2026 50/90 Challenge Day 30/90

Day 30. One third of the way through the project. Still so far to go, but at the same time… it feels like it is just flying by now.

Yesterday I wrote about how I started an album in a day thing on day 29. An attempt to write and record at least 20 minutes of music within one 24 hour period. As if the insanity of trying to write 50 songs in 90 days wasn’t insanity enough, right? So where did I leave off when I fell asleep Saturday night? I had four songs underway. None of them had any real instruments, guitars or voices, all four had MIDI bass and drums, a MIDI guitar guide track, and a melody played on a MIDI piano. Three of the four songs also had lyrics.

The album in a day rules that I followed encourage you to not sleep during the 24 hour period. I’m too old for that shit and I went to bed at about 10:30pm. Unfortunately for me, but probably fortunately for the music, I woke up four hours later thanks to this friggin toothache that won’t go away. It was about 2:30am and I was in too much pain to be able to fall asleep so I did what any idiot in my position would do. I sat up, put on some headphones, and started a fifth song in GarageBand on my iPad. Eventually I was able to fall asleep again but not for long. By 5:00am I was awake for good. I started the morning off by kicking off a sixth song in GarageBand on my iPhone.

I was estimating that I had about 20 minutes of music at this point so I went down cellar to my music nook and skipped my daily exercise in favor of recording guitar tracks. I started with song number six and worked backwards from there. First I came up with a song structure and a melody, then I recorded a rhythm guitar track. Normally I double track the rhythm guitars, but in the interest of saving time I only played one take. I’ve also been using two amps for my 50/90 demos this year but for this day’s sub-project I chose to only use one. It’s all about saving time. After I added the rhythm guitar track I immediately added a lead guitar. Normally I like to wait until the vocals are down before I add leads (why? Because, that’s why) but this time I just did the two guitar takes together.

When song six was done I did the same for song five. I worked out the format, added a melody, added a rhythm guitar track, and added a lead guitar track. Now all I had were the four songs from the day before. They already had the structures and the melodies so I just cranked out the rhythm and lead guitars on all four of them and then the guitar tracking was done. Next, I packed up my laptop and my mic and a USB audio interface and drove to the movie theater parking lot for some car music.

All six songs had a melody recorded on a piano track so I had something to follow along with. The first three songs all had lyrics written as well so I started with those. I had originally told myself I wasn’t going to add harmony parts. It was just going to be one vocal track per song and that was it. Of course I recorded a harmony part on the piano for song number one, immediately breaking my rule. I eventually added harmony parts to most of the songs (I can’t remember if they all had vocal harmonies but I don’t think so. I think at least one song stuck to the one track rule). When the first three songs were done I was out of lyrics so I had to write them as I went. For the second batch of three songs I would write the lyrics to a verse and then immediately record it, then write another verse and record it, then the chorus, and so on until the song was done.

When all six songs had their vocals finished I drove home and started mixing. I would mix the song in GarageBand on my MacBook Pro, bounce it as an uncompressed audio file to the Apple Music app formerly known as iTunes, convert it to mp3, and upload it to alonetone where I officially declare my demos finished. Song number one is actually okay. Song number two is probably almost okay. Songs number three, four, and five, are garbage and I’ve already forgotten all about them. Song number six might almost be okay too but probably isn’t. In the end I think I had about 22 minutes of music finished with about an hour to spare. Not an album’s worth at all, but enough to satisfy the results of this particular little internet challenge. What’s more, the six new songs brought my 50/90 total up to 27 finished songs. One third of the way through the 90 day project and I have 54% of the songs complete. That’s nuts.

And that, my dearest readers and only friends, is the recap of day 30. I am writing this on day 31 and I have yet to do a single musical thing today. Given that my whole family is going to see the new Spider-Man tonight and that we are leaving as soon as I punch out of work, I suspect that there won’t be a single note written or recorded today… and that’s okay. I’m pretty far ahead of things right now. I can manage to skip another day.

Depressed

I am so sad. It’s Sunday night at bedtime. My week’s vacation is coming to an end. I have to go to work tomorrow.

Oh, how depressing. I don’t want to go to work tomorrow.

