2026 50/90 Challenge Day 17/90

Day 17 was a Monday where I had to work in the office. There wasn’t a lot of time for anything other than work, but I got a few things done.

First, while sitting in the car in the parking lot before starting the work day, I came up with a couple of bass guitar riffs on my iPhone. I labeled them song number 16 and then went inside to start my day.

After I got home I was sitting in the living room watching the tube with my wife and my step daughter and I just casually slipped on a pair of headphones and mixed another song. That brings me up to nine songs complete. For the record, I define “complete” as a fully arranged demo with a not-too-terrible mix.

After that I spent a little time messing with the riffs I started that morning. I came up with a song structure and usable bass and drum tracks using software instruments in GarageBand. Nothing special, but it’s ready to add some guitars now.

The current state of the project has nine songs finished, three songs ready to mix, three songs have rhythm guitars and need lyrics and vocals, and one that is ready for rhythm guitars. Doing the math… yes, that’s 16 songs.

Eight Days Away

Eight days. Just eight more days to go.

Eight days from now I will see Rush. I have seen them 25 times dating back to December of 1987. It has been 11 years since my last show. 11 years since Neil Peart first retired, effectively ending the band, and then passed away, seemingly definitely ending the band. I said at that time that I wanted them to stay finished. No Neil, no Rush.

Then last year Geddy and Alex let it be known that they were getting together on their own and jamming. Then they let it be known that they had started jamming on Rush tunes. Then they let it be known that they had started jamming with a drummer, Anika Nilles, and then they announced a tour.

I surprised myself by going from no Neil, no Rush to OH MY GOD I CAN’T WAIT TO SEE THEM AGAIN in the amount of time it took me to read through the tour announcement. They didn’t announce any shows in Boston, but they did announce four in New York and we were able to snag some tickets. Of course they did eventually announce Boston dates but we will be in California those days. There are still two shows in Connecticut though. They are sold out and the resale prices are absurd. We’ll see how they look in October though.

Oh, and there is a rumor of a residency at The Sphere in Las Vegas. If that happens… we might have to be there for it. Just one show, that’s all.

Vegas and Connecticut are questions for future me. Current me just has to make it through the next eight days without spontaneously combusting with glee. You might be able to tell from reading through this blog, but music is really important to me and since 1981 (when I was all of 10 years old) no music has been as important to me as Rush. To my musical soul they have always been the beginning and end of it all. It is going to be different without Neil Peart, but it is still going to be amazing. I just have to get through eight more days.

Cannot.

Wait.

2026 50/90 Challenge Day 16/90

I got a nice chunk of work done, but it was a lot less than I wanted to do. Chalk it up to laziness, I guess.

I mixed one song. That brings the finished song count up to eight. Hey, eight out of 50 is 16%… I am 16% done on day 16. What does that mean? Nothing. It means nothing.

I wanted to mix another song or two but instead I started working on new ideas. I ended up with two new songs. I worked out the structures, finished the MIDI instruments (bass and drums) and added the rhythm guitars. That brings the total count up to 15.

That’s all. I mean, two new songs with the guitar tracks done is a pretty good haul for a Sunday in July. I should be pleased, but I also feel like I should have mixed another song or two at least.

Oh well. Let’s just move on.

The Charles

Two weeks ago I took a bag full of cameras to Boston to shoot some film for the Frugal Film Project. I got half way though things and had to leave to go home for something. It was the day after the 4th of July and I wanted to walk along the Charles River by the Esplanade.

Today I went back. I also stopped at Acorn Street and wandered around Arlington and Berkeley Streets near where I used to go to school. I shot a roll of Kentmere 100 in my Lubitel for the Frugal Film thing. I also had most of a roll in my Nikon N90. I loaded it at Sail Boston last week and only shot a few pics before it was too dark for film. Finally, I had a roll in my dad’s Pentax K1000 that I loaded in… April? May? I don’t remember. I finished all three rolls.

When I got home I took those three rolls and three other rolls that I finished over the last two weeks and sent them off to get developed.

While I was in town I also shot a bunch of stuff with my Digital camera. My Nikon Z5. Here come some highlights.

