Life vs guitar

By now most people have heard of the 10,000 hour theory that you need that much practice at anything to achieve success (or something like that). Malcolm Gladwell cites +The Beatles as an example as they put in a lot of time in Hamburg before they made it big. I'm sure there are plenty of people who have done the hours and still not made it as they didn't get lucky or perhaps they didn't practice the right things.

I've been playing guitar on and off for nearly 40 years and I'm not sure I've played for 10,000 hours yet. That equates to about 40 minutes per day, but I've had long periods where I didn't play much or just didn't progress much. I would play the same old songs rather than learning new ones. Back then you had to get books or magazines if you were not learning by ear. Now you can find a lesson for just about any song on-line. That's a facility I'm making a lot of use of.

These days I play for several hours a week rather than watching television as my evening relaxation. The obstacle to that is that I have two teenage children who also want to use the study/studio for playing music or games. I have to grab some time once they have been sent to bed and at weekends when they are all out doing stuff. I'm not logging my time, but wonder if I will ever get to 10,000 hours, if that even matters. I'm trying to apply myself to improving my playing using the lessons on the +ArtistWorks Paul Gilbert Rock Guitar course. I reckon that has done a lot of my technique since I started in January. I've had a dozen video responses from Paul where he has picked up on various issues to keep me on the right course. I'll get to see him on stage next month when Mr. Big play in London.

I've still playing with the blues/rock band. I have been doing the singing, but we have agreed that we need someone with a better voice. We're in the process of auditioning people. We need to find someone whose ambitions are compatible with ours as well as having the talent. We only really aspire to playing a few pub gigs each year. Ideally we want someone who also plays guitar to fill out some of the songs that need it. I'd still like to at least do backing vocals and maybe sing a couple of songs. I'm getting more confidence at playing lead guitar. I'm trying to learn a few of the original solos to start with, but will look to do my own variations. With luck we could gig early next year, if not before. We need a few more songs in the set first and to get them 'polished'.

On top of this I'd like to do more recording at home. I've had some technical issues with this lately, but I've tried doing a fresh Linux Mint install at the weekend that seems to be working better so far. My daughter wants to record a rock violin piece, so we'll aim to do that soon. Stay tuned...

Still got the blues

I've been keeping fairly busy musically. The band I mentioned a while back is starting to get somewhere. I'd played a few times with the bassist, but last week we had a rehearsal session at a local studio with a drummer. That really makes a difference and I found myself really going for it on the solos. The new tube amp was sounding great. I used a few effects on my Zoom G3X for variety. We're building a set list of covers. I thought we needed another guitar to fill the sound on some of them and we may have someone joining us next time. Stay tuned. We need to come up with a band name. We're a bunch of older guys playing blues, classic rock and southern boogie. Could probably come up with some pun on that.

I'm still doing the +ArtistWorks course, but need to get back to working through the lessons and submitting some videos. I ought to find some areas of my soloing to get suggestions on. I also have some extra learning material after winning a competition by +Licklibrary - Online Guitar Lessons. I now have DVDs for the styles of Billy Gibbons and Gary Moore. I've started on the former and am incorporating it already. I'm playing most evenings. I need to learn more songs for the band as well as developing my general playing. It's good to have a focus now as I was lacking direction between bands.

The new PC is mostly working fine. I've had some audio issues. The sample rate for the interface does not always get properly initialised, so audio ends up playing too slow. I had a workaround until it seemed to sort itself. I think there may have been a driver update. Unfortunately the problem came back this week. I've not being doing any recording lately, but I'll need to get this fixed somehow.

To try and get the PC nearer to silent I purchased a NoFan CR-80EH fanless cooler. It's an interesting design that should work on my 65W CPU, but when I got it installed I found that the temperature was going over the specified maximum, even with no load. I could only check this from the BIOS anyway. I also had some issues installing it. I had some contact with the manufacturers in Korea, but they couldn't come up with any answers, so I've sent it back. I'll probably get something else with a quiet fan. The AMD cooler is just loud enough to be annoying.

When I do get to some recording I have a new set of plug-ins from Linux DSP. They were on special offer for a while and I couldn't resist. I'm still learning to use things like EQ and compression, but these come with detailed manuals that I need to read.

Triple time

My latest video exchange with Paul Gilbert involved me playing some triplet pull-offs. He picked up that I was actually playing three 1/16th notes. Actually it may have been somewhere in between the two. It's a subtle difference, but they are different musical feels. This is the sort of thing you need a guitar teacher to tell you.

