I think I like this one. In fact this might be my favorite of the bunch. That’s not saying much. My heart hasn’t been in it this year and I’ve been just going through the motions and as a result everything sucks even more than usual. So I guess this is in the running for song that sucks the least? I don’t know. It doesn’t have a “track #1” vibe to me though. It might end up as track #2. Maybe? We’ll see. There’s still a long long way to go before I have to worry about stuff like running order.
Author: robertjames1971
I'm wicked tall.
Two Songs Down
Two songs down, somewhere between eight and 13 to go.
This one is okay. That’s about the best review I could give it. Okay.
I think I’ll mix one more and then go down cellar and start adding leads to more songs. That sounds like a good move.
Frozen Car Music
Holy crap, is it cold out there. I just got home from car vocals at the movie theater parking lot and I am frozen to the core. It was six degrees out when I left. It rocketed up to 10 degrees by the time I was done. Heatwave! I would record a song, then listen back to the entire thing as an excuse to turn the car on and run the heater for 3-5 minutes or so. Once I forgot to turn the car off and recorded a whole song worth of vocals with the heater’s fan on full blast. So… professionalism, yeah?
I put vocals on four songs. That was all I had lyrics for. It brings me up to 11 songs with vocals and that means I will have an RPM submission this year. Thanks, I appreciate all the applause.
I currently have two songs ready to mix, eight songs ready for lead guitars, three songs ready for lyrics, and one song that’s still just MIDI bass and drums. It’s going to be a long day.
First though, breakfast and an episode of Star Trek Deep Space Nine… while my laptop finishes adjusting to room temperature.
Four Days to Go
As posted on that stupid tumblr that I don’t know why I still use…
Four days to go, counting today. I’m leaving for some car music in a few minutes. I just need to fill up my water bottle first.
I have four songs ready for vocals. I can get through them all this morning. I have four more songs that still need lyrics. I am considering the possibility of dropping three of them now. They all suck more than my sucky songs usually suck. Do I really want to expel energy necessary to finish them when I know I am not going to use them?
Vocals in the car this morning, then lots of lead guitars later in the day, and maybe a mix or two (or three) after that. Then do it all again tomorrow.
Sounds like a plan is forming. We’ll see how it goes.
Cat Meet Deer
We had 12 deer in the yard just now. Twelve.
Blurry Backgrounds Make Life Worth Living
Random Thoughts
How do you tell if your two cats are playing with each other, or actively tying to kill each other? One second they appear to be trying their hardest to tear each other’s throats out with their teeth, and the next second they are curled up together, grooming each other. I don’t get it. All I know for sure is that the kitten likes to stir up shit any chance she gets, and every now and then the bigger cat will turn the tables and ambush the kitten in ways that nearly make her shit herself. It’s scary and entertaining at the same time.
Harry’s coming home tonight. Just for one night. He’s having computer troubles and Jen is going to troubleshoot with him. That’s all. It’s going to be great to have him here though, even if it is a super short visit.
The weather sucks. It’s going to be super cold tomorrow, and we have another snow storm on the horizon. Hopefully I’ll be through with the car music by then. Hopefully the weather will start to improve once February ends, but we all know that Spring doesn’t come to New England anymore until mid-May at best. I want Summer. I want to move to San Diego where it’s summer all the time.
The Red Sox are playing their first Spring Training game right now. The annual beat-the-hell-out-of-a-college-team kick off to the grapefruit league season. They have a 5-3 lead over Northeastern University in the middle of the sixth inning. I am looking forward to the Red Sox season, even though it is clear we have another last place finish in our future. The fun part about Spring Training is the clean slate. Sure, our roster is a nightmare, but until you start losing games that matter, the possibilities are still very much endless. Speaking of San Diego, now that Xander Bogarts is a Padre, maybe it’s time to become a fan for real. I mean it is one of only three non-Boston stadiums I’ve ever been to. There’s personal history there. Maybe.
So television. I am currently trying to keep up with the following shows: The Last of Us, Star Wars The Bad Batch, Star Trek Picard, Poker Face, The Flash, Extraordinary, and You (season three, I am a full season behind). I may also get back into Star Trek Discovery but I’m a full season behind there too. The Mandalorian is coming back next week so we’ll add that to the mix as well. Yellowjackets season two is on the horizon too. On top of those shows, I have a weird compulsion to start binge re-watching The X-Files and Star Trek Deep Space Nine as well. Why am I torturing myself like this?
