David's Tip of the Day: Self-Assessment - Recording Yourself

Our best tool for bettering our playing is to record ourselves and listen back with a critical ear. If you use this tool correctly, by the time you send your final recording of a study song to me, it should be pretty dialed in. I shouldn’t be making comments about missed notes, they should be more about technique, tone and approach. When listening back to your recording, use your finger to follow along with the provided music/TAB and mark areas that need improvement. It’s a good idea to have the original track of the recording (this is the recording of me playing the song) cued up so that you can reference what I played in certain areas if you’re not sure you’re doing it correctly. This is a process of recording and making adjustments, and then repeating the process until you feel you’ve achieved your best effort.

By the way, the importance of self-assessment through recording is always discussed in workshops when “tips” are asked from artists… it’s universally known as an important technique for bettering one’s playing.