He's given me a few examples of songs that use triplets to listen to. I should really know this as I've played various music that uses triplets on guitar and djembe. I obviously didn't have it as well ingrained as I thought.

This is what I sent him. It's part of a series of lessons with this sort of groove.

One of his suggestions was this

Paul is actually touring in Chile at the moment, so he recorded his video to me in his hotel room. The guy is really dedicated to this course.

Another feature of the ArtistWorks site is a course in music theory. I've done the first part of this. There was a lot of stuff in there I didn't know. The quiz was fairly tough, but I've passed to allow me proceed to the next part.

My daughter has been pursuing her own guitar studies playing along to some of her favourite songs. We just recorded one of those. She did bass, guitar and vocals. The drums came from a video I found of someone playing along with the song. Youtube is a wonderful resource.



This is the drum track we used.

It's all theoretical

I'm taking yet another on-line course at +Coursera. This one is on musicianship. It covers the basics of harmony and melody with some emphasis on ear training. In the first week we had to recognise 2nd and major 3rd intervals. I know I should be able to do that anyway, but it's an unconscious thing and I need to work on it. I can often pick out tunes on the guitar by ear and get most of the notes right, but by improving my knowledge of intervals I would hope to make this easier. As with most things it needs lots of practice.

This course has peer-reviewed assessments. This week we had to find some songs in the key of C major. It's not the most common key for popular music. I found a site that listed such songs, but a lot are actually in A minor, which has the same notes, but is by no means the same thing. Anyway, I found a few, partly from that list, but I checked to make sure they really are in C.

I have another course on music theory in a few months. I regret not doing more music when I was at school. It is possible to make great music without knowing this stuff, as many people do, but my analytical brain likes to know what is going on. I should ask my daughter as she is doing music GCSE and working on the theory grades too.

I plan to keep doing courses on things that interest me. It's better for me than randomly surfing the web. It's made me cut down on that to make the time for learning. You can pick up a lot of things by surfing, but there is no focus and I need that. The big one will be Introduction to Linux later in the year. I hope that will fill some of the gaping holes in my knowledge. It's amazing that all this stuff is free. Mind you, I have paid for another year on the Paul Gilbert course at Artistworks. Still having fun with that.

Oh, and on top of all that I have the beginnings of a possible band project. I found a bassist who wants to do some blues and rock. We've met a couple of times to play through some covers. We'll have to recruit some others if we are going to gig. I've been doing the singing, but I know my limitations. Stay tuned...

All you need...

I've just finished working on this course from +Coursera about the music of The Beatles. I've not got my final mark yet, but I did okay on the quizzes, so I'm assuming a good pass.

It's been very interesting to learn about how they crafted their songs and has led me to listen to lots of them. I've had to use Youtube as I don't actually have the albums or many of the singles, apart from the number 1s CD. I may pick some of them up some time.

+John Covach did a very good job. It's a real shame he can't play the music or even quote much of the lyrics for fear of the copyright police. This should be counted as 'fair use', and it's not as if they need the extra money.

This is part of my on-going efforts to educate myself. I have some other courses on music theory coming up as well as one on Linux to expand my knowledge. These are all free, but I intend to keep paying for the Paul Gilbert course on +ArtistWorks too. I just have to ensure I have enough time for those things I want to prioritise.

I've just embarked on another possible band project with a local bassist. We're working on various blues and rock covers. It's very early days, but we'd both like to gig at some stage. I'm covering the guitar and vocal areas for now. I want to attempt more lead stuff, so I'm working on learning some solos and expanding my musical vocabulary to improvise my own.

On top of all those I need to record tracks for some +Six-String Bliss: The Guitar Podcast albums. I've done one acoustic cover. That used my new MXL 990 microphone.

Taking the Mic

I'm still plugging away on the Paul Gilbert guitar course. I'm trying to put in an hour a day, but have been slipping lately. There isn't a fixed practice schedule, so I tend to work on various exercises from lessons I've already seen for a while and then go looking for some more. This will either be the next ones in the sequence or I'll find a video response that looks interesting. I'm learned a couple of new songs from those.

I've had four video responses from Paul now. It takes around a week for him to do these, but he's doing a lot of them. They are mostly done from a studio, but I've seen one done from the back of a car somewhere in the UK.

