I put vocals down on four songs, mixed two songs, put rhythm guitars on one song, put lead guitars on four songs, and wrote lyrics to two songs.
Looks like more vocals in the car tomorrow, assuming the weather holds. Still a ton of mixing and guitar soloing to go, and still a couple of songs that need lyrics. I’ll make it to 10 songs for sure, but I don’t know if I will get through all 15 songs that I’ve started this month.
I’ve already mentioned putting vocals on four songs this morning, and I’ve already posted two songs that I mixed today, but now I am posting about putting lead guitar parts onto four songs. My fingers are killing me. I still don’t have calluses on my left hand and good heavens am I feeling the repercussions of that right now. I still have four more songs that are ready for leads but I have to take a break for a while. Maybe for the rest of the day. Jen and I might be going down to Cambridge for some tech gear after dinner tonight, so this might be it for guitar on this fine Saturday. I still have to write melodies and lyrics for the last four songs as well.
I think I like this one. In fact this might be my favorite of the bunch. That’s not saying much. My heart hasn’t been in it this year and I’ve been just going through the motions and as a result everything sucks even more than usual. So I guess this is in the running for song that sucks the least? I don’t know. It doesn’t have a “track #1” vibe to me though. It might end up as track #2. Maybe? We’ll see. There’s still a long long way to go before I have to worry about stuff like running order.
We got a couple of inches of snow yesterday followed by some rain and a drop in temperature which turned the snow to ice. I went out after work and shoveled and it was like shoveling bricks. It was not fun. I was happy that the driveway and both cars and the path to the garbage barrels and the area around the fire hydrant were all cleared.
Then later, around bed time, it started snowing again. Not much, but it quickly turned to rain again and immediately froze. When I got up this morning everything I had shoveled yesterday had been magically transformed into an ice skating rink. Yippee. I was also ran out of ice melt last night. Oh goodie.
I did not let it stop me though. I hacked the layer of ice off of one of the cars and proceeded to drive to a not-so-empty parking lot for some car music! I say not so empty because there were two humongous trucks trying to plow the layer of ice off of the lot. You can probably hear them on the vocal tracks. Yippee, again.
I got through four songs and oh my goodness do they suck. That brings me up to seven songs with vocals, with eight more to go. Only two of those eight have lyrics though, so I need to do a lot of work tonight. There must be another car music in the morning. Fortunately tomorrow is Saturday so I can spare a little more time, and if needed I can go out more than once. I can do the same on Sunday. Assuming I can get all of the lyrics written (and one song still needs rhythm guitars as well) then I will have all of the vocals down with a couple of days to spare. Then it’s just lead guitar and mixing, which will likely take a lot of time to get through. I’m already sort of sorting things into two buckets: Songs that might be useable for the final album, and songs that most likely will not be useable. There are two on the later list. Drop candidates, as it were, and one on the bubble. The rest of them are bad, but not so bad as to throw away… maybe. We’ll see how I feel when they are mixed.
My studio view today is thusly:
Also, a pic of half of my audience for the day:
And now for a few shots of the scenic drive to the not-so-empty parking lot:
177/365
So the musical plan for later tonight is record some leads, record one song’s rhythm guitars, mix a song or two, and write a shit ton of lyrics and melodies.
Twice this week I was going to go out and do car music before work only to be screwed over by snow. On Tuesday I probably could have done it but today there was no chance. Damn it.
I did the same thing I did on Tuesday though. If I couldn’t go out and sing, I’d stay home and record some guitars. Last night I added a couple of noodles that are now song #15. I wanted to work on lyrics last night but 24 bars of bass guitar riffs was as far as I got. After finishing my faux running (yogging) and watching episode two of Star Trek Picard this morning I worked those little bass riffs into a song form and recorded the rhythm guitars. Then I put leads onto the only two songs that are currently ready for leads. Nothing special as far as playing is concerned, but both songs are now ready to mix. Just before I punched into work I added lyrics to song #9 as well. I now have five songs ready to sing and will get to as many as I can before work tomorrow. Assuming mother nature doesn’t kick me in the balls for a third time.
