#3
Although I'd always loved to sing, I was still quite a novice guitar player. This--what I perceived as my inadequacy--made me keep my music mostly to myself. Looking back now, I can see that my private sort of feeling had a purpose. I was teaching myself how to write songs and how to play my instrument, learning about what I liked and what I didn't. I was learning to communicate and make decisions with myself, the same way that people in bands spend time learning how to communicate with each other about how to make music that they all love.
I wanted to try recording some of my songs so I set up a boom box and recorded myself onto a cassette tape and then played the tape back while recording a second track onto another boom box. The first track was just me singing and playing my guitar and when I played it back and recorded again I added extra vocals and more guitar. It was very simple, very lo-fi.
Lesson number three: You can be a band even if you are only one person. If you have ideas for more sounds than you can make at a time, try recording yourself at home. No matter how un-fancy your equipment or techniques, you will be amazed at how fun it is to listen to yourself and then add tracks. You will learn a lot. A cassette 4-track or a computer will work but I would even suggest the boom box technique for a first try.
The stakes are pretty low and boom boxes are very user friendly and cheap!