I may be taking on too much, but I've also enrolled in another +Coursera course about the Music of The Beatles. I'm hoping that I can fit in watching the videos when the study is occupied. Although I've heard the band all my life I've not owned their albums and don't know all the background. One of the introductory videos explores some of the available books. There are plenty of those that go into minute detail of how they recorded, the gear they used and the stories behind the songs. I'll look out for those, but I'm loaded up with books right now. Currently reading Guitar Zero about how our brains handle music.

We're also doing some family tree research at the moment. We're concentrating on my wife's family. They have been in Arlesey for a long time. There's a local project based around those men on the war memorial as we commemorate the centenary of the First World War. We have a lot of family photos, but don't know who they all are.

The studio has had an upgrade in the form of an MXL 990 condenser microphone. I've been wanting a decent microphone to use instead of my Zoom H4. That does a good job, but it is difficult to adjust the levels on it and I'm not sure it's ideal for voice. I've done some vocal testing that sounded good. I also tried it with my classical guitar. I've not played that much lately, so I was a bit rusty.



I need to record my acoustic for the Six String Bliss 70s project soon. Something I want to try is to record it with both of my microphones plus the pickup. I've got enough inputs to do all of those at once, so I can do a proper comparison. I'll try to do that soon and post the results.

Where did I put my flares?

The Six String Bliss podcasts have come to an end (unless the hosts have a change of heart), but the community lives on. We're going to try and keep producing albums for our own enjoyment. There are actually two projects in progress at the moment. One was proposed as a 'quick and dirty' 'EP' of songs from the 70s, but seems to be growing into more of an album based on songs people have reserved. The other is to cover songs from the original Woodstock festival.

I plan to contribute to at least one of these. I have a couple of ideas for 70s songs. They are songs that I know pretty well and have wanted to record anyway, so this could push be into getting that done. One will be a stripped-back acoustic version whilst the other will be a full band arrangement where I aim to play all the parts. I usually shy away from programming drum tracks, but will give it a try this time, with a MIDI file I found as a back-up.

I've not decided on anything from Woodstock yet. There are loads of possibilities, but I need to do some listening to make up my mind. I'll see if anyone wants to collaborate.

Forum stalwart JMan is blogging about his recording process, without giving away the actual song(s). This is very useful as many of us are not too organised in how we record and could do with some tips to make it run smoother. I could do with a bit more structure to how I work, but I don't know if I will ever be as organised as JMan.

I'll be using my usual toolset of Ardour and Hydrogen (from the KXStudio repos) plus various plug-ins. I may use my Zoom G3X for effects and amplifier emulation, but I need to check in on the state of Guitarix again soon.

Meanwhile, I'm still working hard on the Paul Gilbert guitar course. I've had two video responses from him now that were spot-on for what I needed. He puts a lot of emphasis on muting as this is vital for playing loud without extra string noise and is also fun for 'chikka' noises. I was working on an exercise using this last night that was crying out for some wah. I've only gained a wah fairly recently on the G3X and am slowly learning to use it.

Star struck

A while back I posted about taking some private guitar lessons. The lessons were good, but getting to them proved to be a pain. It was only a few miles from the office, but getting there after work could take a ridiculously long time. Regretfully I had to give them up, but Stuart left me with lots of material to keep working on. We did an extended last session about chords.

I had also been looking into some of the on-line courses available. I liked the look of the Paul Gilbert school from +ArtistWorks. I like Paul's teaching style. They had some special offers at the end of the year, so I treated myself to a three month subscription that started last week.

The school consists of lots of lessons grouped as Fundamental, Intermediate and Advanced. In his introduction Paul recommends that everyone work through from the start and I can see why. He includes lots of good tips in each video that are applicable to most players on basics like tuning and holding the pick. The latter is different to what I have always used. He uses his thumb and two fingers. I'm giving that a try and finding that I need to use a lighter pick to get smooth strums.

Fairly early on he introduces muting, which is a vital skill for electric guitar. Some of the exercises are fairly tricky, e.g. playing left-hand muted strums between each note of a pentatonic scale.

One of the big selling points of this site is that the instructor will give feedback on videos which you submit for specific lessons. I've sent in my first one and have another ready. I used Cheese to record the first one, but then had to convert the video (using Handbrake) to a format that they accept. GUVC offers more options, but I still had to convert the file. This is my second video. I can't send it in until Paul responds to the first. That seems to be taking a while.

I can't post Paul's response as it's locked into the site, but if you join then you can see all of them. He gives different suggestions for each person, so that makes for a lot of extra material to learn from. It's actually overwhelming how much there is.