Obligatory pictures:
I took the Wren and Cuff Super Russian off the board and replaced it with the Way Huge Russian Pickle. Two different copies of the old Sovtek version of the Big Muff Pi fuzz pedal
176/365
The plan for tonight is to try and write lyrics. I currently have six songs that are ready for lyrics and one more that isn’t quite ready yet. I’m at 15 songs now when I only need 10. Two of the 15 are especially crappy and might go unfinished. We’ll have to see what happens over the next five days.
I will complete this project if it takes everything I have. I am not blowing my RPM Challenge success streak.
Look at that, I mixed a song! The 2023 RPM Challenge will not be a shutout and that is good. The song isn’t good, but the fact that it exists is… and isn’t that the entire spirit behind the RPM Challenge?
I probably should have done the car music this morning. We only got about an inch of snow and the road was never entirely covered. Still, better safe than sorry.
I sort of almost made up for it. Sort of. Yesterday I added two more song ideas. One is meh, and the other is garbage. This morning before work, when I should have been recording myself singing like a mentally defective bird, I worked the meh idea into a song form and added rhythm guitars. Then I put leads on one of the songs that got vocals yesterday. That means I am up to 13 songs with rhythm guitars and exactly one song is finished tracking and ready to mix. Hopefully I will mix it tonight (and maybe add leads to two more songs, and maybe flesh out the crappy idea and add rhythm guitars to that?).
It wasn’t the progress I expected to make today, but it’s progress. There won’t be car music tomorrow because I have to drive to the office in Foxborough. Thursday… Friday… Saturday… whatever it takes. I have one week left.
I did it today. I went out and recorded some vocal tracks. Three songs. I got out of bed around 5:40, did my exercise for the day from 6:00-6:40, jumped into the car a few minutes before 7:00, drove to the movie theater parking lot, and recorded vocals for three songs. I was hoping to get to more, but I wanted to get home in time to shower and have breakfast before work.
I did song #’s 1, 2, and 4. I skipped #3 because I hate it more than all of the others and therefore have not written lyrics or melody yet. I still have four songs that are ready to sing, so there should be another car music tomorrow.
There was a new gear hiccup. Isn’t there always? I started getting lag. Where the hell did that come from? I’ve been doing this process for YEARS now and I have never once had an issue with lag. It started mid-way through the first song. I saved everything, killed off the Garageband session, restarted it, and everything was fine. It happened on the second song too and the same steps cleared it. It didn’t happen again. It’s yet another thing that can go wrong these days that never went wrong before. Annoying, but not debilitating.
Want to see my studio? How’s it look…
Nice, huh?
So tomorrow I hope to do more car music. Wednesday I won’t be able to because Wednesday is a work-from-the-office day and I won’t have time. Thursday and Friday… one of those two days I need to go to Lowell General Hospital and get some labs done. They open at 5:00am, so maybe I can do that and then do car music for an hour, and then do my exercise after work? The faux jogging (“yogging”) is currently taking about 40 minutes. I think I can hack that after work once.
I am up to 12 songs now. Remember when I used to do FAWM and my goal was 14 songs? Maybe my goal is once again to get to 14 songs. I know there’s one I want to drop before I submit the project to the RPM Challenge folks, 14 songs just gives me more options. Adding two more songs will also give me more guitar playing that can act as a warm up before I start recording leads… now that I have three songs that are ready for leads.
We’ll see how it goes. Shit loads of work left to do and only eight days to do it. I’m not panicking yet, but I am gettin’ there.
I failed to record any vocals today. I’ll try again tomorrow. I did write lyrics to two more songs (I have seven now) and I added two more songs, complete with rhythm guitars. One of the new songs is in 11/8 time, which is a first for this prog nerd.
Vocals in the car in the morning or die trying. Not literally, or course. We buried my mother last Tuesday, I don’t even want to think about death for a while.
And now for the obligatory Les Paul pics:
So the continuous auto focus zeroed in on the mic stand. Okay.
Inside the Red Head's Head 