I bought a new digital recorder, the Zoom H4, to record dialogue and sound effects this weekend for the Hamilton 24 Hour Film Festival. I also rented an Audio Technica AT8015, which was recommended by the recording guy at Long & McQuade. I could write a whole entry about filming last night. Maybe I will later once our 5-minute film has screened in front of audiences.

I have wanted a digital recorder for quite some time, mostly to record my endless noodling on my guitars. I often jam to the sound of my own drum, having no one else to play with, and I come up with a lot of little ideas for parts of songs, but have had no way to capture them until now. I don’t take my guitar playing seriously; I’m playing in my bedroom with no band, after all. While playing, I am more involved in the feeling of making the notes come out of my hands and through my guitar, so I rarely have the clarity of mind to observe the sounds and compare them to all of the music that I’ve heard in my life; which, I think, is pretty much what your brain does when listening to music.

Here I am playing my LP with some reverb in to my 1970s Garnet Gnome (probably my favourite amp, especially after hearing the following recording).

Jazzy short riffing Sleepwalk