Godsawful mbira playing

Wow! Why am I not asleep? You tell me. So I decided to play mbira from Berkina Faso and record it. Henry should particularly appreciate this since I've critiqued any number of his recordings. Let me return the favor to myself. But first, let's hear the recording, so we all know what I'm talking about.

OK, first of all, wow, do I need to work on some timing or what? Dynamics too. I think I hit some keys better than others. I have to find a better way to hold the instrument or something. Another aspect which relates to timing is rhythm. This is a two-fold problem. One is that I need to maintain a rhythm, and this is both a problem of timing and dynamics. The second issue is that I apparently completely suck ass at transitioning from one sort of rhythm to another. Still, I think there are some nice ideas in here. Needs a hell of a lot of work though. I give it a three out of ten. Good scale, good ideas, sort of has parts where it goes along nicely, but you can really hear that I haven't mastered the subtleties yet. I think basically it's got some strong stuff, but it really needs work to get consistently musical. Practice, practice, practice. That is your uncle Khomus' musical motto for the new year.

Your beloved uncle Khomus confesses humbly, he's a slacker, and this piece shows how and why. I think I get distracted by the coolness and don't really focus on making it great the way it should be. Recording a lot more, even one offs like this, will definitely help me improve. I should add that I'm pretty tired and I basically sat down and just bashed this out in the minute or so the recording lasts. It could also use some equalization and stuff to sound better, but I'm not so worried about that part yet since this was just screwing around. Part of this is also the instrument, some keys are just louder than others, and I'm sure part of it is the frequency distribution in the recording, that root bass note really is loud and some decent equalization would help bring everything in line. That's also something I'll have to work on, just the differences between what you hear and how it comes out in the recording equipment and how you change it back to something more like what you hear. All of that having been said, it looks like it's time to really buckle down and slog through the technical aspects of getting my playing up to some sort of acceptable level. Luckily since I like the basics of what I'm doing already, that should make it easier. Still though, by all the gods, there's a fair spot of work to be done, ain't?