Category: Guitar

Been a While

It’s been almost a month since I played my guitar. It’s starting to effect my mental health.

At least I think it is. The lack of playing combined with the daily construction combined with the approaching surgery combined with the approaching lifetime of dietary and lifestyle changes that follow the surgery have all contributed to my current mental state. Given that information it’s hard to say if the guitar is all that big a part of the stressedness.

I think it is. I need to play.

Envy of None

Go. Now. Make this a part of your life.

Not being much of a synth-pop guy, when I listen to this I think of some of the Smashing Pumpkins stuff that Flood produced, or maybe some of the post-Actung Baby electronic stuff U2 did. Wait… wasn’t that Flood too? Or was that Brian Eno? I don’t know. I heard an interview with Andy Curran where he said it sounds like Depeche Mode or The Cure. That works too.

So there I am, listening for the first time and really enjoying it purely on a holy-shit-this-hook-is-infectious level. I wasn’t hearing any stand out guitar parts, but I knew that was coming. Alex Lifeson (as well as everyone else involved in the album) has made a big deal out of the fact that he’s playing the guitar without ever sounding like a guitar. He’s basically a guitar synth player rather than just a guitar player. Then you get to Spy House, track five, and there’s a stretch of about four bars where he just shreds like the Guitar God he is, and then it’s back to synthy stuff.

I imagine Robert Fripp and Adrian Belew sitting in a room together listening. They both nod their head in approval. Then they look at each other and nod their heads in agreement. Then they look over at Alex Lifeson and nod in solidarity. Yeah. I’m 100% sure that exact thing happened.

No go and listen to it.

More Changes Coming Today

Are you sick of hearing about our home improvement odyssey? Would it bore you to hear that the drywall guy is coming today to start walling up our cellar? Drywall->paint->flooring->finishing->furniture. That’s the to do list as it stands now. I’m sure you’re sick of hearing it.

Are you also sick of hearing that I am watching Marvel movies? I bet you’re all really sick of that one. Fed up, indeed. Turns out The Incredible Hulk is on HBO Max. I’m sneaking in the first 20 minutes before I have to sign in to work. Bore-ing, am I right?

At least I am not boring you all with guitar playing posts, right? You’ve got that going for you. I haven’t played at all since March 19th. That was 18 days ago. I need to play.

Okay. Time to punch in to work. Here’s hoping the stress level goes down a notch today. Fingers eternally crossed.

No Music?

For the first time in a year I failed to come up with anything for Record Every Month. Im a little sad about that, but it’s okay.

What will April bring? Probably not much. We have so many home improvement things going on that I don’t know if I’ll have any time for recording.

Still no dates for Lizardfish rehearsals. Im hoping we can get something in during April because im going to be out of commission for most if not all of May.

I had to take down the cellar music nook for reasons. It’s all in cellar storage now. Im mad at myself too because the reason I stopped using it came down to a misunderstanding. Jen said it was too loud for her to concentrate and I thought she meant that in general. She didn’t. She just meant it was distracting that day.

Oh well. My mistake.

Hopefully I’ll have some time for writing and recording before I go under the knife. I’ll write lots of songs about being scared shitless.

Rock on, fat boy.

No March Music?

I am supposed to be working on the Record Every Month challenge. Why hasn’t there been any new music?

I have two songs in progress. They are both ready for vocals. It’s March 29th. What’s the delay?

Well, the main delay has been that there is always something going on in the morning right now. I haven’t been able to eek out any time for car music to put the vocals onto those two songs. I was hoping to get it in tomorrow morning, but my doctor’s appointment was just rescheduled from 10:30am to 8:00am. I might be able to do it after the appointment. Then I would have Wednesday and Thursday evenings to put down the lead guitars and throw together a mix.

I think I can pull that off. It’s been so long since I listened to these two songs that I am not even sure how they go anymore. We’ll have to see tomorrow, right?

I’m still planning on more re-recordings. I am much more interested in that project idea than Record Every Month, but I haven’t had time or energy to work on any of that either. I have one song in progress but I haven’t even recorded the rhythm guitars yet. There is just too much going on. It’s a little nuts.

So to sum up, musically speaking… let’s see what happens.

What Am I doing?

Remember in that last post when I mentioned doing another round of re-recordings of older songs?

I have literally lost my mind.

How about two more rounds?

I picked out a handful of songs to think about re-doing. Most were from the last couple of RPM Challenges but I poked around through other projects looking to fill out the numbers. When I got to the 2020 50/90 playlist I thought about how I made a whole 10 song project out of songs written for the 2021 50/90 and I thought… do it again?

Sure enough, I have 10 songs from various places and projects, that will be round seven. I also have 10 songs just from the 2020 50/90, and that will be round eight.

Robert… come on… what are you doing?

Realize that this is just me trying to be a 50 year old schmuck who is following social distance protocols up to and beyond their maximum who still wants to play the guitar a lot and who also likes to think that part of him is still that 22 year old kid who went to school to learn how to operate a recording studio.

So… yeah. That’s happening.

It might be a while before I get too deeply into it as I still haven’t started doing the laundry. I’ll get to it though.

Busy Sunday

Jen and I spent our Sunday morning prepping the kitchen and the dining room both for the next week’s worth of contractors and for what comes after the contractors are done. Mostly we just talked about redesigning things and cleaning up some of the places that require changes. We also built the first piece of pre-fab kitchen furniture. The ball is rolling and it is out of control.

The Bruins traded for a new defenseman and the Red Sox signed a new infielder (I think). I don’t know either of them because I am completely out of touch, but they both received long term contracts so maybe they’re both pretty good? I hope so. I missed the last couple of Bruins games so I didn’t hear that Bergeron is injured. Shit.

I may have made a decision about music last night and it may result in more annoying blog posts. Duck and cover kids. It was well after midnight and I should have been asleep but I was wide awake. I started poking through my Alonetone account. I listened to a few things from the last couple of re-recording projects. I thought to myself… do I want to do another one? I have six “albums”, do I want to do a seventh? There are two or three songs from last month’s RPM Challenge that might be worth another look. There’s also a couple of songs from the previous RPM that might be worthwhile too. Shit… I think I am starting to put together Quarantine Tunes Volume Seven. Just when you thought it was safe to listen to music again.

Spring officially began about an hour and 10 minutes ago. We survived another Winter. Now we just need to avoid any unscheduled Spring snow. That would be nice, right?

Okay. I need to do some laundry. I’ll talk to you later.

Finally Played Guitar Again

It’s been almost a month since I played the guitar at all. Finally I got some noodling in today. I kicked off a couple of song ideas for the Record Every Month challenge thing and I put rhythm guitars on them. They both suck pretty hard, but it’s okay. Something is better than nothing, I hope.

My new Les Paul through the Klon KTR into the Keeley D&M Drive into the Vox AC15. That’s a happy noise.

As always, forgive the dust.

Calm Down

Given the hectic nature of the last two weeks, it is almost unsettling to have a Saturday with nothing going on. I started work on two songs for Record Every Month. I watched a Star Trek Discovery episode, and I am about to start a second.

Jen and I have talked over some plans for redesigning the rest of the kitchen and the dining room. We were thinking of going to IKEA tonight but the idea of the crowds and the Covid risk and what not is steering us away. We might try to go shortly before close on a weeknight this week to cut down on the human interactions.

I am going to play guitar today. Bank on it.