Category: Guitar

Now What

I probably wrote this exact same post last March, but it needs to be stated again.

I have finished the RPM Challenge and FAWM. I’m very proud of my goofy self, despite the fact that the music I made isn’t very good. I wrote and recorded 14 songs in less than 28 days. It feels like a nice accomplishment.

Now what?

Last year I made a list of a big batch of unfinished songs I’d started in 2007 and 2008, as well as a few newer songs that needed to either be re-recorded or re-written and decided that I’d pick them off one at a time over the course of March and April or so in order to keep the happy RPM vibe alive for a while.

I finished recording 2/6 remaining 2007 left overs, and started tracking the other four, which are all at various stages of incompletion. I re-recorded one song, and re-wrote another. In November I started writing two new songs and have finished one of them.

For 2013 I have two little ideas on what to do next. One is to continue picking off the unfinished songs. There are eight of them, including the one from this past November. I also recently found a cd full of random songs I had written and played along with Mike and Maria back in the late 90’s. some of those songs might deserve a long awaited recording. I’ve picked two to start with, maybe three… or four.

So that’s the plan going forward. Finish more of the left overs, record some more ancient artifacts, and once in a while actually write something from scratch.

Lets see how long it takes me to run out of steam this year.

RPM Day 26

I know it’s late for this, but I’ve had a busy day.  Deal, okay?

I added the final lead guitar parts to four of the remaining six songs.  I haven’t made a final mix of any of them yet.  I might do that tonight, or I might wait until tomorrow.  I’m so close to finishing that I can almost taste it.  I should probably start thinking of a cover, and maybe a title.  What do you think of Rock Music for Old People?

RPM Day 24

Holy crap!  It’s the 24th already??

I finished two more songs today.  Aren’t you pleased?  I bet you all can’t wait for March 1st, right?

This song was declared finished, then yesterday was declared unfinished, and then after a remix today is again declared finished.  I was going to redo the vocals, but I decided I probably couldn’t do any better on the next attempt so I just fixed some things that I didn’t like about the previous mix.

This next one is actually one that is finished for the first and last time.  Please don’t be scared off by the very long fade in.  Sometimes the prog nerd in me takes over when I least expect it.  There is a song there somewhere, I promise.  Also, I told myself that I was going to keep this as a guitar/bass/drums/vocal project with the occasional keyboard part thrown in as an exception.  Well, this one sort of centers on an electric piano (although it sort of gets pushed around by the bass on the right side and the rhythm guitar on the left) and it has a sax solo.  Yup, I was listening to this on the way to the grocery store this morning and I sort of sighed reluctantly when I realized that I had to put some sax on this one.  My days of being a competent sax player are long, long past me.  The pitch is a little suspect, but what are you going to do?

I might try to sneak in more lead guitar tonight.  I have two more songs that are ready for it.  We’ll see what the day brings.  My fingers aren’t feeling all that great right now and I need a break.

RPM Day 23

It’s almost 8:00pm here and I haven’t done my stupid daily update that is boring all of you to tears.  Never fear.  In the words of the Yardbirds, Here’s ‘Tis.

Earlier this week I had announced that this particular song:

was complete and done and finished.  Today I changed my mind.  I remixed it.  It’s not much different, just a little more care was taken with it.  Oh, and I put some seriously retarded goofiness into it as well.  Gotta love idiots who put flangers onto drums, right?  Am I right?

This little song:

Was not finished, but now it is.  I used a fuzz box.  How have I made it this far into life without owning a real fuzz box?  Fuzz boxes and Phasers are the big overused stomp box gimmicks for this year’s project.

This particular little ditty:

Was also not finished, but now it is.  This holds the distinction of being the only song in the batch of 14 that did not have any work done on an iOS device.  This was all done on the full GarageBand on my MacBook Pro.  I think you can hear the difference.  I am a little sad that I didn’t do the whole thing on a computer now.  The iPad and the iPhone are just so damn convenient   I mean it would have been tough to have written a song in the car in a parking lot waiting for a take out order to be ready if I had to do it all on an actual computer, right?  Am I right?

So that’s three songs that are finished, finished, finished.  There is one other that used to be finished but I have decided it will get a new vocal take on Monday.  There are two other songs that have vocals that I want to re-record, at least in part, that still need lead guitar parts.  Then there are seven (7) more that don’t have any vocals yet.  RPM requires 10 songs.  FAWM requires 14.  I have 14 in progress, I could call FAWM done now but I won’t.  Finishing the vocals for a total of 10 songs on Monday is definitely doable.  Getting up to a total of 14?  That’s a little more difficult.

We shall see.

RPM Day 17

My useless streak is over.  My stupid streak is in full swing.

I believe that I have all the rhythm guitar parts recorded.  I’ve been going pretty minimal this year.  Only one song has more than one rhythm part, and I’ve used my Les Paul for everything.  No acoustics or 335 at all.  I think I’m going to stick to the one guitar plan throughout, but who knows.

I still need to write one more section of the mini-suite thing (which still could be dropped in favor of using the A and C sections as a stand alone song) and to arrange the last five songs.  Those are tonight’s goals.  After that its vocals time, which is where my RPM projects normally die.  We shall see.

