thanks Kev & Jeff for your comments, had a chat with my teacher today, and he wants me to try out garage band first, using the mic on the laptop to record my sax – first of all to see if that is sufficient for my needs before going down the multitrack route etc..

At my current level of playing, i need the recordings more for my own feed back from practice runs, not quite at the stage to produce proper demo’s, which will give me more time to look into do i really need this stuff etc..

Thanks Jeff – i don’t have problems with background noise (touch wood – unless someone starts digging up the road outside), and i record when the house is empty (dont want flushing toilets in the background – lol).

When i practice i always make one or two mistakes, and make a mental knote of where they are, to iron them out.

Before i did my first grade exam, i was being to over critical of my playing for the exam – i wanted everything sounding perfect, it got to a point in one of the mock exams at the teachers house – i made a mistake and stopped playing half way (disaster in a real exsm).

The teacher got me to change my approach, be less over critical, and carry on playing to the end which was more important. He explained the various marks i would get for playing – so based on that – i realised i could allow myself a certain number of mistakes, and how serious the mistakes would be in terms of marks.

So armed with that knowledge, i try not to let mistskes worry me anymore – and have accepted the fact i will almost certainly make the odd mistake here and there. If its a case of making a mistake in the same place evertime, then i know i haven’t mastered that part properly & need to iron that one out.

But like JF says, if you practice it over and over (some conductors say if you can play a piece 5 times in a row without a mistake – then consider that you have learnt it) – you should be ready for a performance.

I agree distractions like setting up machines, the neighbours cat takes a dump in your garden, postman rings the bell – do throw off concentration – in that case i just put the mistakes down to that.

The only thing that irritates me is when someone plays something & then blames their mistakes on their equipment when in fact its a lack of practice/feed back – ie they haven’t got to the stage where the piece they are playing is ready for performance. Most listeners can judge for themselves if their is a problem with the equipment.

For me i can play mary had a little lamb – without a mistake (hopefully, but you see what im getting at) – without worrying
about making a mistake because its so easy to play. The same thing applies to any piece you learn, at some stage of playing it over and over – when it begins to get like mary had a little time – then thats performance time/demo recording.

cheers Jeff – will check out audicity & garage band when the spple mac turns up! Next week my teacher will show me how to use garage band on his mac – so i’ll listen to the quality of that recorded through the mac’s microphones as opposed to through a mic via a audio interface.

Thats funny i was playing a piece where i was honking on the sax by flicking my tongue from the roof of my mouth, onto the top of the mouthpiece in a downward vertical motion, and hitting the tip of the reed with underside tip of my tongue and stopping the reed – sort of slapping the top tip of the mouthpiece with my tongue – after a while i could taste blood in my mouth – i nicked the underside tip if my tongue with the reed – the reed turned pink! lol