2026 50/90 Challenge Day 22/90

I had some good progress on day 22. The first thing I did was add a new song. Song number 20, to be precise. It’s in 9/8 time and it is going to suck trying to put guitars on it, but odd time signatures make me happy so… yeah. Next I took song number 19, which was just a couple of riffs, and worked out the structure and finished the fake/software/MIDI instruments (bass and drums). After that it was all about lyrics and melodies. I think I had three songs that needed lyrics and I finished them all.

That was it for day 22. That left me with six songs ready for vocals and two songs ready for rhythm guitars. On to day 23!

I’m on Vacation

I’m on vacation and it is wonderful. Today is the first day. It’s Saturday so is that technically not vacation because I would be off work anyway? Explain it to me.

I did a nice bit of music work today. I also went with my wife to her favoriate computer store and bought her a monitor. It has all been sort of spoiled a little (just a little) by the toothache. Three days ago I could take Tylenol and the pain would more or less go away for hours. Now? Three Tylenol buys me an hour. Maybe less. Sometimes a little more. It’s hard to judge. I want to take it on the same schedule as my vitamins, every five hours or so. I’ve been feeling huge pain for a couple of hours but if I stay on the schedule I have to wait until 9:00pm and I still have 15 minutes to go. I am literally writing this to try to distract myself from the pain and the desire to take some meds.

My dentist appointment is the day after tomorrow. That seems like a really, really long wait. I will survive though. Trust me.

We are starting to plan the nitty gritty details of our Rush trip next week. Train from Boston to New York on Tuesday morning. Rush concert Tuesday night. Train back to Boston Wednesday afternoon. What do we do with the rest of the time? Not sure yet. Am I bringing cameras? I’m bringing the little digital point and shoot. Should I bring a film camera? Will I have time to use it? Not sure. I’ll probably bring it even if I don’t have time or opportunity to use it. 

What else? We’re going to see The Odyssey tomorrow. I hope I can handle all of the historical inaccuracies folks like elon musk are complaining about… sorry… I can’t… I tried to type that with a straight face but that critique of the movie is so absolutely fucking idiotic. As if the movie were based on historical events and not an epic poem. Not a work of complete fantasy fiction. Cut the shit elon and fox and maga and all of you nazi fucks. It’s a story. Yes its thousands of years old, but it’s just a fucking story. Get over your racist asshole selves.

Okay. It’s time for the 9:00pm Tylenol. Wish me luck, universe.

PS: I think I set this account up to automatically cross post to Threads. If it works, this will be the first post to do it. Did it work?

2026 50/90 Challenge Day 21/90

This post is recapping day 21, which was yesterday, but today is day 22 and I really should be in the car recording vocals but I’m just overcome with laziness right now. I’ll do it tomorrow, I promise.

Not a lot of progress on day 21. I had a lot of stuff to do before work in the morning and I had a lot of stuff to do after work too. I didn’t have dinner until after 8:30. Fortunately I was able to sneak in some work after that. I wrote the lyrics and the melody for one song (song #18). I now have three ready for vocals. I also, just before falling asleep last night, came up with a couple of bass riffs that I have labeled as song #19.

That’s all for day 21. As mentioned, I should be doing some vocal recording today on day 22 but… nah. I’ll do that tomorrow. Today I hope to write some more lyrics and write some more melodies and figure out the structure for song 19 and maybe add another new song idea (or two?) and maybe record some rhythm guitars. I think it’s time to switch from my Gibson SG to my 1978 Les Paul Custom. Yeah, it is time for a guitar swap. Having said all that, I am feeling kinda lazy right now (I’m on vacation after all) so maybe I won’t do squat today.

I’ll let you know how it goes when I recap day 22 tomorrow.

Sigh of Relief

Can you believe it? I am officially on vacation. See you next month, work!

My toothache is killing me. I booked a Dentist appointment yesterday but the nearest time I could get is on Monday. Good thing I am already off work, eh?

No plans for the vacation week apart from two days in New York to see Rush. Did I mention I have tickets to see Rush on Tuesday? Oh the happiness.

Okay, I am going to go take a fist full of Tylenol in the hopes that it dulls the tooth pain enough to let me sleep for a couple of hours. G’night, all.

2026 50/90 Challenge Day 20/90

20 days down, 70 to go. It feels like it should be a big deal, but this year it really isn’t. Maybe I am ahead of my usual pace, but this time around I am not feeling day 20 stress. Weird.

I put rhythm guitars on song number 18. That was the only song that was ready for a guitar part. Everything else in the pipeline already had the rhythm guitars. I could have done more, but there was nothing left to do.

Other than that, I mixed two songs. I’m up to 12 songs finished now. I mixed this one and this one. Neither of them are terribly good (just like everything else I’ve ever written in my entire life) but they exist now and that’s the important part of this little game.

The state of the project after 20 days is:

  • 12 songs finished.
  • Two songs have lyrics written and are ready for me to record vocals
  • Four songs have the rhythm section finished and are ready for me to write lyrics

2026 50/90 Challenge Day 19/90

I have songs ready to mix but I didn’t mix anything yesterday. Why not? What’s wrong with me?

Nothing.

Instead I put rhythm guitars onto two songs, wrote lyrics and melodies for two other songs, and programmed the bass and drums for a new song. I’m up to 18 now.

So I didn’t mix anything, but I still did okay for a work day. I’ll take it.

Dinner Scene

Six days until the Rush show. Six long days. It feels like an eternity.

Tonight I was sitting in the living room working on the 50 songs in 90 days thing. My wife and my step daughter were out running errands. When they came home my wife asked if we could watch the dinner scene from the Rush Beyond the Lighted Stage documentary.

My wife and my step daughter are going to the Rush show too. They are starting to get psyched too. We are all getting psyched. It’s only six days. So close, yet so far.

2026 50/90 Challenge Day 18/90

Day 18’s progress was exactly the same as day 17. I started a new song and got it far enough along that it is ready for rhythm guitars. It is the 17th song started and it is another in a lifelong series of attempt to write something in 3/4 time that is worthy of head banging. It’s probably going to suck, but I’ll have fun with it while it lasts.

Other than that, I mixed a song. Of the 17 songs in the pipeline, 10 are now finished with a reasonably not-terrible mix of a demo. If my math is correct, 10 songs complete out of a the goal of 50 puts me at 20% done with this year’s project. Given that 90 days is approximately three months, I need to be at about 33.3% complete by the end of July. How many songs is that? Doing the math again, 50/3=16.67. Round up you get to 17. Huh. If about one third of the project is 17 songs… how many songs did I say I had in progress? Heh heh.

Quiet Day

It has been a quiet Tuesday, apart from the huge thunderstorm that rolled through this afternoon and almost drown the entire state. There was some minor flooding on route 128 during my drive home. Just the odd lane that had a couple of inches of standing water. Just enough to make you think you were going to hydroplane your way right off the road.

Other than that, work was okay. The Red Sox 14 game winning streak is safe for the day as they were rained out. Bummer. I worked on some music for the 50 songs in 90 Days Challenge.

Mostly I am just starting to get psyched up for next week. I took the week off. Partly so we could go see Rush in New York, but that is only a couple of days. The rest of the time is just because my company has a max on the amount of Personal Time Off you can carry and I was just about to hit that max. Use it or lose it, you know? I’ve already worked my two days in the office so the last three days before my time off will all be working from home. I like the sound of that.

So for the most part, today has just been a kinda nothing day in a good way. Here’s hoping for more of the same tomorrow.