On the stupidity front, I did the recording last night in the dining room.  I cleaned off the table and gave it a quick wash.  Then I folded up my iPad’s smart case to use as a stand while I did my thing.  When I was finished I closed the cover and put it away.  Later that night I went to check my email and there was a spot of some kind of incredibly sticky Indian food sauce that I missed when I washed the table.  It got onto the inside of the cover, and when the cover was closed it got on the screen.  Crap!  I have to get something to clean the screen with, and I’m just going to replace the stupid case.  I’m pissed at myself.

 

Oh we’ll.

RPM Day 15

I did nothing yesterday. I sort of half heatedly tried to write lyrics but nothing came to me immediately and I stopped trying. That was the extent of my musical adventures yesterday. Sorry. I’m hoping for a big rhythm guitar recording push over the long weekend.

RPM Day 14

I had another slow, but not entirely unproductive day yesterday.  Song #13 is currently planned as the four part suite I talked about in yesterday’s update.  As of right now, parts A, C, and D have been sketched out.  A and C are on my iPad, while D is on my iPhone.  Again, I love living in the future.  B will need to be developed on my MacBook because I want to use a weird time signature and the iOS version of Garageband can’t do that.  I haven’t put any guitars onto these projects yet.  Maybe tonight or tomorrow I’ll get to that.

I also threw together another new project on my iPhone yesterday morning.  The structure is similar to another song that’s in the works, but if I should chose to keep it it will be song #14… which means FAWM could be completed this year.  I suppose that technically FAWM is complete now.  I have in fact written music for 14 new songs.  However, I don’t like to call the challenge complete until I have 14 complete songs, including lyrics and melodies.  That’s going to be the hard part this year, even more than usual.

My cold keeps getting worse.  I can barely talk right now, never mind sing.  I had planned to sneak some singing in here and there in the short space of time between my wife leaving for work and me leaving for work, but we’ve been car pooling on non-kid days.  I do have a vacation day scheduled for late in the month.  Hopefully I’ll be better by then, but I don’t think recording vocals for 14 songs in one day is really doable.

I’m going to have to figure something out.

RPM Day 13

Hello and welcome to day 13 of the 2013 RPM Challenge. Yesterday was not a complete waste, but it was close. The Bruins played the Rangers and lost in the shootout after a dramatic third period come back. This past weekend’s new episode of The Walking Dead reached iTunes and became available to my season pass. I had to watch that, right?

I did put a little more thought into the idea of a new suite type thingie. When I say “suite” I am thinking of something like “A Day in the Life” where you have a John Lennon song with a bit of a Paul McCartney song shoved into the middle. This time I’m thinking of three song fragments making up four sections of the suite. The A section will be a more or less complete song. I actually wrote something for this last night. It’s slow and riffy In E minor. The B section will be faster and in an odd time signature. I’ll probably do what I always do in this cases and write something in 7/8. I’ll change the key too, probably either A minor or B minor. The C section will be a reprisal of the A section, only shorter. Finally the D section will be something completely unrelated. I’m thinking really, really slow, quiet, as trippy as a non-drug user can make it, and instrumental. It will probably just end up being a long guitar solo. I’m also thinking of maybe going modal for this part. Mixolydian maybe?

Coming up with the B and D sections are my goal for tonight, but we have a few very important personal things to take care of today, so I might have to put it off until tomorrow.

I’m still thinking positive, but at the same time I’ve never had to record a vocal while suffering from a cold. This might all be a waste of time this year. Who knows.

RPM Day 11

It is official… I am a Mac user again!  I just opened up this page to write my daily RPM entry and I couldn’t remember the date.  I looked down at my task bar, expecting to see the calendar icon with today’s date on it (as I would if I were on a Macintosh) but it wasn’t there.  Why wasn’t it there?  I’m on a Windows 7 box at work.

Yesterday was mostly spent celebrating my step son’s 10th birthday.  He had a party for friends scheduled on Saturday but it was postponed by the blizzard.  Yesterday was a little gathering for my and Jen’s families.  We had a lot of fun.  The niece and nephews are a blast.  We were only missing one nephew as my sister had to stay home with him due to a fever.  We celebrate his birthday next week though.

There was cake and presents and food and fun and no sign of the RPM challenge other than my guitar sitting there in the living room… throwing off waves and waves of guilt.  “You should be playing me,” it was telepathically telling me.  “You should be recording rhythm guitar parts right now.”  No, I thought back.  You are no longer the most important thing in my life like you were in my youth.  Now you take a back seat to my family and friends.  You are still special, oh Mister Guitar, but you are no longer #1.

That being said, after the party was over and the fun was done, I doodled out another song idea on my iPhone and then recorded the rhythm guitar for that project and two others that were sitting on my iPad.  There are still two unfinished things on the iPad, but I am going to scrap them.  Considering how bad most of my crap is, these must be really horrible if I am scrapping them so soon.

I currently have nine songs arranged with rhythm guitars recorded, and three sets of phrases that are not yet arranged.  That’s 12 potential songs.  Two more and I am set to complete FAWM.  I just need to write lyrics and melodies and get all of the various into the can, as they say.

There are 17 days left.  It should be easy, right?

Did I mention I woke up with another cold this morning?

Time to panic!