How to make Your Own Guitar Tuition Video

Firstly decide on a song to teach.

It has to have wide appeal and it can't be too advanced. Advanced guitarists wouldn't need a video would they? Also it has to be something that you enjoy playing yourself.

Go through the song and figure out which bits might cause a beginner to stumble.

There's no point in producing a video that has a few easy bits and a really difficult bit that you can never learn and therefore not be able to play the piece all the way through. Eliminate the difficult bits by using my years of playing experience to know what I can get away with and what is absolutely essential.
If there is a big barre chord then I must replace it with just the bare bones. If there is a big stretch then figure a way round it.

Now I have to learn the piece thoroughly myself.

I mean learn it so well that it is second nature and can be played very fluently. I have to be able to play it whilst thinking about teaching you to play it and talking at the same time.

Now make the tabs

Once I've decided on a final version I now have to tab the piece. I know there are loads of tab sites out there on the internet but honestly...an awful lot of them as so innacurate that they are unusable. I don't know what the music publishers get so wound up about since the stuff is so 'off the mark' that it probably wouldn't be recognisable by the person who wrote it.

I use a registered version of Tabledit to make the tabs. It is not the most advanced tabbing software out there but it has all the features I need and it is much more useable than some of the more advanced ones.

On a recent tele-conference I had with some of my long term subscribers I asked about who was using the tefview program that I send out with videos and was suprised that more people don't make use of this great facility. You can speed up, slow down, change key, change instrument and all sorts of other possibilities with this sotware. I use it all the time, especially for learning new material. When the tab is done I then need to save it as a .jpg and also as a .pdf and make these downloadable.

Ah...so now I can think about making the actual video

OK so once the tabs are finished I can think about making the video. I have my lighting and camera positioning pretty well sorted out these days but it has taken a vast amount of trial and error to get to this point. I now shoot the video. I use two of my DV digital video cameras and three halogen lamps. The lamps need to be pointed away from the guitar and sheilded and reflected from the walls to get the best shots. People ask do I get out takes....do I? Oh yes..lots of out takes.

Let's get it all onto the computer

Once the guitar video is 'in the can' (sounds good that doesn't it?) then I need to get in onto a hard drive and useable by my video editing software. The raw video files with a length of 10 to 15 minutes are about 6 GB each and remember there are two of them (sometimes three) for each song. This means that I go through an awful lot of hard drive space. Just as an aside you need hard drives that spin at 7200 rpm minimum otherwise the video capture is too quick for the drive and frames get dropped ( my local computer store manager likes to see me drive into the car park)

Find a good editing package

Now the files need to be edited to produce a smoothly flowing lesson. I try these days to give a rendition of the entire song as a performance so that buyers know exactly 'how it goes'. When I'm happy with the playing part I need to add titles and transitions between the edits. When the whole project is finished I am ready to render the video files.

I will in all probability need to render the file in several different formats. If I'm producing a DVD for example then it's usually best to save the finished video file in its highest quality format (usually .avi). This format is also need if I am creating some streaming video for promotional purposes (more of that later.) The commonest file I creat is a .WMV (Windows Media Video) I tey to save in the highest quality I can without allowing the file size to get too big. The only problem with huge files is that they can take a long time to upload and download.

Let's get it out into Cyberspace

Once the downloadable version is saved I can then upload it to whichever webspace I'm going to use. For this I use a standard .ftp (File Transfer Protocal) program.

Now all I have to do is...

Upload the tabs and .tef files, html pages, video files...

Creat a sales/promotion page in html. (and upload it)

Create a purchase link/button to add to the sales page.

Arrange for purchasers to be added to an autoresponder list
so that they can access their video download after payment.

Create a small streaming sample of the video to go on the purchase page (and upload it)

Creat a download page for the buyer in html. (and upload it)

Add a buyers link to my main website page. (and upload it)

Now all I have to do is tell every one on my subscribers list that I have made a new video and then go and have a cup of tea and a sit down 'cos I'm knackered.

All I can say is 'It's a good job I like messing around with Guitars and Computers'

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