Madam Pachalotte, of the Rhode Island Pachalottes.
Yeah… no on calls her that but me. She really only answers to Kitty.
Month: February 2020
Poop
I have just made a command decision for the family.
When we return from vacation I am going to gift cat, aka kitty, aka baby kitty, aka panic, aka panache, aka lady penolope clearwater, aka madam patchalotte of the rhode island patchalottes, aka patchie pants, aka patchiewatchiewoowoo, aka Patches a new litter box.
Her days of pooping in the current grody gross litter box are nearing an end.
Ol’ Man Spicket
Pictures of the Spicket River mean I went to Weight Watchers (or WW for the cool kids). I didn’t want to go. I thought my weigh in was going to be bad with a capital Bad.
Nope. I was down. A bunch. I am kind of in a cycle where one week is up a fraction of a pound and the next week is down a lot. I’m not doing anything different, it’s just working out that way.
Whatever, I’m on vacation.
That’s 10!
The RPM Challenge defines an album (for the purpose of the challenge at least) as 10 song or 35 minutes of music.
I just finished mixing my ninth and tenth songs of the month. I could stop now and the challenge would be completed. There’s still FAWM which requires four more songs, but I always think of FAWM as an afterthought, RPM is where my February Music Heart lies.
Oh yeah, and that to do list I posted earlier? I didn’t do any of it yet. In fact, I may have added a whole new song. What a moron!
Anyway, here’s song #9, which goes on the rock band half of the album…
And here’s #10 which goes on the acoustic side of the album…
And now I can go to bed before my battery dies, Nighty Night, Disney World (not until Sunday though).
Vinyl? Me?
Oh this is silly.
A fellow RPM Challenge participant informed us of a site that offers to press your music on vinyl. That’s kinda funny. There are actual recording artists trying to release their music on vinyl who can’t because there are so few manufacturing sites that the demand has created a gigantic backlog. This company is offering it though. Good for them. I hope they rake in the business.
I imagined that they would likely charge by the unit with volume discounts. I was sure their minimum order would be in the thousands. I Googled them and found this page. I was right about charging by the unit. I was wrong about the volume discounts. More importantly, I was wrong about the minimum order.
Their actual minimum order? One unit.
Gasp
They charge $30 a unit and their minimum is one unit. Good lord, how will they ever make money? Bedroom playing clowns like me will bombard them with single unit orders!
I will admit that the idea of having one of my own projects pressed on vinyl is tempting, but I don’t want to do it. Nothing I have done is worthy of even that low a cost. Maybe if I ever finish the best-of thing I’ve been talking about every March for the past five March’s I would think about it for real. For now though, it’s just a silly nerd daydream*.
*Also, there is a glaring typo on that page. I don’t think I can put any faith in their QC if they can’t even proof read. Sure, I make idiotic typos all the time (in pretty much every post) but I’m not selling anything. I don’t have to look professional, they kinda do.
To Do List
I’ve probably mentioned most of this before, but why not do it again? I put up a new blog post on the RPM Challenge website. Here’s what I wrote:
I am leaving for Disney World on Sunday before dawn so all of this crap needs to be done before I leave. I think I can do some mixing in my hotel room at night before sleep, but if I don’t get to it all I’ll be home to finish it off on the 29th. I need all of the tracking done before I go and any song that isn’t done goes onto the dropped list.
So what’s left?
Song #7 needs a bass, drums, and guitar leads.
Song #10 needs bass and drums.
Song #12 needs bass and drums.
Song #18 needs guitar leads.
That’s it. The three bass and drum tracks are just midi in GarageBand. I can do those with headphones on tonight before bed. The guitar leads will be noisy, I’ll have to find some time to do that tomorrow in between packing and vacation prepping.
No problem!
The Florida trip starts on Sunday, but my actual vacation starts in just over four hours.
I’m ready.
I’m so completely ready.
Burned
I stuck around the house this morning so that I could do a little more recording. I didn’t get to everything I wanted to get to but I’m almost done with the tracking. Tomorrow I will wrap it all up.
I was able to stay home later than usual because it is Massachusetts school vacation week, which means greatly reduced traffic, and it’s Friday which also means greatly reduced traffic. I was watching Waze as I worked and my expected travel time never topped 40 minutes.
At least it didn’t until I was actually on the road. With Waze listing my estimated time of arrival at 9:00 on the dot it suddenly recalculated my route and asked me to get the hell off of route 93 South like pronto. Uh oh. The arrival time jumped up to 9:12 and the traffic in front of me stopped dead. There was an accident between Dascomb Road and Route 125 somewhere. I was able to get off at Dascomb, but the traffic in Andover was awful and I limped back to the highway one exit further down. I ended up being 15 minutes late. Damn it. I got stuck in some traffic on 128 South too because of an accident on 128 North. Rubberneckers are jerks, am I right?
Change of subject, I am still putzing along on my Flickr Photo a Day Challenge. I took yet another picture of a guitar after I wrapped up my “session” (heh heh) this morning. That puts me at 174 days. I thought my previous best was 174 too so I was thinking of writing something goofy tomorrow when I broke my record. I looked back at the blog post where I sketched out all of my previous failures and it turns out my previous record was 154, not 174. Dumb ass. So, yippee. New World Record. 174/365.
One Day
Did I mention that for some idiotic reason I started a couple of new songs today? Well I’ve finished one of them already.
When I woke up there was a dumb strummy little riff in my head. It was a telecommute day so I was able to record it and turn it into a whole (kinda lame) song. I recorded all of the rhythm guitars to a basic guide drum track. At lunch time I wrote the lyrics and the melody and recorded the vocals and the lead guitar. After work I replaced the midi drums with a GarageBand drummer and I added the midi bass. In the hour or so before bed I mixed it and uploaded it everywhere.
Its not a very good song, but it’s kinda cool to go from nothing to finished over the course of a single day. I did the same with another new song but didn’t get a chance to add the drums and bass or do a mix. Everything that requires a microphone is done. There is a third new song that is just bass, drums, and a piano melody with some lyrics. I’m hoping I can get all of the recording for that one done before work in the morning. There is also one other song that still needs a lead guitar. Fingers crossed I get both songs finished before I have to leave for work.
Lots of Progress – #RPM2020
I did a musical ton today, including writing and recording two entirely new songs. Why the hell did I do that?
I did a ton of guitar before work this morning.
I did vocals for the two new songs during lunch.
I also did more guitars at lunch. I was burning through stuff really fast, which probably means it’s all crap.
After work I mixed a song. It’s one of the songs that I am doing two versions of, so it isn’t “new” as far as the project is concerned, but it’s new in that it didn’t exist a couple of hours ago.
Song… Number Six, I think? And Seven too!
I think this is the sixth song I’ve finished. Yeah, I have seven files and two of them are different versions of the same song, so that leave six. Yeah. I think the running time is up to round 19 minutes too.
I’m liking the guitar sounds. The rhythm used the Klon KTR and I’m in tonal love. The lead is the KTR after a Big Muff clone (Wren and Cuff Tri Pi ’70) and it’s just filthy and wonderful.
I think I knew what the lyrics were about at some point, but I don’t remember.
The RPM Challenge website is down. Raise your hand if you’re panicking.
(Robbie slowly, timidly raises a panicked hand)
ADDENDUM:
I forgot to click publish on this post and went ahead and mixed the seventh song before I realized it. So you get a bonus song in this post! Aren’t you happy? Free stuff!
This one is… meh. Enough said.
Inside the Red Head's Head 