I haven’t shot any film since Disney World. I blame the weather. I still have a bunch of rolls saved up. I had way more than I needed for Disney so there’s still a nice supply available. I want to get some more black and white film to play with too, and once the weather starts clearing I am going to go WAY off the deep end, with both film and digital. I just need to find a way to convince people to go with me. Like a photography club or something, but just with people I actually know rather than random folks in some online club.
I want to go wander around Boston. I want to go wander around New York. I want to go wander around the mountains in New Hampshire and Vermont. I want to go wandering around the coast of Maine. I want to go wander around the coast of Massachusetts. I want to go back to Washington. I want to go back to San Diego and Los Angeles. I want to go to San Francisco for the first time. I want to go to Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington for the first time too. I just want to go places. Covid screwed us out of three years of exploring. I want to make up for lost time.
Okay. Back to work, Robert. Only 2.5 hours to go until the weekend when you’ll see Harry and do a mountain of work on music and spend quality time with the love of your life. Get on with it!
Crappy Weather and Crappy Singing
We got a couple of inches of snow yesterday followed by some rain and a drop in temperature which turned the snow to ice. I went out after work and shoveled and it was like shoveling bricks. It was not fun. I was happy that the driveway and both cars and the path to the garbage barrels and the area around the fire hydrant were all cleared.
Then later, around bed time, it started snowing again. Not much, but it quickly turned to rain again and immediately froze. When I got up this morning everything I had shoveled yesterday had been magically transformed into an ice skating rink. Yippee. I was also ran out of ice melt last night. Oh goodie.
I did not let it stop me though. I hacked the layer of ice off of one of the cars and proceeded to drive to a not-so-empty parking lot for some car music! I say not so empty because there were two humongous trucks trying to plow the layer of ice off of the lot. You can probably hear them on the vocal tracks. Yippee, again.
I got through four songs and oh my goodness do they suck. That brings me up to seven songs with vocals, with eight more to go. Only two of those eight have lyrics though, so I need to do a lot of work tonight. There must be another car music in the morning. Fortunately tomorrow is Saturday so I can spare a little more time, and if needed I can go out more than once. I can do the same on Sunday. Assuming I can get all of the lyrics written (and one song still needs rhythm guitars as well) then I will have all of the vocals down with a couple of days to spare. Then it’s just lead guitar and mixing, which will likely take a lot of time to get through. I’m already sort of sorting things into two buckets: Songs that might be useable for the final album, and songs that most likely will not be useable. There are two on the later list. Drop candidates, as it were, and one on the bubble. The rest of them are bad, but not so bad as to throw away… maybe. We’ll see how I feel when they are mixed.
My studio view today is thusly:
Also, a pic of half of my audience for the day:
And now for a few shots of the scenic drive to the not-so-empty parking lot:
So the musical plan for later tonight is record some leads, record one song’s rhythm guitars, mix a song or two, and write a shit ton of lyrics and melodies.
Yeah… I can do that. Some of it at least.
St Mary’s
St Mary’s cemetery is not the same place as St Mary cemetery, but we have family in both.
Gotta Keep Pushing
Twice this week I was going to go out and do car music before work only to be screwed over by snow. On Tuesday I probably could have done it but today there was no chance. Damn it.
I did the same thing I did on Tuesday though. If I couldn’t go out and sing, I’d stay home and record some guitars. Last night I added a couple of noodles that are now song #15. I wanted to work on lyrics last night but 24 bars of bass guitar riffs was as far as I got. After finishing my faux running (yogging) and watching episode two of Star Trek Picard this morning I worked those little bass riffs into a song form and recorded the rhythm guitars. Then I put leads onto the only two songs that are currently ready for leads. Nothing special as far as playing is concerned, but both songs are now ready to mix. Just before I punched into work I added lyrics to song #9 as well. I now have five songs ready to sing and will get to as many as I can before work tomorrow. Assuming mother nature doesn’t kick me in the balls for a third time.
Obligatory pictures:
The plan for tonight is to try and write lyrics. I currently have six songs that are ready for lyrics and one more that isn’t quite ready yet. I’m at 15 songs now when I only need 10. Two of the 15 are especially crappy and might go unfinished. We’ll have to see what happens over the next five days.
I will complete this project if it takes everything I have. I am not blowing my RPM Challenge success streak.
