Category: Guitar

My Ears are Killing Me

I said I was going to celebrate my 53rd birthday with a work-on-music day and that’s just what I’ve done.

I have worked on new recordings of five old songs. Two songs got lead guitar tracks. Two songs got rhythm guitar tracks and vocals. One final song got bass, drums, rhythm guitars, and vocals. I don’t know if the clock is going to cooperate or not, but the three songs that did not get lead guitars today might still get lead guitars today.

I was home alone for all of this guitar playing… so I played through my Fender Deluxe Reverb… the best amp I’ve ever owned… and I played loud. Very loud. The decibel meter on my Apple Watch topped 100 db once. Yeah. My ears are killing me. Oh glorious noise!

251/365

Robin seems pretty sad about the news about Steve Albini but she agrees that playing the guitar at a disturbing volume is as good a way to honor his memory as any.

More Guitar

Two days in a row. It is silly how sneaking in 20-30 minutes of guitar playing before work in the morning can just brighten up the whole day. Silly and a little weird, maybe.

I mentioned last night that I started working on a new song for the re-recording project thing. I put rhythm guitars on it this morning after I did my daily exercise and had a quick breakfast. Done and done. I used direct outs from two of my amps again. That’s the norm now. Oh well. It sounded pretty good today. It sounded pretty good yesterday too, I think.

Here’s the obligatory guitar pic. Let’s use it for today’s photo a day project as well. Day 243 of 365. Actually… 366, but we won’t worry about that until the end of the line.

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Another Song Ready

While sitting in the living room tonight being totally annoyed that there was neither a Bruins game nor a Red Sox game (WTF?) I took my frustrations out on another song for the re-recording project. Now I have a song that is ready to get some rhythm guitar tracks tomorrow… assuming I get up early enough and have time to play some guitar before work. We’ll see.

Stupid NHL and MLB both scheduling a night off for their Boston teams on the same night. Jerks. Also, for the record, I don’t care about the Celtics so if they are playing tonight don’t bother trying to cheer me up by mentioning them. If they are playing tonight it will probably annoy me even more.

Pre-Work Guitars

I mentioned last night that I was hoping to get some guitar playing in before work.

This morning? I got some guitar playing in before work.

I put rhythm guitars on the song I worked on last night, and lead guitars on the only other song I had in progress. I think I might have a little time to add vocals on Thursday morning, so I’m hoping to start another song tonight and put rhythm guitars onto it before work tomorrow. Wednesday is an in the office day so there’s no time for anything there. If I apply myself (HA! Fat chance of that!) I might be able to get to three songs ready to mix by early next week. That would be cool.

The current project is updating, editing, rewriting, and rerecording songs that were originally written for the 2021 Fifty Songs in Ninety Days challenge. I picked 10 songs to focus on. I might decide along the way that some of them are unworthy, but as of now we’re going with 10. Two songs in progress. Many more to mess around with.

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242/365

New Music Playlist

There. Finally. I added a new music playlist to the My Music page. Quarantine Tunes Volume Seven is done and done.

This is a bandcamp.com playlist but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not buy it. I only use bandcamp for these things because the playlists look all nice on wordpress.com pages and they seem to work okay too. At least they did the last time I messed around with one. These recordings are absolutely not worth paying for. Believe me. Listen to your hearts content (which, obviously includes not listening at all. That’s 100% fine with me. I kinda suck at this stuff), but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not buy the album. Thanks.

Food Fun

My staff and I just went out for a group lunch. I ate too fast. It was really good and I got carried away so now my gastric bypass surgery’d stomach is complaining. I am dumb. I am bad at following directions. I am bad at eating in this new stomach pouch kind of world.

Oh well.

Here’s my photo a day challenge pic for today. I took it just after I finished my morning exercise at around 6:00am today. It might end up being the cover of Quarantine Tunes Volume Eight. The jury is still out on that one though.

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236/365

Game Two: The Bruins Lose

The Leafs came back to take game two of the best of seven first round series. If Swayman plays goal in game three and wins, will we have a full blown goalie controversy? We’ll see. Game three is Wednesday (I think… isn’t it?)

Anyway, let’s chase those hockey blues away by listening to a newly mixed crappy song. Quarantine Tunes Volume Seven is done save for figuring out the actual running order for the 11 songs. More on that to come in the future though. For now, here’s the last song.

Two-Two-Two Songs in One!

A couple of years ago I was working on the Record Every Month Challenge and I had a couple of song ideas going at once. I didn’t realize until well into the recording process that the two songs had almost identical chord changes in their respective choruses. Ooops. I could have done the right thing and dropped one of them, but instead I leaned into my lack of creativity and used a line of lyric in both songs and turned them into parts one and two. Doofus, yes, but what do you expect?

Fast forward to the current re-recording project I’ve been torturing the universe with and I thought it would be further fun to sort of duct tape the two songs into one and record the whole shebang as if it were one longer song.

Done and done. I just finished mixing it. Here you go, universe. Enjoy my shitty song!

I Played Today

I played some guitar this morning before work. I have a nice, positive feeling of accomplishment. Granted what I needed to do was practice for this weekend’s band rehearsal but instead I recorded lead guitar parts for two songs. Quarantine Tunes Volume Seven is done with tracking. I have to mix the two songs I worked on today and then it is on to Volume Eight… which I already have one song that is a guitar solo away from being ready to mix.

I played through the direct output of two amps today. No noise. Headphones only. It is most definitely not as much fun as cranking out some actual sound and moving some air around, but it’s still always great to play. I used my ES-335, as you can see in the obligatory photo…

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232/365