2026 50/90 Challenge Day 29/90

Day 29 (yesterday) was a Saturday. I’m still on vacation until Monday and we didn’t really have anything on the agenda for the weekend beyond some chores and a little home improvement tasks. Lots of free time had me thinking about the 50 songs in 90 days challenge and how I could spend a good chunk of time on it. In fact…

What if I rolled an Album in a Day project into the larger 50/90 thing?

There are a few places online where you can find challenges to write and record an album in a day. I always find myself on this page. I did one years ago following those rules and there have been many, many times when I’ve thought about doing it again, but I don’t think I’ve ever considered doing one while I was already working on another writing/recording thing. Then I finished the month of July with all of the song ideas I started completely finished and I had a totally clean slate as far as 50/90 was concerned. August 1st being a Saturday when I don’t have a lot going on for the weekend meant…

Sure, let’s do an album in a day. The rules define an album as 20 minutes of music. That’s way too short. That’s an EP, not an LP. I don’t make the rules though, so off we go.

I started at 3:30pm on Saturday so I needed to write and record 20 minutes of new original music by 3:30pm on Sunday. The rules encourage you not to sleep during the 24 hours but I am old so that definitely wasn’t happening. By the time I went to bed last night I had four songs with MIDI bass and drums done, a MIDI guitar guide for when I record the actual guitars (or if I had to record the vocals before the real guitars), a MIDI piano playing what would eventually be the vocal melody, and for all but one of the songs, lyrics. I didn’t record any actual guitars or vocals and I think I had 12-13 minutes of music so… yeah, it was a pretty piss poor showing I think. I wanted to have a lot more done before sleep. I was thinking that I probably wouldn’t be successful in this little sub-project (spoiler alert for tomorrow’s post, I was totally successful).

Come back tomorrow to find out how the last 15.5 hours of the 24 hour day went.

Two More Shows

Did I mention we’re going to two more Rush shows?

Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut has two shows, one in late October and one in early November. It was always more or less a given that we would go to one of them. Now we officially are.

There are two shows in Boston but we can’t make either one. We will be in San Diego helping my step daughter move into her new apartment ahead of starting her PHD program. That’s going to be epic in and of itself. Weirdly, on the day we are flying home Rush is playing in Cleveland. Somehow, mysteriously, our flight home was magically rerouted to Cleveland instead of Boston so… yeah, we’ll go to that show too. I mean, that one is a total accident, right?

Now the only question is… do we stop with two more shows or do we try to accidentally snag some tickets for a third show as well. We’re already clearly insane so why not just lean into it, right? At this point literally every Rush show could turn out to be the last Rush show. One never knows.

Here is my updated list of Rush shows:

1987–12–03 — Worcester Centrum — Worcester, MA
1990–05–10 — Worcester Centrum — Worcester, MA
1991–12–10 — Worcester Centrum — Worcester, MA
1994–03–11 — Worcester Centrum — Worcester, MA
1996–11–09 — Fleet Center — Boston, MA
1997–06–23 — Great Woods — Mansfield, MA
2002–07–12 — Tweeter Center — Mansfield, MA
2002–10–28 — Fleet Center — Boston, MA
2004–08–12 — Tweeter Center — Mansfield, MA
2007–06–27 — Tweeter Center — Mansfield, MA
2007–07–09 — Mohegan Sun Arena — Uncasville, CT
2007–09–06 — Marcus Amphitheater — Milwaukee, WI
2007–09–17 — Madison Square Garden — New York, NY
2008–06–15 — Comcast Center — Mansfield, MA
2008–07–05 — Saratoga Springs Performing Arts Center — Saratoga Springs, NY
2008–07–07 — Mohegan Sun Arena — Uncasville, CT
2008–07–11 — Verizon Arena — Manchester, NH
2010–09–14 — TD Garden — Boston, MA
2011–04–08 — Giant Center — Hershey, PA
2011–04–10 — Madison Square Garden — New York, NY
2012–09–07 — Verizon Wireless Arena — Manchester, NH
2013–05–09 — Mohegan Sun Arena — Uncasville, CT
2013–05–11 — Etess Arena — Atlantic City, NJ
2015–06–23 — TD Garden — Boston, MA
2015–06–29 — Madison Square Garden — New York, NY
2026–07–28 — Madison Square Garden — New York, NY
__________Upcoming Show Dates____________________
2026–09–19 — Rocket Arena — Cleveland, OH
2026–11–01 — Mohegan Sun Arena — Uncasville, CT

2026 50/90 Challenge Day 28/90

I went a little nuts on day 28.

