Labor Day is behind us. The gridlocked traffic this morning proves beyond all doubt that summer is over. Here in New England, welcome to winter. Fudge.

While the calendar and the weather and the commute traffic all tell us that we’re up to our eye balls in winter now, the summer song writing challenge is still moving along. Not only was yesterday Labor Day, it was also day 66 of the 50 songs in 90 days challenge. What progress did I make?

After I arrived home from an early morning ocean flavored photowalk, I went down cellar and started playing guitar. On day 65 I put vocals on seven songs. On day 66 I put lead guitars onto the same seven songs. That was all she wrote. I wanted to do more, but that was a really good day’s work and I’m happy with where things stand.

24 days left. 45 songs done, seven ready to mix, one ready for vocal tracking, and one ready for lyrics. I still hope to add six more to the pipeline and finish the project on October 1st with 60 songs (at least). Still a lot of stuff to do.

Day 65 was pretty big for the 50 Songs in 90 Days Challenge. I worked on seven songs. All of them started the day needing vocal tracks and all of them ended the day with all of their vocal tracks finished. I had one other song that was ready for vocals but I failed to get to it. Besides that, the only other song remaining is still waiting on lyrics.

It might not sound like much given that I can sum up the entire day’s work in one sentence, but trust me… seven songs worth of vocal tracking is a massively big day.

I had a good day on day 64. Not as productive as I had hoped, but I got through the things I needed to get through.

I worked on four songs. The songs with the working titles of numbers 51, 52, and 53 all got rhythm guitar tracks. Four tracks in total. Two takes through two amps each. One pair of amps panned hard left and the other panned hard right. That’s how I always do it.

When I finished the third song I still had some time on my hands and wanted to keep playing guitar but I didn’t have anything else that was ready for a guitar part. So I did the only thing I could. I started a new song. I wrote song number 54 in its entirety. I usually start with MIDI tracks. Bass and drums and maybe something to use as a place holder for real guitars. This time I just set up a drum loop and started playing the guitar. I worked out the song form at the same time I was working out the riffs and chord changes. When I had the guitar worked out for the entire song I added a MIDI bass and replaced the drum loop with MIDI drums. Then I added a melody, played on a MIDI electric piano, then I wrote lyrics that fit the melody. Boom. Song 54 now exists.

45 songs complete. Nine more in progress. All of them have rhythm guitars and all but one have lyrics and are ready for vocals. 26 days left before it all ends.

Day 63’s update was exactly the same as day 62. I added one new song. It is all MIDI at this point but all of the parts have been written including the melody and the lyrics. I just have to replace the MIDI guitar with real guitars and replace the MIDI electric piano with vocals and then improv some lead guitar and we’re set.

Spoiler alert, day 64 has been fun. It would have been more fun if I didn’t suck at guitar so badly. I’ll probably bitch and moan about that tomorrow. Or not. We’ll find out tomorrow.

Day 62 (yesterday) was another day that felt pretty light on progress. Similar to day 61, I started a new song (number 52) and wrote the whole thing, lyrics and all. I didn’t record any real instruments yet. The whole thing is just MIDI “software instruments” (as GarageBand likes to call them), but everything is there just waiting for me to replace the fake guitars with real guitars and all of that fun stuff.

That’s all. I was hoping for more, but I am really just trying to set myself up for a big weekend. That’s the plan at least.