The site has various social aspects including a forum and 'shout out' board that Paul participates in. There are also some interviews including this one with Dweezil Zappa. The whole thing is eight parts and they cover a lot of ground.

There is a free acoustic school you can join to see how it suits you. This is fairly basic stuff and I have only looked at a few of the early lessons. There are lots of other schools for different instruments and genres. Everything from classical to bluegrass.

ArtistWorks has an affiliate scheme. If you join with this link then we both get a free extra month. I think the prices are pretty good as you are only paying the equivalent of one private lesson each month.

Lessons to be learned

As I've previously said, I've been thinking about getting more guitar lessons. I found +Stuart Bahn on Google+ where he was posting some interesting articles and eventually realised that he's based not far from where I work in London. My first lesson was last night.

I told him that I want to improve my ability to solo in blues and rock. Whenever I try this I seem to just play cliches or get stuck in very linear patterns. I have tried learning more licks from various tutorials, but haven't done so well at applying them.

Stuart is taking me back to basics on really learning the minor/blues pentatonic scales in all positions and exploiting the extra notes and bends you can use. He did a good job of explaining the basic theory behind why certain notes sound good. I knew some of this, but he's filling some gaps. We went through some example licks to apply this, but he emphasised using variations of those for variety.

He also picked on up various issues with my technique. I expected this as I knew I had some bad habits. I need to work on all areas of picking, bending and muting. I generally just play my electric without plugging in, but he said I should use an amplifier or other effects so that I can more clearly hear where the issues are, e.g. other strings sounding when they shouldn't.

I've got a load of stuff to work on before my next lesson in a couple of weeks. I have been playing a fair bit anyway, but it was not generally focused on anything specific. I have been trying to use some books, but not sticking to a schedule. I will review those in the context of what I'm doing in the lessons.

Of course I need somewhere to apply all this learning. I'll look again at trying to get involved in some sort of jam at least.

Guitaring

Although I've been playing guitar for about 35 years I don't consider myself to be that good a player in various areas. I've mostly been a bedroom player and just learnt songs, or parts of songs that took my fancy. I've also done lots of tutorials, initially from magazines, and later on-line. I've not done much actual performance where I need to bring it all together. I have played in a couple of band line-ups, mostly playing rhythm. I have improved at that, but could do with expanding my chord vocabulary.

I've recorded a few songs where I played several parts, but those are invariably built up from lots of small sections and I've not done much soloing.

Soloing is probably my weakest area. I know lots of licks, but when I try to string them together it all sounds terribly clichéd. My recent jazz improvisation course showed up some of my limitations, but may have been too advanced or the wrong approach for me. Perhaps my mindset of being analytical rather than spontaneous is part of the issue.

I'm thinking of ways to move forward. One is to find a good teacher who can guide me to a new approach. I have some leads on that to follow up. My other thought is to try learning more full songs, complete with the original solo. I have quite a few of those in magazines, with backing tracks. I'd aim to play the song 'live' as if performing it. I really want to do some gigs at some point, but just don't feel quite ready yet.

This post is an incentive to actually get on with achieving my goals, so that I need to update you later. Stay tuned.

Jazz for dummies

The title refers to what I think I need, rather than what I'm getting. I'm a couple of weeks into this course and struggling already. The first week had Gary talking a lot about what the course is about and not much on the theory. For the first assignment we had to analyse one of his solos and do our own over the same backing. I made a few notes about his solo, mostly based on a transcription where I could actually see what notes he was using and relate them to the chords. I understand the basics of how chords are built, but not necessarily how to use them or even play some of them on guitar. My own solo was based partly on what I worked out and partly on what sounded right.

The marks are in and I managed 5/8 on the analysis. The solos were not graded, but I got a few interesting comments. They could tell I was bluffing, but I had confessed that anyway. They suggest what scales I could have used, but the course had not covered that. I know I'm not great at soloing. I usually just play around with the blues scale, but have been trying to move beyond that. That's part of why I'm taking this course.

Week two introduced a whole load of scales. I was aware of the various 'modes', but not how to use them. There were also some other 'altered' scales. Gary zooms through these, but it's still not giving me enough context. I don't even know what a dominant 7th really is. Wikipedia didn't enlighten me. The assignment is to play around with several of these scales. I can at least do random selections based on fingerings I've worked out and maybe come up with some tunes. I need to do that in the next couple of days. I've listened to what some others have done and their efforts are more elaborate than I could manage.

