The car was packed up… did the band practice happen? It’s been so very long…
Yes! Yes it did happen! All four of us were there. The first band practice in ages!
Yes, we sucked but who cares! It was fun and we weren’t nearly as bad as we could (should) have been. We have tentative plans to try again next week. Fingers crossed, folks. A few practices… get back into playing shape… relearn a bunch of songs… book a gig. That’s the hope. We’ll see how it goes.
I don’t want to feel like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football but… that might be the case.
We have a band practice scheduled for tomorrow afternoon. Will it happen? I keep getting my hopes up and they keep getting canceled at the last minute. Should I be excited about this or should I be resigned to the fact that it’s going to fall through.
I don’t want to feel like Charlie Brown. I am choosing to be excited, but maybe not quite as excited as I was the last bunch of times.
So which guitar should I bring to the practice? Whichever it is, it’s going to need new strings. I’ll decide in the morning.
Let’s see… how did I make out on the last day?
I put lead guitars onto two songs. I mixed eight, count ’em, eight songs. I then sorted all of the songs into three lists.
Oddly, the third list was very short. I think I ended up with nine songs on the first list, seven songs on the second list, and four on the third. After sorting was done I re-listened to everything on the second list to find at least one that I could put on the final album. I ended up keeping four. There were two that were easy decisions. That put me at 11 keepers. I figured 12 was a better number so I went back and forth between two B list songs but I couldn’t decide so I kept them both.
Next, I “borrowed” a photograph of good ol’ Punxsutawney Phil from wikipedia and used an iOS app to turn it into a very lame album cover. Then I listened through the 13 keepers again and came up with something that passed for a half decent running order. From there, the only thing left to do was go to rpmchallenge.com and submit it.
Done and done. See you next year, RPM Challenge fans.
Done. I whittled the 20 songs down to 13. I was thinking of using 12 but I couldn’t make up my mind between the last two so I kept them both. I just sent it off to rpmchallenge.com and my name is now on the list of winners. Yippee. 14 successful RPM Challenges in a row. What a hero I am. Huzzah and shit.
Now lets see if I can embed a playlist, shall we?
Tracking is finished. I added lead guitars to the last three songs and then started mixing. I’ve plowed through three mixes already but there are still five left to do. The phrase that pays as far as mixing goes is “quick and dirty.” I just want something to upload, it is not going to be anything particularly good but it will exist and that’s good enough for me today.
This was the last song I started working on, and the last song to get vocals, and the last song to get lead guitars, and the 11th song to be mixed.
Also, I played my Les Paul Custom today and it came through for me on this song. I actually enjoy the leads here. That’s not normal for me on this year’s project.
Yesterday was day 27, which means as I type this it’s day 28 and it’s the last day and I am too panicked (musically) to think straight.
I seriously forget what I accomplished yesterday. I know I did two songs worth of vocals, and I know I mixed four songs. I also did some sax parts but was it two songs or three? I also, also did some lead guitar but was it three songs or four? I think it was three parts each but they combined to finish four songs. I think.
It doesn’t matter. I have two more lead guitar parts to record and then I have to mix EIGHT songs, make a cover photo, and pick the running order for the final album submission.
That sound you hear off in the distance? That’s me screaming in frustration.
Yippee, bro.
I just finished mixing the 12th song for this year’s RPM Challenge. I kinda sorta like it. I think the GarageBand drummer would have worked up quite a sweat if it were a real human being and not a piece of software. Oh well.
12 songs down, eight to go. Two of them still need their last guitar tracks to be recorded. So ridiculously much left to do and I only have tomorrow left to do it. Oh, and I have a full work day to get through too. If I manage to pull it all off then I expect my brain to be a puddle of melted mush by the time I sleep tomorrow.
This song isn’t terrible. It’s okay. I wanted an acoustic head banger and this sort of gets the job done.
This morning I snuck in a few pics to cover today’s photo a day challenge picture. I had just finished adding the final tracks to a song and I picked up the camera while listening to the playback. Here is today’s entry, 180/365:
I almost went with this one instead…
These would have been okay too…
I did my car music this morning. I was out of the house a couple of minutes past 6:00am. I only had two songs to work on so I knew it was going to be a short trip. What I didn’t know was that it was going to freakin’ snow!
We only got enough to cover everything, but I don’t think we were supposed to get anything at all. At least I didn’t hear anything yesterday. Granted, I knew the forecast was calling for it to be warm today so I didn’t pay attention to any precipitation predictions but still… what the hell?
Fortunately it didn’t stop me from finishing the last two songs worth of vocal tracks for this year’s RPM Challenge. Once I got home I finished the last three saxophone parts too. On top of that, I managed to sneak in a few songs worth of guitar leads. I am still not finished with tracking for this month’s project. I still have to add lead guitar to two more songs. After that, all that will be left is to mix the last (gulp) 12 songs. Yikes!
All of this zaniness ends tomorrow… record two guitar leads and mix 12 songs… and work two full work days… yeah… I can do it. I’ll stress out and be on the verge of constant musical freak out, but I can do it.
Inside the Red Head's Head 