I took a ton of pics of the Hancock building

I also took a ton of pics of little foot bridges

I was using the 70–210mm zoom so I could take pics of things that were really far away

The Longfellow Bridge from a crazy distance

There is a chance that one of the film pics I took of this fountain has a rainbow in it but I think I missed it

The Hatch Shell. The Boston Pops are not there anymore

2026 50/90 Challenge Day 15/90

As is often the case when I do a lot of work in a single day, I lose track of exactly what I did. When I sit down the next day to write these pointless, stupid recap posts that are meaningless to the entire population of the planet Earth besides me, I have to try and piece it all together again.

What the hell did I do yesterday?

There were six songs still in progress. Three had lyrics written, two others had their full rhythm section recorded, and one other only had MIDI bass and drums. I started my Saturday sitting in the car with my MacBook, a USB audio interface, and a Shure SM-57 with a little pop filter on the end of it. I recorded the vocal tracks for the three songs that were ready. All of them had at least one section with two-part harmony (which pretty much every song I ever write has a two-part harmony somewhere) but one of the songs had a chorus section with three-part harmony because I am out of control.

With that done I stayed put in the car with the laptop and all the stuff and wrote the vocal parts for the other two songs that had guitars done. Years ago that was how I did things. These days I record the melody with a keyboard and then sing along. I’m kinda digging doing it the old fashioned way, but I don’t think I will change the workflow permanently. Every now and then is fine.

From then on it was a guitar playing day. I don’t have much in the way of calluses on my left hand so I knew I was in for some pain. Recording lead parts hurts more than rhythm parts (because of all the bending strings, I think) so I recorded the leads for two of the songs and then took a break and recorded the rhythm tracks for the one remaining song. It’s in 5/8 time and my brain hasn’t wrapped itself around that weirdness the way it has with 7/8 time so it was a bit of a struggle, but it went okay. After that I cranked out the last three leads. By the time I was on the last song I was almost completely out of gas and my finger tips were killing me… so the playing on that song probably sucks more than my usual, normal level of suck. Oh well.

Later on I tried to mix one of the songs but every time I opened GarageBand something would come up to take me away from it. That’s not a complaint, they were all good things that I was happy to be involved in. I’m just saying that I tried to do more yesterday but did not.

So that leaves me with seven songs finished and six songs still in progress. Five of the six are ready to mix and the last one is ready for lyrics and a melody. Here’s hoping I get to a lot of that today.

Yup, it Still Works

I’m so happy that my silly little point and shoot camera still works on day two. I haven’t broken this one yet. Sigh of relief.

I’m also pleased that my car has an inspection sticker (the last one expired two months ago and I just got around to it today) and I was able to play some guitar today. I am not happy about how the lack of calluses on my left hand fingertips results in HUGE pain when I play, but I will rise above that little hiccup.

DSCN0057 — First clock pic with the new camera. My car windows are so dirty.

DSCN0066 — Of my four electric guitars, my SG is probably the last one I go to but that doesn’t mean I don’t love it.

2026 50/90 Challenge Day 14/90

Given that day 14 (yesterday) was a work day, I somehow managed to get a lot of music stuff done.

First, before work I was able to record rhythm guitar tracks for three songs. I played my Gibson SG again. I played pretty poorly overall but I don’t care. I usually manage to sneak in two songs in these pre-work sessions and yesterday I managed three. I’ll take the win.

After work I wrote lyrics and melodies for two songs. I was hoping to do more but that’s all I managed.

So after two weeks I had 13 songs at various levels of completion. Seven are mixed and done. Three have the rhythm section done and lyrics and a melody. Two have the rhythm section done. One is just MIDI bass and drums and is waiting for real guitars. Checking the math… yes, that is 13 songs.

New Camera Day

It was just over 11 years ago. June of 2015. We had tickets to two Rush concerts. One at TD Garden in Boston and the other at Madison Square Garden in New York. I wanted to bring a pocket sized point and shoot camera into the two arenas so I bought a little Nikon Coolpix S7000 at Best Buy. 16 megapixels, a 20x zoom. Good stuff.

I took about a couple hundred pics at the two shows and was really happy with some of the results. For example:

DSCN0205 — Boston. Alex auctioned off that guitar.

