I just counted up the days on the calendar. Today is day 27. My blog posts have all been correct. I think.
I got a lot done today. Most of which has already been mentioned on the old bloggie, but here’s a summary anyway.
Six songs got new guitar parts. Two songs got rhythm tracks and four got leads.
Three songs were mixed and are officially finished. That gives me 10 in total and by RPM Challenge rules I have a full album-in-a-month for July. I hit the 10 songs but I came up a bit short on the 35 minutes. I’ll hopefully mix at least one more before the month is out so that I can hit that goal as well.
Finally, I wrote lyrics and melodies for three songs. That gives me a total of five that are ready for vocal tracks which means I may be doing some car music in the morning. If I get out early enough maybe I’ll do a short photo walk somewhere in town as well. Maybe. We’ll see.
Tomorrow is the last day of July so we’re coming up on one third of the way through the 50/90 challenge. I am probably a little behind the pace from the last couple of years I completed this game, but that might be because I was super out in front of the pace those times. I am feeling pretty good about where I stand at the moment, but it could still very easily all come crashing down.
Should I go over to amazon and order some less expensive not-quite professional film like Kodak Gold or ColorPlus, or should I buy fewer rolls of better, professional level film like Kodak Portra 400 or Ilford HP5?
Probably go with the cheaper stuff. I am a super amateur hack, after all.
That’s the Everest ride at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. From a distance, of course. I don’t think we’re going to spend much time at Animal Kingdom when we go back in September. Half a day, maybe? We had it all planned out but I haven’t updated the calendar yet. I’ll get to it soon, of course.
Film is fun, but it’s expensive. I remember when it was super cheap. Back in the old days, before digital cameras.
I mentioned earlier that I put guitars onto six songs this morning. I’ve spent the afternoon mixing and have finished three songs. That brings the total up to 10. That means 50/90 is 20% complete. It also means I have an RPM Challenge rules (10 songs or 35 minutes) album in a month for July. Nice
I wanted to share one of the songs, just because that’s how I usually do this… but all three songs are pretty shitty over all and none of them are worth posting at all. They are just bad.
I’ll share this one though because it’s in 15/8 time so it at least has that going for it, I guess.
More guitar pictures? Hey, that must mean I worked on the music project today! Yeah, I did!
I put rhythm guitars on the only two song ideas that still needed rhythm guitars, and I put lead guitars on the only four songs that were ready for lead guitars that didn’t already have them. Nice! I have once again run out of guitar parts to record.
Next up for music today is mixing songs that are finished tracking, and writing lyrics for songs that don’t have them yet. On we go!
I played my SG today, and up until the point when I was recording leads on the fourth and final song of the morning it felt really good. That last song wasn’t the guitars fault, I am just way out of practice and I ran out of gas.
I also played through my Deluxe Reverb. No direct signals today, for me or for Baby Yoda.
I put it on the film blog too. Why? I just don’t want it to die. If I can’t just reblog from one to the other, I will once in a while just post to both.
I didn’t go out this morning. I have done my exercise and had my breakfast. I am going to take a shower and then work on music. That’s the plan. I want to go to Boston. I doubt I will, but I want to. Maybe just go for a walk during golden hour and snap a few pics? We’ll see. There’s a golden hour before sunset too, not just after sunrise. We’ll see.
First off, as a caveat, I have seen Jurassic Park. I have read Jurassic Park. No way in hell I would ever bring back a dinosaur, no sir, no how, no chance.
Having said that…
If I had to bring back a dinosaur I would want to find something small enough that if I needed to I might be able to kick it’s ass in a fight. Given, as previously stated, that all of my dinosaur knowledge comes from reading Jurassic Park, I would probably go with the Compsognathus. That’s the little guy in the movie that acts as a scavenger. Sure there’s a scene somewhere in the book, and the second movie I think, where they eat a person, but they are supposed to be the size of a turkey.
Here’s what the wikipedia has to say about them:
Compsognathus is a genus of small, bipedal, carnivorous theropod dinosaur. Members of its single species Compsognathus longipes could grow to around the size of a turkey. They lived about 150 million years ago, during the Tithonian age of the late Jurassic period, in what is now Europe.
That is my first thought. I wonder though, is there a small plant eating dinosaur I could go with? Let’s ask the google.