I was already aware that jazz is based on a lot of theory, but still find it amazing that people can apply all this in real-time whilst playing. I guess it comes from lots of playing. We covered some of the basics on the evening course I did years ago where we would work on a tune each week, but I've forgotten most of it as I didn't get to apply it outside the lessons.

I listen to some jazz for fun, but can't really tell if it's using the theory. Of course some rock and blues players do great solos without knowing any of this, but might be more limited in what they play. I am generally more analytical than spontaneous, but this theory is hard. I shall persist as long as I can with the course. It doesn't really matter if I don't pass in the end.

Making it up

After my technical course on music production I'm now onto another from +Coursera on improvisation. This is being taught by jazz great Gary Burton. I see he just blogged that 39,000 people are signed up! As with the other course a lot of people will sign up just because it's free and not stay with it.

I'm no expert on jazz. I've listened to a fair bit and been to some very cool gigs, but don't totally get it. I even did an evening class on jazz improvisation years ago. That was fun. I mostly got by on the few scales I know and some hints from the teacher. Watching another guy there playing a million chords on his big Gibson made me appreciate how little I know.

So far my improvising has been fairly aimless. I know lots of neat riffs, but can't always use them in the right context or come up with my own. I hope this course will help me move forward. The first week's lessons have just covered what the course is about and some explanation of what improvisation is. No details of chords and scales yet. The first assignment involves analysing one of his solos and then improvising over the same backing. This has some extended chords that I wouldn't know how to play. My friend +AshBrooke Music, who is also on the course, suggested starting with a C Major scale. I tried that and I can hear some places where a flattened 7th or 3rd will sound better. I need to work out which chords that applies to. I thought I'd record something straight away. This will at least give me something to compare to later and I ought to be recording myself more anyway.


I know it's not great, but I think I have some feel for the rhythm and for ending up on the 'right' notes. You will hear me searching for the note in places. This ties in with the Chord Tone Soloing book I'm reading, but haven't fully grasped yet.

I plan to look at Gary's solo and work out what is happening with the chords.

Jedi in training

Yay, another Star Wars title!

As previously mentioned I am doing a course in music production. I'm now four weeks in with two to go. We've covered a lot of ground and I'm learning a lot. So far I have got by in recording mostly by instinct and from reading a few things or watching videos. There are lots of subtleties I've missed.

Week one was about how sound works and how signals flow through the studio. I did an assignment about recording spoken audio using my trusty Zoom H4 and my webcam.

I posted this on one of the G+ communities where it was seen by our 'professor' who said nice things about it. He did a hangout where I was able to say hi and he remembered me.

However, there were a few issues with this video and I had problems trying to edit in Kdenlive. So I re-did it as an audio only lesson and was able to easily do lots of editing in Audacity.

We all have to assess others, which has been interesting. Most people have put in a lot of effort, but a few have just written a few lines or even copied from elsewhere in some cases. I've not noticed any plagiarism in those I've seen. I was pleasantly surprised to get full marks for my effort.

Week two was an introduction to the DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). He has tried to keep things general as people are using lots of different applications. Ardour seems fairly popular, but I've seen a lot of Reaper and Cubase. It's interesting to see what you can do with those. I can certainly see why people use Reaper.

I did an assignment on setting up a project in Ardour. I tried some methods of recording a screencast, but they were not working for me, so I used a digital camera to film the screen. The result was not ideal. Hard to read the screen and the audio was very low. I used an effect in Kdenlive to bring the level up a bit, but, of course, that added noise, as we have been taught. I seemed to lose a few marks because of the video quality.

Week three was on how the mixing part of the DAW functions. I learnt about what inserts can do and how parallel effects work. As this was new to me I used it as the subject for my assignment. I'd now found some scripts that could record the screen, including the Jack audio using a combination of ffmpeg and jack_capture. I just captured part of the screen to try and preserve the full resolution in Youtube, but that meant that some menus went off the screen. I've been using the older version of Ardour (2.8) as I don't have version 3 on my main system yet. For my audio example I had a go at a short section of an 'a capella' song I've been thinking of doing. I sang it as part of a huge choir at Towersey last year.

