18 Days and Counting

Magically, the streak of consecutive days where the guitar was played for at least a couple of minutes has reached 18. I put rhythm guitar tracks onto one of the final two songs from May. Only one more song to go. Last night I wrote lyrics for two of the June songs, and after I finished playing the gitter I wrote lyrics for a third. There will be car music tomorrow, though I am not sure how that schedule will work out.

I used the direct out from the Bassbreaker 15 amplifier. It calls it cabinet emulation, not simulation, but whatever. It sounds… okay. Not great. The little nutube Vox amp probably sounds better. I’ll stick with this for a while and see if it grows on me.

Pics:

Grogu used The Force to turn the amp around. After weight loss surgery, I am no longer strong enough to lift a tube amp.

As for tomorrow. Here’s the plan. I am going to get up at the ass crack of dawn and do the third Couch to 5k training. I expect I will die during that, but once it’s over I will go inside and eat breakfast and recover. Then after breakfast is done, and the one hour pause after eating before I can drink water again is also done, I’ll jump in the car, drive to a secluded place, and crank out some vocal tracks.

Hopefully. We’ll see if I can stick to that plan or not. Wish me luck.

I Forgot My Amp Did That

So all of this early morning guitar recording has been with the guitar plugged directly into my USB audio interface. No microphones are being used because no speakers are being used. It’s a fully headphone setup.

I have been running the guitar through an amplifier though. My little Vox MV50 has a direct output on the back that includes cabinet simulation. Normally when you use a line out of an amplifier it sounds dog-shit awful. Not long ago the idea of digitally simulating a speaker cabinet and sticking it onto your line out signal has become a very helpful thing. There are all sorts of digital modeling amplifiers that do it now. Some are big rack mount devices, some are as small as foot pedals. My little Vox amp is an attempt at a tube amp in a pedal sized box. It uses Nutubes, which is something Korg came up with a few years ago as an alternative to normal vacuum tubes. They work off the same principals but they are extremely low powered. I think they sound okay in the amp’s pre-amp stage, but the power stage is still solid state so it doesn’t really feel like a tube amp. It sounds good enough to use, but it’s not really the same.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have an actual tube amp with a line out that has a cabinet simulation? Wait a second… I think I actually have one of those! My Fender Bassbreaker 15 is a fully tube amp with exactly that kind of output on the back of the box. Why am I using the Nutube thing when I could be using the real sucker instead? Today I plugged it in and took the Fender’s cabinet sim for a spin. I think the Vox might sound better. I want to mess with it some more, but it doesn’t sound terribly good. It’s probably usable, but it’s a lateral move at best, if not a step backward. We’ll see.

I had completely forgotten about this, but when I first got the Bassbreaker amp I used the line out quite a bit for recording. When I got the Vox I used both of the amps in line out mode together for a two amp setup on an RPM Challenge. I think it was 2015 or 2016. It worked okay then. Maybe the thing to do going forward is split the signal to both amps and run with a two amp set up again. That could be fun. I mean, if I am stuck going direct again, maybe that’s something to keep things interesting. We’ll see. Next time I record rhythm guitars (tomorrow, I hope) I’ll use the Fender. Next time after that I might use them both. We’ll see.

Yup, He Played Guitar Today

I had two song ideas left over from May that hadn’t been worked into a song form yet. I took care of both of them while watching an episode of The X Files and eating some breakfast. When that was done I put guitar tracks on both songs. That leaves me with two songs still needing rhythm guitar tracks. Both are leftover from May.

That means I have 11 songs ready for lyrics now, and two more that are almost ready for lyrics. Yikes! I need to get cracking on that. Lots of car music in my near future, eh? There are still four songs waiting to be mixed as well. Got to get moving! It’s June 22nd. There are only eight days left in June! If I do a faux 50/90 this year I might include July 1-3 in June too. 50/90 doesn’t start until July 4th. We’ll see how far I get.

Two pictures because I am getting tired of this and getting lazy.

Okay, Robert. Let’s go get ready for work.

The Morning So Far

I did not forget to put out the trash. I am significantly less dumb than last week. Of course last week I waited until Wednesday and that was a stupid mistake. This week I had to wait until Wednesday because Monday was a holiday. Okay. Next week will be back to normal.

I did my 30 minute work out, yogging in place. The couch to 5k comes back tomorrow. I watched episode one of Secret Invasion. I am hooked so far. I will probably watch it again before episode two comes out. I did play guitar for about five minutes. It counts. I didn’t plug in, I just played an A minor scale a bunch of times. I didn’t record anything. I just don’t have time.

Up next is my pre-commute morning routine. I need to pack my bag and get moving. Today is going to suck, but I will handle it. Bring it on, bro.