When I woke up yesterday I looked at my Trello board (the place where I keep track of all of this music stuff) and saw that I had three songs ready to mix, two songs ready for vocals, and one song that was just a couple of bass riffs. It was July 31st. I wondered to myself, could I finish all of these todays and then start August with a clean slate?

Interesting…

First I went to the song that wasn’t a song yet. It was just three eight bar phrases consisting of just a MIDI bass and MIDI drums. The drums weren’t good and needed to be replaced, but we’ll deal with that later. I added a MIDI guitar to act as a guide and then added a little melody to each of the three sections. After that I packed up the laptop and a mic and headed to the movie theater.

Car music. That’s what I call it when I go to the empty movie theater parking lot to record vocals without annoying the hell out of everyone in the house and also without feeling soul crushing embarrassment over my lack of singing skill. I added the vocals tracks to the two songs that were ready. Then I wrote lyrics to fit the melodies for the thing I’d noodled out earlier and recorded those vocals as well. At that point every song still in progress had vocal tracks.

When I got home I took the un-structured thingie and worked out a song form and redid all of the MIDI drums. It was now ready for rhythm guitars. The other two songs were ready for lead guitars. I then went down cellar to my music nook and plugged in my Les Paul Custom and added the rhythm tracks. Since the vocals were already done I was able to then immediately add the leads too. Next I put the leads onto the other two songs from the car music experience and at that point it brought me up to six songs ready to mix. Look at me being all out of control and shit.

I next went upstairs to the comfy chair in my bedroom, put on a good pair of headphones and started mixing. It took hours, but I managed to crank out all six songs. Done. So as July came to an end I had 21 songs and they were all finished. There is nothing in progress right now. 21 songs in 28 days. How the hell did that happen?

So now that July is over and the 50 songs in 90 days challenge moves on to month two, what do I do next? I’m thinking about this. Write and record an album in one day? I’ve done that once. I came up with one half decent song and 5-6 utterly forgettable pieces of crap that I never thought about again. I promise I am not going to do 24 hours without sleep. I’m 55 years old. My days of all nighters are over. I’m thinking about starting at around 3-4:00pm today and seeing if I can get 20-30 minutes of new stuff to the point where it is all ready for vocals. Then wake up early tomorrow morning and go do some car music, then spend the rest of the morning finishing the tracking and doing quick and dirty mixes. That could be fun.

We’ll see how it goes.

Frugal Film Project Take Two: July Edition

Hello and welcome to another installment of the Frugal Film Project. The internet challenge that tasks you with buying a cheap film camera (for me it’s a Lomography Lubitell 166 Universal from the good ol’ Soviet Union of yesteryear) and pairing it with a cheap-ish film and shooting one roll each month for a year. Seeing as I am a dumbass and a glutton for punishment I am doing two rolls per month this year. Kodak Gold 200 and Kentmere 100.

Both of July’s rolls were shot in Boston. We’ll start in color with Kodak Gold 200. It was July 5th and I was curious to see what was still around following the best 4th of July celebration in the country, the Boston Pops show on the Esplanade. Unlike last month, all 12 photos came out. I started on Boston Common and walked over to the Esplanade in hopes of seeing some stuff worth seeing along the Charles River.

I am always extra careful to make sure that the image in the viewfinder is level before I click the shutter. Either my viewfinder is out of line or clicking the shutter causes me to dip the camera down to the right because almost every shot I’ve ever taken with this camera is crooked.

So that’s one roll down for July. I had every intention of shooting the second roll that same day but something came up and I had to end my photowalk early. I went back on July 19th to shoot the roll of Kentmere 100. I retraced a lot of my steps but I managed to visit Acorn Street as well. That is considered to be the most photographed street in Boston. Once again, all 12 shots came out. That’s kinda miraculous to me.

