Category: Guitar

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.

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.
173/365

I did vocals for the two new songs during lunch.
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I also did more guitars at lunch. I was burning through stuff really fast, which probably means it’s all crap.
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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.

Plans are for Wimps

I said I was going to record more sax tonight. I even wrote a 50 page essay on it in the previous post.

Guess what I did…

I said I wasn’t going to add guitar to the acoustic songs until everything else was done. Guess what I did…

Two of the four electric songs that needed lead guitar now have lead guitar. Three of the acoustic song that only had sax now have lead guitar too.

My finger tips hurt.

Oh What a Relief – #RPM2020

This morning I packed my computer, a microphone, a pair of headphones, and a USB interface into the car and drove off to a parking spot behind The Loop in Methuen and recorded four songs worth of vocals.  I had the lyrics and melodies written already so it wasn’t too painful an experience.

When I was done (meaning, when the battery on my MacBook was approaching death and I had to go pee so bad I could taste it) I went home and started working on lyrics and melodies for the last four songs.  The first of the two were kind of interesting and one of them I purposely made pretty difficult as a bit of a challenge.  After those two I was really getting tired so I threw the last two together pretty quickly and they are just as bad as that sounds.

After that I hung out with my step son for a while, and made some late lunch/early dinner for the love of my life, and then (after double checking that the MacBook’s battery was back to 100%) I went back to The Loop (a different section of the lot behind the building this time) and cranked out the last four.  I got a little over confident for a bit and a couple of the songs have THREE part harmonies instead of my usual two.  Sick.

So where does RPM stand now… Four songs mixed, three songs ready to mix, three songs needing saxophone, and four needing lead guitar.  Once the full boat is mixed I am going to go back to six of the acoustic songs and add bass guitar, drums, and lead guitar and then remix them.  If I don’t finish that by March 1st I won’t worry about it, I just need to make sure I get a complete mix of each song before I start messing with alternates.  Well, more alternates.  I already have two different mixes of one of the acoustic songs.

I need to have all of the remaining guitar and saxophone finished before we leave for Disney World.  I will have my MacBook with me on the trip so I can sneak in a mix before bed each night, and if I am out of my mind crazy I might even sneak a couple in on the plane.  Then I will take full advantage of the leap year day and mix anything that’s left over once we’re home again.

Is any of this stuff good?  Well, no.  That’s not the point though.  The point of RPM, as always, is that it didn’t used to exist but now it does exist.

There’s still the issue of the half-a-song left for FAWM.  FAWM is 14 songs in 28 days, so for the leap year they say it’s 14.5 songs in 29 days.  Does that mean I have to sneak in one more?  If I do it’s either going to be simple, or 36 minutes of noodling and noise for the Blind Chaos thing I mentioned a few days ago.

I wouldn’t say I’m almost done, but I’m past the one humongous hurdle with time to spare.  I feel happy.

In closing, here is the view from this evening’s “studio.”

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Song #3

First, a picture from last night that has nothing to do with anything you will hear on the audio file…
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Right, now that that’s out of the way…

 

Now to the song.  Allow me to quote the description I used on alonetone, though I’ve written about all of this before…

Long story…
or, What the hell is a cajon anyway?

I listen to a podcast about cover bands. One of the hosts is a drummer and he plays in an acoustic group. He said he played his cajon at the acoustic gigs. I thought, what the hell is a cajon?

Google informed me that it’s this box thing that you sit on and smack with your hands. There is a hole in it somewhere and even some snares and depending on where you whack it you get a bass drum-ish sound or a snare drum-ish sound. It’s kinda neat.

Fast forward a few months and I’m sitting alone in Epcot center, just outside of Soarin’ (true story) and I was tapping away on GarageBand on my iPhone trying to come up with something different from my usual power trio arrangements. Turns out one of the percussion settings in the drummer function had a cajon. I started thinking like a hippie in a coffee house and thought, cajon, acoustic guitar, and cello. Well, GarageBand’s string sounds are crap and the cello was scratched in it’s place I thought maybe I could dust off my alto sax and use that as the soloist. I hadn’t played my sax since 2013 (I think) and it was time.

Nothing ever became of that Epcot Center song idea, but when RPM 2020 came around I came back to that idea. I decided to make half of my album the usual rock band stuff, and the other half this goofy coffee shoppe thing. If time permits I am going to do a rock band mix of the coffee shoppe songs too, but we’ll see.

This song is about how the US Senate gave the fascist in the white house legal permission to rig elections.

Isn’t that a great story?  I’ve still never seen a cajon in the flesh.

Two Songs, Three Mixes

First there’s this… A 12-bar blues in the verse and a chunk of a 12-bar blues in the chorus.  This is the only electric song that I didn’t double track the rhythm guitars, but I got to spread out the stereo thanks to running through two amps which is about as awesome as it gets.

Now the screwball part of the post.  This is the first song from the acoustic half of the project.  It’s the only one of the seven that I didn’t put any percussion on (what the hell is a cajon, anyway?) so it’s just two tracks of guitar, two (actually three) tracks of vocals, and one track of sax….