Over the years, I used the shit out of that camera. It went with me pretty much everywhere. I made a conscious decision somewhere along the way to use the S7000 instead of my iPhone and from that moment on I took a zillion pics with it. Then it broke. Shit. The lens cover wouldn’t open all the way, and it wouldn’t close at all. It just died. Boom. Dead. Sadness.

In September of 2025 I went to eBay and bought another one. A replacement. I was so happy to have my stupid little pocket camera back. Unfortunately it was a lemon. Every single photo it took was blurry. All of them. I would crank up the ISO in the hopes of it using the fastest shutter speeds possible but it didn’t matter. Everything was blurry. Sadness again.

Now here we are in July of 2026 and I have tickets to see Rush at Madison Square Garden (the show is less than two weeks away! SQUEEEE!!) and damn it, I want to bring a pocket sized camera into the show again. I want more of those pictures. This time there will be a keyboard player and a different drummer, but otherwise I want more of the same.

Fuck it. Back to eBay I go. I bought another one. If this third camera is also a lemon then I will give up and just use my iPhone like a normal person in 2026. The seller was in New Hampshire so the shipping was nice and fast. It was delivered today. The battery was charged. I threw the memory card that was in the second camera (that I am pretty sure started life in the first camera) and did a lap around the house snapping anything.

Is it a lemon?

Nope. It looks good!

Success (he said knowing a million things could still go wrong between now and the Rush show, but give me a break. I want to be happy for a change. Let me have this one, m’kay?)!

Here’s hoping this little sucker lasts me for about 10 years the way the first one did. Fingers crossed

2026 50/90 Challenge Day 13/90

Right then. That’s better. After two days with very little progress (days 10 and 11) and one day with absolutely no progress (day 12)… I had a pretty good day.

Yesterday, day 13, was a telecommuting day so I had some time before work to try and get stuff done. I added rhythm guitar tracks to two songs. You probably heard my sigh of relief at having gotten something (anything) done.

After work the progress continued. I had three “songs” that were just a few bass riffs without any structure. I worked out the song forms for all three of them and finished the MIDI bass and drums tracks. All three songs are now ready for rhythm guitars. Next I added another song. The form, the MIDI bass, and the MIDI drums are all set. That brings my count up to 13 songs. Seven are complete and six are in various states of incomplete. I didn’t stop there though. Next I added a melody and lyrics to the two songs that got rhythm guitars that morning. I now have two songs that are ready for vocals.

There, now don’t we all feel a little better about the state of things?

What’s Going On?

The nazi fuck in the white house is going to give a speech tonight where he will say the 2020 presidential election was stolen even though it clearly was not stolen. There is zero credible evidence to say it was stolen, but the nazi pedophile rapist in the white house (which I legitimately just typo’d “shite house” and will probably forever call it that from now on) wants to pass the uber racist/sexist and utterly unnecessary save america act which will effectively remove voting rights from millions of americans including all married women who took their husbands name so he’s going to lie to our fucking faces again (which he does literally every time he opens his nazi fascist pedophile rapist racist mouth) and tell us how he has evidence that 2020 was stolen even though he will present no evidence because no evidence exists and his base will get down on their knees and swallow every word.

Okay… I need to calm down. I’ll change the subject.

On my personal laptop, I use Vivaldi as my web browser of choice. It has recently started being unable to connect to certain sites. Like, random sites that no browser should ever fail to connect to. Things like… wordl. Why? Why are you fucking with my word games, Vivaldi? I can connect using Chrome and Firefox. Why not Vivaldi? It’s not me, it’s clearly you. I don’t want to go back to Chrome, damn it. I’m not as pissed about this as I am the nazi fascist pedophile rapist racist in the shite house, but I am pretty pissed about it.

Ugh… what else. Music. Let’s talk about that. The 50 songs in 90 days Challenge. I have had three days in a row with little to no progress. Today I recorded some guitars. I feel a little better. Not much, but a little.

I had used my Les Paul Standard on everything I’d done since the project started on July 4th. Today I changed guitars. I was going to go to my Les Paul Custom but instead I went to my SG. I hereby declare that today is officially Gibson SG Standard day in my basement music nook. You heard it here first.