Acrotholus audeti is a plant eating dinosaur, about 40 kilograms and about six feet long. That’s a bit bigger than I would like, but it’s a veggie-saurus so maybe it evens out. It could take me in a fight, but it wouldn’t eat me. So maybe that’s the winner.
Still though, as previously stated. Don’t bring dinosaurs back. Just because you can do a thing, doesn’t mean you should. Just like Ian Malcolm said.
Did I miss a day here? I don’t know. Maybe I’ll count calendar dates another time, but not today. I think today is day 26.
I didn’t do anything on day 25, yesterday. Nothing at all. A totally wasted day. Today was better. I put vocals on four songs, worked out the song form and the MIDI bass and drums for two songs, and wrote lyrics and melody for two other songs.
There are two more days left in July. At the bare minimum I want to mix three more songs before the month ends. That will give me 10 songs complete, which will give me an album in a month under RPM Challenge rules. After that, we’ll start August and see what happens. As of this moment, nearing the end of day 26, I have 22 songs in progress, seven of which are mixed and finished.
It’s also the anniversary of the day that Neil Peart joined Rush, so for Rush fans it’s a two-for-one deal.
Unfortunately it is a sad day for my family. Today should have been my parents’ 56th wedding anniversary. Instead, it’s the first wedding anniversary without my mother. The first one since she passed away. My father is having a tough time today, but he’ll make it through all right. I hope he’s all right at least. He’s sad and he misses her and he just wants to be alone.
I miss my mother. We all do. We always will. Happy anniversary, mom and dad.
Oh, and to make matters worse as I was finishing up the last sentence I started having a migraine. Oh good.
Where should I bring the film cameras tomorrow? I was thinking of downtown Lowell, or downtown Andover, or any other place that I mentioned 20 times in blog posts over the last week.
But… what about Boston? Early on a Sunday morning before anyone gets up or anyone who isn’t insane drives into town. Do I dare?
Here’s a pic from Disney World because I think my film only blog is dead now that reblogging was screwed up by a WordPress.com code change that no one asked for. Or at least one that I didn’t ask for.
I thought this morning was going to be a bust. I got up to Hampton Beach in plenty of time to catch the sunrise, but there were clouds covering the horizon. Lots of them. I thought I had wasted a morning. I didn’t though. Gravitational lensing and all that? Could be.
I took a few shots before the appointed sunrise time, just because I was there and the ocean was there and we were there together and why not, right?
The waves were super wimpy, but the sky was just spectacular. I set up the tripod and put the digital camera on it for some long exposures. I’m not sure why, but none of them came out. I used shutter priority and set the time to 30 seconds. I didn’t try anything shorter than that so it’s my fault, but at least I can blame the… shit… I forgot to drop the ISO down to 100. I keep it set at 800 when I am at home. Okay. I can’t blame shutter priority, it was all my fault. Sorry about that, folks.
Anyway, I took out the ebay Nikon with Dad’s zoom lens and I was putzing around with that when suddenly I noticed the freakin’ sun was visible, popping out of the water. I guess I didn’t waste the morning after all!
Success! Two sunrise shoots in less than one week. I think I am set for sunrise at the ocean pics for a while then. Excellent.
One thing that’s fun at this spot on Hampton Beach is catching the sun reflecting off the windows across the street. It was less impressive than other visits but it was okay. I was missing my old zoom lens at this point, but I had a zoom on the film camera so I may get a good view when I get the film developed at some point in the vastly distant future.
I took a bunch of sun and water shots with the film camera. I expect they will all suck, mostly because the light meter on the Nikon FG-20 is a bitch to read. Manually focusing with that camera is also a bitch, but everything I was looking at was at infinity so that made it easier. Hopefully everything will come out okay, but we’ll have to wait and see.
I had planned to make a second stop on this morning’s photography adventure. I was going to go to downtown Lowell and walk around with one of the film cameras. Unfortunately for my plans my bladder was kinda full. I changed plans to stop at a spot in Andover where you can get up close to a railroad track, but I needed to change from route 495 South to route 93 South and I accidentally got on route 93 North, which is the way to get home. I was kind of on autopilot because I was listening to the live tracks on the deluxe edition of Rush Permanent Waves because today is Geddy Lee’s birthday and I guess I just distracted myself.
I decided I would go home, pee, and then go out for some car music. When I got home, Jen suggested I go back to bed because it was only 6:30am or so and I was going to need a nap at some point, so I went back to bed for a couple of hours and then did car music.
Inside the Red Head's Head 