Now here’s the same song with the sax replaced by an electric guitar and bass and drums added.  I call the first mix the Coffee Shoppe Mix, and the second mix the Bar Band Mix although I don’t think I wrote that onto the file name….

….and with that, I have two songs complete.  I just have to decide which version of the acoustic song goes on the final album.

Facebook Memories

This picture popped up in my Facebook Memories today. Me and Kevin In the proto-Lizardfish days of 2012.

Look at how few pedals I had. Isn’t that cute? Wah, volume, a tuner, and the amp’s channel switch. It was so widdle.

What Else?

I’m so hyper focused on music right now that the world is passing me by.  What am I missing?

The New Hampshire primary was last night.  The top three places were all held by people I could reasonably see myself voting for on Super Tuesday.  Sanders was my pick last time around.  Buttigieg seems fine to me.  I’d like to see a little more grass roots and a little less big money, but policy wise he’s fine.  My step son has done some volunteer work for his campaign and I am bursting with pride over it.  Klobuchar was a surprise but I’ve liked her since the day she announced her candidacy.  I have this vague image in my head of her beating the living shit (figuratively speaking) out of the people who are making a bad joke out of the Constitution. I see her as someone who could clean up the shit show.

Warren has been my main focus and I’m a little disappointed at her showing so far.  I saw this primary as a Warren vs Sanders showdown with Biden kinda peeking in from the sidelines.  There’s still time for Warren to improve relative to the others, but if we have to settle for her as our esteemed US Senator, I’m fine with that.

Realistically, whoever ends up winning the nomination is getting my vote and at least a chunk of my money.  That nazi piece of shit in the white house has to go.  Of course he won’t.  The Senate has already approved his attempts at rigging the election, so the very concept of a legitimate election has already been flushed down the toilet.  He’ll rig it and he will win it.  Our democracy is already dead, I’m just clinging to the tiny shreds that are left behind.  Mostly just out of habit.

At least the Bruins are still doing well.  That awful dip in the standings prior to the all star break is going to bite them on the ass.  Their huge lead is gone and Tampa is right on their heels.  I was very pleased with their play of late, but losing to Detroit really grinds my gears.  We get the Canadiens tonight.  There are few things that could cheer me up as my country descends into a fascist dictatorship as much as watching the Bruins beat the holy hell out of Montreal.  No pressure though, okay Bruins.  You just go out there and have fun.

A week or so ago, Larry and I were having a discussion about various Quentin Tarantino movies and he made a joke about a scene in Kill Bill and it went right over my head.  I saw both volumes in the theater and had never re-watched them.  I thought they were both fantastic and I loved every second of them… I just never revisited them again.  I fixed that error over the weekend and watched both movies.  They are just so good.  The violence is way over the top and the story doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but every scene is perfect.  I forgot about so much.  In my memory the first movie is just blahblahblah Crazy 88’s and the second movie is just blahblahblah Superman’s disguise.  I forgot about all the other twistedly delightful stuff.  I kinda want to watch them both again, but instead I’ll watch the two movies I still haven’t seen: Hateful 8 and Django Unchained.

Note: I don’t think “twistedly” is actually a word.

Okay, I have to mention music again.  I can’t avoid it right now.  I did some recording this morning.  After being late to work on Monday because I stayed home a little too long, and late to work on Tuesday even though I left on time, I came up with something to try and keep me on track.  After I set up my laptop to record some voice parts, I brought up Waze on my phone.  I put in my work address as my destination and I left the phone on the table next to me.  As I worked through the two songs for today I kept an eye on the estimated time of arrival.  When it reached 8:45 I packed up and left.  It worked.  I was on time today.

Unfortunately when I was packing up I put my MacBook onto the stand on which it sits on my desk in the office (grammar, bitches), turned off the lights, and left the room.  A couple of minutes later I heard a bang.  What?  My laptop FELL OFF THE STAND!  It was still working okay, but it scared the crap out of me.  I managed to back up this morning’s work onto an external drive, but if my lappy is dead I might be in big musical trouble.  I know it’s not dead, everything was functioning within normal parameters… still… how scary is that.  BANG!

Friday is Valentine’s Day.  We don’t have any plans.  I’ll see if my beloved love wants to do anything after work.  It’s also a kid weekend so my step son will be around.  He went to a mock UN weekend last week and I can’t wait to hear about it.  Tonight will be the first time I see him since he came back.

I went to the gym last night.  I am planning on going again tonight and tomorrow night and as many days as I can between now and Disney World.  I need to build up some stamina for long walks.  I’m still stuck at the 15-minutes-before-my-back-starts-complaining point.  Every little bit helps though.

What else… I’m thinking about playing a little saxophone tonight.  If you hear crying it means I can’t pull it off anymore.  I was a music major and sax was my primary instrument of study.  I haven’t touched it in years, but normally when I start playing again a lot of the old skill is there.  What isn’t there is the muscles in my jaw.  I get a few minutes of solid playing followed by fatigue so bad I can’t play anymore.  My plan for the next week and a half is play a little, rest a little, repeat.  That’s assuming I’ve still got it.  Boy, do I hope I’ve still got it.

When you are 48 years old the phrase, “Boy, do I hope I’ve still got it” comes into play almost every day for a seemingly infinite number of topics, wouldn’t you say?