Understanding Guitar

One Beginners’ Efforts

A few days ago, I made some recordings with the intention of posting them here. I came up with a quick chord progression while practicing Bm.

Actually, I didn’t really come up with the progression. The progression is Bm, A, G, Em which are the chords for Comfortably Numb by Pink Floyd as written here. It is the strumming that I “created” which I liked quite a bit. So I grabbed my Zoom H2 and recorded it.

I can’t play it perfectly. The reason I came up with it was because I’ve been trying to practice the Bm chord. I can play it, I just need to be able to switch to it faster.

Here are the recordings.

Note: if you read this site from an RSS Reader (such as Google Reader) you many not be able to see the MP3 players above. Please click here to listen to the three recordings.

You can hear the “dead” chords that I’m playing after some of the chord changes. That is when I’m trying to go back to Bm. It doesn’t work always, but I did get a few in there. Just getting a few of those changes was a major accomplishment for me. The recordings aren’t perfect, but I’m still working on it. I will try to post more when I feel the chord transisitions are better.

As some might know, I’ve been slowly working on a song for my wife. It is something I’ve always wanted to do and so I decided to start sooner rather than later. Some might say I’m rushing things, but it helps me learn, so what the heck!

With that said, I’ve written the first chord progression for the song. I figure I’m going to keep building on it and modifying it until I feel it sounds good.

I made three recordings, and I will be honest — each of the recording contains mistakes in one way or another. Originally I was only going to post one of them, but I thought “why not post all of them.”  I’ll just put myself out there.  I’m not really sure which one is the best or closest to what I want but If I had to guess I’d say recording two or three…

Recording 1:

Recording 2:

Recording 3:

I decided to buy myself a holiday present - a Zoom H2 “Handy Recorder.” It is indeed, handy! As little background, I’ve been looking at buying a field recorder for quite a while (about 6 months). I first went with a MicroTrack II, which I decided to promptly return. The $299.99 price tag was a bit steep for what it provided and what I needed. Instead decided to go with either the Zoom H2 or the Zoom H4.

After reading the several reviews, I was pretty confidant that I would be purchasing an H2 or but wanted to consider the H4. I had read all of the articles that are below and then some and was confidant that one of those two units would serve me best. The only question now was which unit?

Luckily the store had a demo of each unit though at the time neither had batteries or an SD card (the data storage medium). So, in reality all I could look at was the physical unit — I couldn’t test them. I looked at the two units (keep in mind, they are built by the same company) and I felt that the H4’s center navigation dial was a bit flimsily (I think the O’Reilly H4 article touches on this). I had also read (in the same O’Reilly H4 article) that the 4 track functionally of the H4 was a bit clunky. Though, I don’t/didn’t need this functionally, I’d still be paying for it. Don’t get me wrong, it’d be nice to have - but it is not needed. In the end these two things didn’t help the H4…

The final aspect of my decision (a contributing factor, if you will) was the fact that I could not return the Zoom H4. In conclusion, I’ve come across both negative and positive feedback on the H4 and for my money I couldn’t take the chance…

In the end, after reviewing the features of the H2, learning what it has to offer, inspecting the demo unit, considering the $199.99 price tag and the articles I’ve read I decided to go with the H2. From what I could remember, all of the articles were fairly positive.

To be fair to M-Audio and the MicroTrack II, it isn’t that I didn’t like the unit. The audio it recorded was fabulous. However, I didn’t feel that the unit completely suited me. It truly was not the unit I had come looking for. The salesmen suggested it. I’m not a field recorder or sound expert; and hence made a decision to the best of my ability. I suggest you read any articles you can before selecting one for your use. This is why I’m posting this article about the Zoom H2, I want to share what I know about it.

Articles

The following are some of the articles I’ve read on Field Recorders and Multi-Track Recorders:

Sweetwater.com

Buying Guide: http://www.sweetwater.com/shop/studio/recorders-players/buying-guide.php

O’Reilly

H4: http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/2007/02/01/review-zoom-h4-handy-recorder.html
H2: http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/2007/09/13/review-zoom-h2-surround-recorder.html
MicroTrack 24/96: http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/2005/11/30/m-audio-microtrack-review.html
Edirol R-09: http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/2006/08/31/edirol-r-09-digital-recorder-review.html

bradlinder.net (Blog)

http://www.bradlinder.net/2007/10/m-audio-microtrack-ii-available-for-299.html

Wikipedia

I found these articles while writing this article. I had not seen these before making my purchase.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H4_Handy_Recorder
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoom_H2_Handy_Recorder

Note: These are not all of the articles I have read, I this is all I can re-find. Had I thought about it, I would have saved each article.