RPM Challenge Day 24/28

Yesterday’s haul (on day 24) was pretty decent, but not nearly as much as I had hoped.

I started by putting vocals onto five songs. I had four vocal parts written out before leaving the house for the morning car music, but after I finished the fourth song I had enough time to write the lyrics and the melody for the fifth song as I was recording it. I would have tried to do a sixth song too but my bladder was full and… well… yeah.

After work I came up much shorter than I had hoped, but I was able to work out the song form for songs 19 and 20. I had a basic idea for song number 21 and maybe song number 22 too, but I didn’t get anywhere with them. Maybe I could sneak them in before Friday. Probably not. There was an inkling of an idea for a 23rd song too. I guess when you’re on a roll you’re just on a roll, right?

Finally, before bed I managed to mix one song. That was it for day 24.

Day 25 is an in the office day for me (so is day 26) but (spoiler alert) I managed to get a little work in before I left the house.

I Need to Practice

Listen to the section of this song where the saxophone and the guitar are trading four bar solos. The first four bars of sax sound okay. The second four bars of sax… I don’t know about anyone else, but I can literally hear my body decide it has had enough sax playing for a while and needs a rest. It’s something in the amount of breath support behind each note. The tone just gets thinner out of the blue. Again, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I find that hysterically funny.

Here’s song number four for this year’s RPM Challenge.

Pre-Work Music

Did I mention that I did some car music this morning? My weird, random bout of insomnia last night meant I was up super early and had more than enough time to drive out to the movie theater parking lot to record vocals. I made it through five songs. One of them had the lyrics and the melody written on the spot. I haven’t done that in quite a while. I still have two more songs to add vocals to. I am going to be in the office the next two days (Tuesday and Wednesday) so hopefully I’ll have them all ready to go by Thursday morning.

The RPM Challenge is stressing me out big time this year, and none of the songs are any good. It has me questioning whether it’s all worth it or not. I still think so… but by how much? Who knows.

Obligatory Clock pic from the drive home which will act as today’s photo a day challenge picture:

RPM Challenge Day 23/28

On day 23 (yesterday) I made some good progress, but given the late date and the mountain of stuff left to do I probably didn’t make even close to enough progress. It was the final weekend day of the month after all.

I put a MIDI bass track onto one song, then I added lyrics and melodies to four songs. The only songs still in play that don’t have melodies yet are three songs that don’t have rhythm guitars yet either. I added a MIDI guitar as a guide track to one of them in the hopes that I could come up with lyrics for it but I ran out of gas and never got any further. I did manage to add one mix down though.

There are a total of 20 songs in the pipeline at the moment. A whopping three are finished… and they all need to be finished by Friday. Yikes.

Three Songs Down

I mixed my third RPM Challenge song of the year tonight. I was able to spend some quality time working on music tonight, but not nearly enough. At least not as much as I had hoped to do.

Mixing a song is always a good thing though, even when the song is meh like this one.

RPM Challenge Day 22/28

Nothing. I was totally shut out. I had no time to do any music work at all yesterday. I still have TONS left to do before the month ends this coming Friday night.

Shit.

RPM Challenge Day 21/28

It was hard to find time to work on RPM Challenge music on Day 21 but I got a few things in. More than I expected, actually.

I started my day by adding a new song to the pipeline. Song number 18 has a full song form, MIDI drums, and acoustic guitars. No MIDI bass yet, but I’ll get there soon enough. During my lunch break at work I added two more song ideas. Nothing solid yet, just a few bass riffs grouped together. That brings me up to 20 songs. That was my goal. 10 electric songs, 10 acoustic songs. Still very unsure if I will finish them all, but at least we’ve gotten this far.

Before I managed to fall asleep last night I mixed a song too. That’s two songs mixed and finished. I didn’t think I was going to have time for any mixing last night but I just couldn’t turn off my brain to fall asleep.

Today is day 22 and there is a strong chance I am going to get completely shut out and have no progress at all today. There is one week left (counting today) so… yeah. Get crackin’ red head.

Two Songs Down

I know I said I was going to sleep, but I just had to take some time to finish another mix. Two RPM Challenge songs down and anywhere between eight and 18 still to go.

There’s no electric guitar on this song. None at all. There’s acoustic guitar and saxophone, but no electric guitar. I originally saw this as sort of a throw away. Just a little blow off thing to pad my numbers. Somehow though I am finding I kinda dig it. Weird.

Got a Spare 20 Grand?

Sometimes I feel like Gibson will create a replica of any Gibson guitar that Eric Clapton ever looked at. Oh, Clapton was in the same building as that Les Paul back in 1968? Let’s make a copy and sell it!

This one though… this one, I am down for. His custom three pick up. The Black Beauty from those Disreali Gears photos and from all of those Delany and Bonnie photos and, I think(?) from some of those early Derek and the Dominoes concert photos too. Yeah… sign me up. $19,999? I’m sure I have that laying around here somewhere.