How am I going? What should I do?

I wanted to put up some clips of my playing to get advice from people of what I should do to improve.

I did a set of reels
http://minorcrisis.net/files/Dr%20Gilberts%20Moving%20Cloud.mp3
A set of jigs
http://minorcrisis.net/files/Andrews.mp3
And another set of reels, the second written by Josephine Marsh
http://minorcrisis.net/files/The%20Birthday%20Reels.mp3

So comment away! I’ve been playing for about a year and a half, a year of which has been on my own. I’m starting to feel a little lost right now as to what I should be doing, so any advice would be very appreciated.

I think that’s bloody good, to be honest. Especially for only a year and a half.

I do have two comments intended to be helpful:

1 Lighten it up. The stresses are OK, but they’re a bit heavy and ‘forced’. I would try, when you’re practising, to play the tunes slower, much slower, and try to play them without any emphasis for a while, ie make them as flat as possible. This wouldn’t work for everyone, but I think from the recordings you’ve posted that you already have enough rhythm in you, and it will come back automatically as you develop.
2 There are certain places in most of the tunes where, on each repetition, the timing goes. Again, slow practice is the answer to this. In my personal opinion - though I know not everyone agrees - a metronome is useful for this, because it will show you exactly where you’re going wrong in the tune. but it will only work as an aid if you are practising very slowly.

Other than that, just learn lots and lots more tunes, preferably by ear, either from folks at sessions or, failing that, from CDs. (I’ve only just started doing that myself, and, whilst I used to frown on learning things from CDs, I have to admit I’m finding it quite fun at the moment.)

Very good. Much better than me and I’ve been battering away for a lot longer.

The first two have expired, the third one won’t play on my machine.

Damn it! None of the clips are working. I was lookign forward to hearing them. Why don’t you stick some clips up on YouTube or set up a Myspace with the tracks on there? They should last longer then.

Hey guys thanks for the interest. The site i used said it would be fine for 100MB of bandwidth, they’re only a couple of mg each so I thought that would be enough. I’ll set up a myspace sometime soon and put them on that. I’d do youtube, but I don’t have a webcam.

ben, thanks for the comments. Usually others can hear something you’ve grown so accustomed to that you don’t notice. I’ll definitely take your advice, thanks.

You can still use youtube provided you have Windows Movie Maker (comes as standard these days) or some equivalent program. You can then define your sound track as the audio and stick in a still picture (or several) for the video. Then your music is just the accompaniment to a kind of slide show, though *we* know that’s where the interest is. That’s what I did for http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0h9Kx3NyfqI

play video

(Hmm, must try to do better sometime soon…. )

i use http://lightningmp3.com for free music hosting

works a treat.