Morning Routine

The morning routine today was a little upended. Usually I have some water with my morning vitamins, then yog in the cellar and have some more water. I stop drinking after about 15 minutes of exercise so that my 15 minute pause between drinking and eating will be up when I finish exercising and I can just have breakfast right away. for the last couple of weeks I’ve been playing guitar after I finish breakfast.

Today I had some water while walking and running outside, but I didn’t have my pills until I got back inside. I took a shower during my 15 minute pause and then had breakfast while watching Spaced. When breakfast was done I played guitar and then punched into work immediately after I finished.

I put rhythm guitars onto a May song, and lead guitars onto a June song. The streak is at 13 days and I am 90% sure it ends today. Tomorrow is an in the office day and I really don’t expect to be able to get any playing in before I have to start getting ready. The whole morning routine goes right down the crapper on commuting days. We’ll see what happens. I pulled it off last week, but with a new Marvel show kicking off tomorrow, Secret Invasion, I don’t know how things will go. Fingers crossed, right?

Pictures. This was focused on the pick up.

This was focused on the poker chip/pick up switch.

This was focused on the truss rod cover (aka the word “Standard”).

This was focused on the treble knob.

This was focused on BABY YODA, BABIE!

This was focused on the left food switch, I think. I don’t quite remember.

Pulled it Off

Crazy morning. I normally set my alarm for 5:00am on weekdays and then hit snooze a few times but still get out of bed well before 6:00. Today I didn’t get up until almost 7:00. I assumed my whole morning routine was going to get flushed.

Nope. I got everything I wanted to get done, done.

I fed and watered the cats. I emptied the dishwasher and put the dirty dishes in and cleaned them. I did a load of laundry. I watched Dead City (but not Fear the Walking Dead, thankfully). I ran in place for 32 minutes and closed my exercise ring. I ate breakfast. I drank 16 ounces of water and took my morning vitamins. I took a shower and got dressed and punched in to work with 10 minutes to spare.

I also extended the guitar playing streak to 12 days. I put lead guitars onto one of the songs I put vocals on yesterday. It wasn’t good, but it was a lot better than the last few leads I recorded. Nice.

I also used guitar as an excuse to take today’s photo a day challenge picture. I got everything I wanted to get to this morning done. Good job, Roberto.

Will the guitar playing streak end tomorrow? It probably depends on the weather, I think. If the weather is okay then I might go to the movie theater parking lot shortly after the sun comes up and start the couch to 5k thing. If I do that, I probably won’t have time for guitar before work. I could always try to get it in after work, but that is a lot harder to do.

I just checked the hourly forecast. It’s going to be chilly, but the 6:00am hour is currently looking like it will be rain free. We might be doing this thing, kids. We just might be doing it.

10 June Songs

Yesterday’s music output was decent. I put guitars on two songs in the morning. Later I wrote lyrics for two songs and mixed another song. Before bed I started a new song idea and that makes 10 for the month of June. I’m not saying I will finish my album in a month goal for June, but it’s a whole lot easier to reach it when you actually have the correct number of songs in progress. Now, having said that, I had 10 songs in progress in May as well and I didn’t finish any of them so… yeah.

The guitar playing streak is up to 11 days. I think today might be the last day though. I think I want to do car vocals tomorrow instead. We’ll see. I also might want to start the couch to 5k stuff tomorrow. I am still undecided. Again, we’ll see. I did spend about 20 minutes playing today though. I put rhythm guitars on the new song idea from last night. That means all 10 June songs have rhythm guitars now. Good stuff!

New Song, One Month Late

This would have been my Record Every Month submission from May, had I not completely dropped the ball and failed to finish it.

I like everything about this song except the mix, the vocals, the lyrics, the melody, the guitar leads, the rhythm guitar tracks, the overall guitar tones, the bass line, and the bass tone.

10 Days, Babie!

10 days in a row. I have played my guitar on 10 consecutive days. Glorious!

Now one of these days I am going to have to shift the musical focus from guitar to vocals-in-the-car and that will likely kill the streak, but for now? TEN DAYS.

Are you sick of the daily guitar pictures yet? I am not. It’s making my photo-a-day-challenge really super easy.

I had another pic of the cute little Vox Nutube amp as well but it was a little on the blurry side and I deleted it.

I currently have nine songs that are ready for lyrics and melody. I should really get cracking on that, right?

Nine Days and Counting

I kept the streak alive by playing some guitar today! Last night I cooked up a song idea in 5/8 time. I thought that rhythmically it was going to be tough to track the guitars today but I finished the whole thing, double tracking too, in about 15 minutes. That’s good for three reasons. One, it kept the streak going. Two, I have a bunch of stuff to do this morning and now have a little more time to do it. Three, I overslept quite a bit today and thought I was going to screw everything up but now I might not have.

Pics!