift – cello loops & AI choir ghosts

  • Strata 20: The Perimeter – industrial ambience meets elegiac synth


🎵 Discography & Releases

  • Immersion Vol. 1 – Strata Scores (Tale Teller Club, 2025)

  • The Homotech EPs – AI-assisted sound experiments

  • MoMo's Memory Loops – generative sonic artefacts

  • Beats Ministry Sessions – club meets code

All available on:

🔗 YouTube.com/@TaleTellerClub

🔗 www.taletellerclub.com

🔗 www.iservalan.com


🎙️ Live & Online

  • Virtual performances and listening parties

  • Collaborations with visual artists, animators, and AI developers

  • Podcast and blog features on sonic futurism, tech philosophy, and the creative process


📡 Contact & Press Enquiries

📧 taletellerclub@gmail.com
📍 London-based, available globally for interviews, festivals, and audio commissions.

"I don’t just use AI—I duet with it. Homotech music is the sound of collaboration with the unknown." — iServalan