And that concludes the black and white Kentmere film portion of the project. Two rolls of film, 12 images each. Last year I started this game in May and was successful through August before failing in September. This year I started in May again and I need to last one more month to match last year’s attempt. I think I can do it. Tomorrow is August 1st and I have no clue where I want to go for the next two rolls. Somewhere in Boston, probably, but we’ll see. Until then… go shoot some film!

2026 50/90 Challenge Day 27/90

I did a little bit of work on day 27 (yesterday) but not as much as I had hoped. Spoiler alert, day 28 is way more productive.

Anyway, what did I do? I wrote lyrics and melodies (and harmonies) for two songs. That leaves me with two songs ready for vocals, three songs ready to mix, and one song that doesn’t have anything other than a couple of bass riffs. Oh yeah, and 15 songs are already done.

That’s it for day 27. Like I said, day 28 is way better. You have to wait until tomorrow to read about that though.

Rush!

Jen, Bellana, and I took a train from a little South of Boston to New York on Tuesday morning. Mike the bass player took the same train on Monday. Kevin the drummer flew into New York from Arizona on Monday. Sarah and Adam, two of Bellana’s friends, came into town from somewhere to the South (sorry, I don’t recall exactly where) on Tuesday too.

Jen, Bellana, Kevin, Mike, and I met for dinner before the show and had some excellent sushi and steak. I had three pieces of salmon sashimi and it was delicious. I also stole some of Jen’s french fries because I am a stinker who enjoys getting in touch with his Irish heritage by eating all things potato based. The fries were (and I am not overstating this in the slightest) spectactular.

When dinner was wrapping up, Bellana went off to meet Sarah and Adam and we all converged on Madison Square Garden. It wasn’t until after we got inside that things started getting weird.

The tickets we bought were in section 328. Section 328 however, isn’t an actual section. I don’t know what the hell it is. I think it’s a press box of some sort. There were two rows, separated by a stairway, and the seats were folding chairs up against a sort of desk with monitor screens under a glass table with a glass partition-like thing sticking up in front of it. We would have had to look over the glass and down to our left to see the stage.

Those seats would have been fine and we would have been able to stand with no one behind us complaining. It just felt odd. The situation, however, was about to get even weirder.

Bellana and Sarah and Adam went off to find a merch table while the rest of us stayed in our press-box-ish seats. I should mention that we only had six tickets and Adam was going to sit by himself somewhere else, down in the 200 level. As the rest of us were discussing the weirdness of our seats am MSG staff member approached us. He told us he had a number of seats that had not been sold (why?) and he offered to upgrade us.

Upgrade us? The fuck? I have never even heard of someone getting a ticket upgrade at a concert before. I mean… huh? Are we interested in seats in the 100 level? Well, seven hells yes we’re interested! He handed us six tickets, four together and two a row behind, and walked away. Kevin summed it up best when he said, “did we just manifest this?” He then grabbed the guy and asked if we could get one more ticket so Adam could sit with us. That’s when Bellana and Sarah and Adam came back to join us and told us that a different staff member had approached them with upgraded tickets too! What the hell is going on here?

We tried but were unable to get seven upgraded seats, but we did manage to get six together. Adam took one of their upgrades and the rest of us sat together. Through out the whole first set there was an empty seat next to us so Adam joined us during the intermission only to have the owner of the missing seat show up during the second set. Oops. We were all standing though so we all just stayed there like nothing weird was happening.

Ticket upgrades? At a supposedly sold out arena concert? Who knew?

Okay then… how was the show?

It was fucking amazing.

It was absolutely awesome.

Geddy Lee’s bass playing was his normal level of amazing. He really sounded like someone who never stopped playing over the last 11 years. The really impressive thing was his voice though. In some of the last tours before retirement he was struggling at times. His notoriously high voice was not as high as it used to be, as is normal for human beings as they get older, and there were things that he just couldn’t do. Sure, the band adjusted the keys to steal him a few extra notes but there will still times where he sounded like he was haing a rough time. Last night though there was none of that. He has mentioned that once they seriously starting playing again he worked with a voice couch to try and recover some of his range and apparently it worked because he was in the best vocal form I’ve heard since probably the early 90’s. It was so impressive.

