Month: February 2020

I’m Pretty Smart, I think

I’m pretty smart… I think.  At least I always thought I was.  My grades in school were always good.  In college I blew a curve on a test in Calculus II, and I got an A- for the semester in Calculus III.  I’m not saying I’m some kind of rocket scientist or anything.  Don’t expect me to do anything Earth shattering like building the better mouse trap, okay?  I’m not dumb though.  I have a decent brain and it usually gets the job done.

Taking that as truth… why the hell do I still live in a place where it snows?  I mean… I thought I would be smart enough to know better.  My wife, now she’s super smart.  She’s gotta be the smartest person any of us have ever met and yet she still lives here too.  My step kids?  Smarter still!  If anyone is going to build that better mouse trap it’s absolutely going to be one of them.  Yet… the four of us all still live in a place where it snows.

I just think that maybe after all this time we would have done something to fix this little snow falling problem.  Something like… move to Southern California.  You know, something like that.

So Long and Thanks for All the Fish

Well I sure hope my fellow Americans enjoyed their 243 years of Democracy because it just ended.

The US Senate just voted to allow the President of the United State to do whatever he pleases, including rigging elections, without having to worry about any consequences.

We are officially a dictatorship now.  Let Fascism Reign.

Checking In After Day Four – #RPM2020

I just posted this onto the RPM Challenge site:

I’m up to eight songs now. Seven have the song form sketched out and one has rhythm guitars (technically that’s a day five thing as I did it before work this morning).

Three of the songs are going to go with the acoustic guitar/hand percussion arrangement. My initial hope was to have five acoustic and five rawk-power-trio. Not sure how that’s going to shake out though.

The RPM Challenge needs at least 10 songs. FAWM needs 14.5 (it’s a leap year). RPM does not need newly written songs, FAWM, by definition, does. Given that I’m losing the entire last week of the month I have more or less decided to give FAWM a miss this year and shoot for 10 songs. If I can get two more and then get them all recorded quickly I might pull some old ideas into the project.

Last summer I spent a day with my acoustic 12-string, sitting on the patio, noodling chord progressions and strummy riffs. I was thinking of doing the whole acoustic guitar/hand percussion/sax thing then too and I actually started a few decent sounding ideas. I never finished them though. I might revisit some of them. I also did an album-in-a-day project a couple of months ago and there was one song that I might want to re-record.

It all depends on how quick I can get through the songs I’ve already started. We’ll see.

As mentioned, I was able to get a little recording in this morning.  I finished all of the rhythm guitar parts for song #1.  I double tracked it, as usual, but this time each take was two tracks, for a total of four tracks.  I have been wanting to record through two amps at once for ages.  I did it a few years ago but the two amps were both direct input into the computer, they weren’t mic’d.  Today, they were both mic’d.  Today it was… real.  I guess.

The signal path was my Les Paul into the Klon KTR overdrive pedal with the gain cranked into a Radial ABY box (one input split into two outputs) into both of my Fender Bassbreakers (the 15 watt version and the 18 watt channel on the 18/30) to two Shure SM57 mics.  I’m not sure what the reality of the situation is, but it sounded pretty flippin’ sweet to me!

Last year I made a rule stating I could not copy and paste sections of a song.  That means I couldn’t record a verse section of a song once and then use it for three verses, stuff like that.  I want to do that again this year, but the song I worked on today was kinda hard.  Not really hard, just a little hard.  It required a lot of takes to get everything kinda/sorta right.  Unfortunately that took a lot of time.  It actually took all the time I had available this morning.

Maybe I need to start waking up earlier?

158/365

Well That’s Just Great

This week has seen the end of American democracy, and now tonight we’re learning that the Red Sox have agreed to trade Mookie Betts to the Dodgers.

Well isn’t that special?  Maybe the universe can just come over here and kick me in the balls while it’s at it?

Boycott

I’m not watching the State of the Union tonight.  The Union I used to know is gone.  What we used to call the Nazi party and now call the Republican party has taken over and removed the Constitution.

I am wondering one thing though… what’s the over/under on Trump having Pelosi arrested during his sham of a speech?

Too Sleepy

The plan was to get up early and be ready for work before my beloved Jennifer left.  That would give me a little time to record guitar parts before I had to leave for work too.

Unfortunately I couldn’t get to sleep last night.  I was still up around 1:00AM which meant there was no way I was getting up early.  I slept as late as I could and barely made it to work on time.

I did use all the setup I did last night as an excuse to take today’s photo-a-day pic.  That’s me looking at the positive like some kinda fuckin’ optimist.

157/365

RIP Iowa Caucuses.

Questions for the Universe

My wife and I were having an in depth conversation about a fascinating subject and we were left with two important questions:

  1. Do cats burp?
  2. Do cats fart?

There were two related questions along the same lines:

  1. Have you ever heard a cat burp?
  2. Have you ever heard a cat fart?

It is my belief that if our cat, Patches, does indeed fart it will likely be a very high pitched, dainty sounding fart.

Record Ready

I noodled a little into GarageBand tonight, just to check the mics and the USB interface. My new mic stand (that I bought last year but only took out of the box today) was a lemon. Otherwise, all is well. Now I just need guitar parts to record.

156/365

Checking In on Day 3 – #RPM2020

I just posted this to the RPM Challenge website.  Just checking in:

It feels like I’m off to a slow start but I don’t know if that’s accurate or not.

I have this vague idea of splitting the album into two, one being my usual three piece rock band kinda thing, and the other being an acoustic guitar/hand percussion/sax/voice thing.  The acoustic stuff will probably fall by the wayside but for now it’s still on.

I’ve got two songs sketched out for the rock side and one sort of unfocused idea for the acoustic.  The rock things are okay, the acoustic thing is garbage and should really end up in the trash.

That’s it so far.  I had a gig on the 1st and I was very pleased with the way I played.  Here’s hoping that carries through the month and I nail a few decent guitar parts.

I am hoping to get everything setup in my little corner of the bedroom tonight. Two amps, two mics, and the 8 input USB interface. If I can sneak in some recording too that would be great. We’ll see.