"After the Goldrush" by Neil Young, arr. Bill Tyres.
Channel: Toltec Strings
Date: 22/01/2023

"After the Goldrush" by Neil Young, arr. Bill Tyres.
you can download a pdf of the arrangement at: 
https://www.guitardownunder.com/fingerstyle.php
guitar built and played by Jason Wehr

In the makers space of content creators, one of the most popular video formats is the 'one-day build'  Pick a project that you can complete in 1 afternoon.  There's something really satisfying about trying to play a very simple musical example as musically as you can, just a few minutes after the first time you look at the piece. So pick something that you can definitely work up in under an hour and see what you can achieve with an arrangement well below the difficulty of your recital repertoire.

In this video, I gave myself around an hour to practice and record + another couple hours to edit the video and document the gear.  The process demonstrates 1 microphone versus the kna-Ng-1 pickup with 4 different spectrum matches.  Two of the matches are reference recordings of unrelated pieces; two of the matches are of the same guitar using 1) a different mic and preamp recording a different piece in a different key and 2) the same recording (pickup matched to the mxl 990 mic and FRS gen 1 preamp recorded on channel 1).   Although none of the spectrum matches sound as good as the microphone, without adding any reverb or custom eq, one can see how useful FFT spectrum matching can be; taking a boxy, surface-mount pickup toward a useable, feedback-resistant signal for live performance.  Another option is to record the pickup simultaneously and substitute the pickup + FFT match whenever the microphone picks up intermittent ambient noises like traffic, wind, barking, or noise from your guitar support. etc.  The presets range broadly in their EQ corrections, each bringing the pickup closer to "recording quality" in a different way.   .   

Another takeaway was the process of beat-mapping my own performance.   You can see a tempo envelope above the waveforms indicating which measures were slower than those that preceded or followed them and this is easily compared measure by measure to the score. I did not consciously create the tempo modulations, I just read through the piece as I heard it in my head.  Reviewing the beat mapping provides me with a quantifiable reflection of what I'm doing as I pace different cadences and the development of the melody.
Let me know if you want to see more comparisons and 'one-day builds' like this performance.

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