Week four was on dynamic effects such as compressors, gates an limiters. I have tried using compressors in my recordings, but without really knowing what I was doing. I find it helps to use a plug-in with a graphical display so I can see what is happening. The Calf compressor has this facility, but only if you start it separately and use it as an insert. I need to get to grips with the different types of plug-ins available. I did a quick video on compression. This time I recorded the whole screen and the result doesn't look too bad. I did some fairly bad beat-boxing as my audio.

Week five was on filters and delays. Some interesting stuff on how a delay can act as a filter. I understand better the phase effects you can get with microphones. There was some discussion of mixing, but not in huge depth. I was going to do a video on setting up an EQ plug-in based on a hardware mixer, but my screen capture script was having issues getting the video. So I did a document instead. I've reviewed a lot of documents by others and tried to make mine look reasonable by including lots of screen shots. I used the EQ10Q plug-in. That has ten parametric filters that can be of various sorts and gives a nice graph. I've seen plug-ins that show the spectrum of the audio overlaid on the filter, but I don't know if you can do that on Linux.

Setting up EQ plug-in

The course syllabus seems to have changed from what was originally planned. There was supposed to be some discussion of MIDI, but the final week ended up being about synthesis. This is interesting and explains more about audio theory, but may not be what some people wanted to learn about. I haven't experimented with creating my own synth patches, but I may try it in future. I based my assignment around amsynth. I just need to get my Casio keyboard and MIDI interface working again so I can control it.

Synth modules

I did have a quick play with an on-screen keyboard that let you use the PC keyboard to play tunes and knocked this out in a few minutes for a laugh

The final exam was just a selection of questions from the quizzes. I didn't do extra revision, but still got most of them right. As I mostly got full marks on the assignments and the quizzes I should be guaranteed a pass. I think we get our 'certificates' next week. It's been a cool experience, helped by encouragement from my on-line buddies. We formed a G+ group to discuss it. I'm starting another course on improvisation soon. That will be a different sort of challenge, but I really need to get to grips with this aspect of music. When I do attempt improvisation it all sounds like a string of clichés. I'll report on my progress in due course.

Back to school

Since I finished my degree back in nineteen eighty something I've had a few bursts of further education. I did a few community college evening courses in French, piano, guitar and jazz improvisation. Some of these were great fun and very good value compared with private one to one coaching. Unfortunately they don't seem to offer so many music courses since then. When I decided I wanted to do more singing I had a few private lessons that helped me discover what I'm capable of. I've considered more guitar lessons, but it's tricky when I don't have a specific aim. I had a trial lesson with a teacher a few years back, but he didn't seem to know what to do with me as I already had a lot of technical skills. I've also done a few courses for work on things like Oracle database programming.

My latest course is something a little different. I heard that Berklee College of Music was offering some free courses via Coursera. I initially decided I'd like to try the one on improvisation with Gary Burton. That looked like a challenge as it's something I would like to improve in my playing. That starts in April.

There is also a course in music production. A few of my on-line buddies were taking it, so I decided to join in as I could do with learning more about how to record and produce music. I have all the tools, but am only scratching the surface of what they can do.

The course consists of lots of short video lessons and quizzes on what was presented. Those are fairly simple if you take notes on the lessons. It's largely a matter of understanding the terminology used. The trickier parts are weekly assignments where you have to teach one of a selection of topics. That can be in written form or a video or audio presentation. I tried doing a video. I used GTK+ UVC Viewer to record from my webcam whilst I sat there using my Zoom H4 as a microphone and interface. I was talking about recording spoken word, so it was also a demonstration. I then tried to do a little editing using Kdenlive, but I couldn't seem to get it to trim the segments as I wanted. I have used this a long time back to edit some DV footage and it worked well then. Perhaps it didn't like the video format.

I tried doing the video in a single take, but found that hard. I was going to re-do it, but then had issues getting a decent recording without weird sync issues. I decided that audio would be easier. I recorded in Audacity and did lots of editing to clean it up. That was very quick and easy. The result was not too bad, but I did rush my delivery a bit.

Anyway, that has been submitted now and should be being assessed by other students. There are over 50,000! I've assessed my share and they were generally well done.

The lecturer, Loudon Stearns, has been encouraging people to discuss the course on the Coursera forums and various social sites. I was on a G+ Hangout with him and others at the weekend. It's almost like being on campus.

I'm finding the course fun and am learning lots. The first week was mostly audio theory, but this week is about DAW editing features. I need to explore these more in Ardour. V3.0 was just released, but I've been using some of the release candidates. It should do all I need. A screencast would seem a natural for the next assignment, but I need to figure out how to do that.