As for Alex Lifeson’s guitar playing, he did have some issues. I am a guitar player and he is one of my absolute guitar playing heroes so I may have been more sensitive to everything he did than the normal obsessive Rush fan would be, but I did hear some struggles. I believe he has arthritis in his hands and there were definite signs of pain. I saw him shaking his hands out in between songs a couple of times like he was trying to loosen them up a little. There were a few times where he was going in for the kill on a solo and his hands just weren’t responding and he didn’t quite get there. There were other times where he did though, and hold shit were those moments amazing. The intro to La Villa Strangiato stands out as an example where he was jaw droppingly amazing. The end of the 2112 Grand Finale too. I was in awe. Amaze Amaze Amaze. I would say that the struggles represented maybe 2–3% of the show. The rest of the time he was absofuckinglutely perfect.

As for the new folks, we’ll start with keyboardist Loren Gold. We were joking before the show that he probably doesn’t have a lot to do as Geddy is still playing quite a bit of keyboards. I think he was handing all of the sampled sounds that the whole band used to trigger throughout the show, and there were times when I heard keys playing that were not there on the studio records. That was cool. The big thing I noticed was that as Geddy was playing the keyboard solo in Subdivisions, he was playing it as well. I couldn’t hear any doubling but I could see that they were both doing the same things with their hands. Spoiler alert, I will have to pay attention to that at the next show we go to. Loren was also singing harmonies all through the show. That was really cool.

Now… for the topic everyone wants to know about, how did Anika Nilles do? Neil Peart is the greatest rock drummer the planet has ever known. Filling his role in the band is literally an impossible challenge for any drummer alive. Having said that, Anika toured with Jeff Beck. Look through Beck’s long, illustrious career and look at the drummers he worked with. Every single one of them is unbelievably incredible. She fits in with that crowd perfectly. She is absolutely equal to this challenge. Without question. She was amazing. She was astounding. She was astonishing. I need to rethink my hierarchy of the world’s greatest drummers in a post-Neil Peart world. I was pretty convinced that the top spot went to Gavin Harrison of Porcupine Tree, The Pineapple Thief, and King Crimson fame, but now? Now I am not so sure. I think my favorite parts of the entire show were the moments where she did something different than Neil. The moments where she took a piece of Rush music and made it her own. Those moments were incredible. To say I was impressed is a massive understatement.

The show was incredible. The show was amazing. The show was an absolute joy. How incredible? Incredible enough that Jen and I bought tickets to the November 1st show at Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut. We’re also trying to see if we can work any other show dates into our schedule. It was that good.

Now for some photos…

DSCN0160 — Geddy and Anika… hiding behind her cymbals

DSCN0179 — Two things. First, the only way my camera saw Anika was when she was on the screen. Second, I forgot to put my camera into burst mode of the pyro in Far Cry so this is all I got. Sorry.

DSCN0188 — They did three tributes to Neil. This was Bravado. They also did video montages for him on Time Stand Still and The Garden. They did a little tribute to John Rutsy during Working Man as well.

DSCN0192 — Alex auctioned off the real Whitey for charity, This must be a replica.

DSCN0211 — Geddy playing a Gibson Thunderbird. Awesome.

DSCN0244 — During Tom Sawyer, Alex was trying to make Geddy laugh so Geddy was trying to block him out

DSCN0247 — The only time I could see Anika’s face was on the video screen

And there we have it. My 26th Rush concert. The first since 2015.

To quote Rocky from Project Hail Mary, amaze amaze amaze!

2026 50/90 Challenge Day 26/90

With all the traveling home from New York that was going on yesterday I expected a second day in a row with no 50 songs in 90 days challenge progress. I was wrong though. Just before bed, while I was about 93% asleep, I brought up GarageBand on my iPad and noodled out a couple of very simple bass riffs. I filed them as song number 21 and then fell asleep.

Better than nothing, even if it is just barely.

Home

We are home, safe and sound and in one piece after a great two day New York adventure. I’ll share the details eventually, but for now it’s getting late and I am tired from traveling and I want to go to sleep.

I will leave you with this. Sort of a preview for a larger post that’ll probably come tomorrow.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: