Yeah, I think I am going to give up on the little 2008 Casio point and shoot.
It took about five tries to auto-focus on the sky. Like… how much more light do you need? I want to get something new, but there aren’t a lot of pocket sized options anymore and they are way more expensive then they should be in the days of the iPhone. I don’t want to go back to doing all of this on my iPhone but I think we’re heading in that direction. Shit.
Why do I not want to use my iPhone? Snobbery. That’s all. What can you do?
Fortunately my guitar is still out of the case from when I played it the other day. I was able to sneak a couple of super narrow depth of field pics in before I left the house this morning and one of those will be my 357th photo a day pic for this round of 365 days.
What do you say we try to guilt me into working on the 50/90 challenge by trying to post daily updates again? Think that will work?
Neither do I.
Here goes anyway.
I put rhythm guitars onto two songs, lead guitars onto one song, and added one new song idea. That makes 32 songs in the pipeline.
32 songs underway
1 song is just a few bass riffs without any structure
11 songs have rhythm guitars but no lyrics or melodies
2 songs have lyrics and melodies but no vocals
2 songs have vocals but no lead guitars
4 songs have lead guitars but need to be mixed down
12 songs have been mixed and are finished
And that, dear readers, is where we stand right now. 41 days left. That’s probably not enough to get me to 50 songs with mixed demoes. We’ll see how close I can get though.
Talk about a case of the Mondays gone wrong, right?
I got up early, did my exercise, watched a Doctor Who (priorities, yeah?), ate breakfast, wrote a blog post, showered, went to the grocery store and got a few things that we forgot to put on the shopping list yesterday, took a photo for today’s photo a day challenge entry…
355/365
…Came home and put away the groceries, went down cellar and put rhythm guitars onto two songs that I started fiddling out last night, put lead guitars onto one song from last month, took a couple of obligatory I-played-guitar-today photos, and punched into work with about 10 minutes to spare.
Here’s hoping the work day is that productive too. Let’s keep the motivation rolling! Happy Monday, gentle readers!
My plans for today included going out in the morning and taking some pictures, playing guitar and working on the 50/90 challenge, going grocery shopping, and finishing two seasons of Doctor Who.
How am I doing?
Welp, I didn’t take the camera out today. I could have. I was up early and the weather was great. I just couldn’t get myself moving to do it. I just stayed home. Sorry.
In my defense though, while staying home I played a TON of guitar. I worked on seven songs, as I posted earlier, and recorded a mountain of really shitty guitar tracks. I have been ignoring 50/90 over the last three weeks, and probably screwed myself out of completing the challenge again, but we’re still trucking along. I have also mixed two songs today. Maybe starting tomorrow I’ll get back to the daily update posts to try and guilt myself into making more progress. Who knows.
As for the TV stuff, I finished season five of the old Doctor Who this morning while faux jogging (pronounced yogging), and then after I came home from grocery shopping I finished season nine of the new Doctor Who series. Both TV goals for today, complete! Now I have one more season to go on the second doctor in the old show, and one more season to go on the twelfth doctor on the new show. I am ready for regenerations on both shows, even though I am enjoying both doctors. It’s weird. As soon as I get a new doctor, I want another new doctor. I guess I am just an asshole.
I’m writing this at around 3:30pm. What am I going to achieve with the rest of the day? Probably nothing. Harry is still here. He’s going to his father’s house tonight, for a while at least. Jen and I will have dinner together. Other than that, there’s a new That Pedal Show that I haven’t seen yet. Maybe I’ll watch that now.
I put rhythm guitar tracks onto SEVEN songs this morning. I have actually run out of songs again. There are 29 in the pipeline and they all have rhythm tracks!
Now I have to get dressed and go food shopping and then figure out what to play on next! It’s a music day, folks. Play it till your fingers bleed as if it were the summer of ’69!
I just counted up the days on the calendar. Today is day 27. My blog posts have all been correct. I think.
I got a lot done today. Most of which has already been mentioned on the old bloggie, but here’s a summary anyway.
Six songs got new guitar parts. Two songs got rhythm tracks and four got leads.
Three songs were mixed and are officially finished. That gives me 10 in total and by RPM Challenge rules I have a full album-in-a-month for July. I hit the 10 songs but I came up a bit short on the 35 minutes. I’ll hopefully mix at least one more before the month is out so that I can hit that goal as well.
Finally, I wrote lyrics and melodies for three songs. That gives me a total of five that are ready for vocal tracks which means I may be doing some car music in the morning. If I get out early enough maybe I’ll do a short photo walk somewhere in town as well. Maybe. We’ll see.
Tomorrow is the last day of July so we’re coming up on one third of the way through the 50/90 challenge. I am probably a little behind the pace from the last couple of years I completed this game, but that might be because I was super out in front of the pace those times. I am feeling pretty good about where I stand at the moment, but it could still very easily all come crashing down.
I mentioned earlier that I put guitars onto six songs this morning. I’ve spent the afternoon mixing and have finished three songs. That brings the total up to 10. That means 50/90 is 20% complete. It also means I have an RPM Challenge rules (10 songs or 35 minutes) album in a month for July. Nice
I wanted to share one of the songs, just because that’s how I usually do this… but all three songs are pretty shitty over all and none of them are worth posting at all. They are just bad.
I’ll share this one though because it’s in 15/8 time so it at least has that going for it, I guess.
More guitar pictures? Hey, that must mean I worked on the music project today! Yeah, I did!
I put rhythm guitars on the only two song ideas that still needed rhythm guitars, and I put lead guitars on the only four songs that were ready for lead guitars that didn’t already have them. Nice! I have once again run out of guitar parts to record.
Next up for music today is mixing songs that are finished tracking, and writing lyrics for songs that don’t have them yet. On we go!
I played my SG today, and up until the point when I was recording leads on the fourth and final song of the morning it felt really good. That last song wasn’t the guitars fault, I am just way out of practice and I ran out of gas.
I also played through my Deluxe Reverb. No direct signals today, for me or for Baby Yoda.
Did I miss a day here? I don’t know. Maybe I’ll count calendar dates another time, but not today. I think today is day 26.
I didn’t do anything on day 25, yesterday. Nothing at all. A totally wasted day. Today was better. I put vocals on four songs, worked out the song form and the MIDI bass and drums for two songs, and wrote lyrics and melody for two other songs.
There are two more days left in July. At the bare minimum I want to mix three more songs before the month ends. That will give me 10 songs complete, which will give me an album in a month under RPM Challenge rules. After that, we’ll start August and see what happens. As of this moment, nearing the end of day 26, I have 22 songs in progress, seven of which are mixed and finished.
Not much to report on the song writing challenge front over the last two days. Day 23 was Wednesday and I didn’t do anything. Day 24 was yesterday, Thursday, and I didn’t get shut out but I also didn’t do much. I wanted to do a car music and track some vocals and maybe get a mix or two in and maybe write some lyrics but instead all I did was add two new song ideas. Just a couple of bass lines and a drum groove. All midi. I’m a little disappointed in myself for two days with very little progress, but the weekend is almost here and I am hoping to get a ton of music in (as well as more photography goofiness). Jen has plans to work on a project this weekend, so I will dedicate myself to a project or two as well. Harry will be paying a visit too so I will dedicate however much time he is here to him. I also want to visit my father on Saturday. It’s his anniversary, and the first since my mother passed. It’s going to be very sad and I don’t know if I am up for it. Mother’s day was rough but I fear this is going to be rougher.
So now we’re up to date on (more than) the current music project.
Inside the Red Head's Head 