Category: Music

First Car Music in a Month

Finally, right? I made it out for some car music today. I had three songs ready to go. One was a new one for Record Every Month and the other two were re-recordings for the great 2015 rerecording project which will likely never ever end. The re-recording things are meant to be a little… I don’t know… they are hopefully to be of a slightly higher quality than everything else. Performance wise if not sound wise. Something like that. The rules of the stupid game require me to be pickier about which takes I keep and put in the final mix. It’s also supposed to be more… live… live-ish? Not live, but also no copy and paste. Every sound you hear should be more or less unique. If a song has a chorus that plays twice then even though the two takes are similar enough that you don’t notice a difference, they are in fact different. For the record every month thing, or in fact for just about all of the demoes I make, copy and paste is fine. Record the chorus once, then paste it everywhere else there is a chorus. I do that for bass and vocals but not for guitars. It’s no fun to not play the guitars all the way through.

So what does it mean? It means I started with the record every month song so I could use it as a warm up before I got to the more involved shit. I opened up the computer plugged in the mic, setup the first verse and nailed it in one take. Well, that was weird. I suck as a singer so getting anything in one take is weird. I then setup each other section of the song and nailed them in at most two takes. What the fuck is going on? I suck, I can’t be getting things right this easily, especially when I haven’t done anything like this in a month.

When I was done, I picked the easier of the two re-recordings and that’s when everything went back to normal. Oh my word, did I suck. I sucked out loud. I sucked as much as anyone who has every sucked at singing has ever sucked at signing before. I. Sucked.

An hour and a half later I was working on the last section of the last song and my MacBook Pro popped up a warning that my battery was about to die. I guess I sucked exactly as much as my battery would allow.

I just suck.

Nope, Not Today

No car music today. I was up early enough that I might have pulled it off, but I would have been cutting it close to the start of the work day and I just punted. I can’t do it tomorrow because tomorrow is take three of our visit to Vermont. Sunday it is. Or, as the old commercials for monster truck shows used to say:

SUNDAY
SUNDAY
SUNDAY!

…or something like that.

The Braves failed to eliminate the Dodgers last night. Here’s hoping the American League has a similar story after tonight’s game. Houston is up 3-2 over the majestic Red Sox. Games six and seven are in Houston. Given the last two games, I am thinking my home town team needs a bit of a miracle. Two of them. One tonight in game six, one tomorrow in game seven. Yikes. There’s not a lot of optimism around here. Not even the cautious kind.

We need to be in Burlington tomorrow a couple of hours before lunch. That means we have to get up super early. That means I don’t think I’ll be listening or watching the game for very long tonight. That being said, I require the Red Sox to jump out to a 30 run lead in the first inning. That’s probably enough to hope they can hold it. Maybe 40 runs would be better, but let’s shoot for 30, m’kay? I’ll settle for a 1-0 win, of course, but I want to be able to feel comfortable going to sleep early. Can you do that for me, Red Sox? Here’s hoping.

Happy Friday. Hype up for game six, if you can.

Bed Time

It’s 11:30pm. Looks like the Dodgers are going to avoid elimination tonight. Here’s hoping the Red Sox do the same tomorrow.

I have three songs ready for car vocals. I was hoping to get to sleep early tonight to make getting up early tomorrow easier. What are the odds I pull it off?

Somewhere between not great and terrible, I think.

Patches is trying to move me off of my side of the bed. I’m pretty sure she’s going to fail.

Sweet dreams, everyone.

Remember That Thing?

Hey, remember when I used to post about writing shitty songs all the time? The Red Sox have totally distracted me from all of that.

I need to write at least one song this month and tonight in my baseball induced misery I wrote the melody and the lyrics for a new song. Aren’t you proud of me? Aren’t you sad that I’m posting about shitty music again? Yeah, sorry about that.

Car music in the morning?

When I sat down to write this literary masterpiece of a blog post I put the Bruins game on the radio. They were losing to Philly, 4-3 in the third. Almost immediately after I started listening, Philly scored to pad the lead to 5-3.

Sports wise, this is just not my night.

Two Notes

Two notes as I get ready for bed on a Saturday night.

First, game three of the Red Sox/Rays ALDS series is tomorrow at 4:00. I really thought Tampa Bay was going to sweep us, but last night the offense and the bullpen pulled out an impressive win. We need more of that tomorrow. We have a chance to close out the series without leaving Fenway. Sounds good to me.

Second, one of my neighbors is having a party with insanely loud music that is making my skin crawl. Where is Lizardfish when we need some massive volume to drown out the lame noise?

Pep Band

We found out yesterday that Harry has joined the UVM pep band that plays at hockey games.

I also found out that the athletic director responsible for my boycotting UMass Lowell athletics is no longer the athletic director.

I’m going to have to drill Harry on attendance and social distance policies and Covid safety at UVM games because of this:

I would LOVE to go and hear Harry play, even if I am secretly rooting for the other team.

Thursday Morning Hype

Game one of the Red Sox/Rays Division Series is tonight at 8:00ish. Are we psyched? Are we hyped? You know it. The Rays were the best team in the American League this year and the chances of us taking them out are slim to none. No negativity from me though, if any team can take those Floridians out it’s us. The whole team has already had Covid, so we don’t even have to worry about them waging biological warfare or anything crazy like that. I mean, we know how much Florida loves spreading the Covid, right*?

I did a little music today before work. Are you proud of me? I didn’t actually play guitar, I just redid some midi tracks on a GarageBand file for the re-recording thing. I redid all of the drums and bass tracks for one song from the summer. I now have three of those songs patiently waiting for new guitar tracks, and one new song patiently waiting as well. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe this weekend. Someday. Soon.

Okay, folks. Back to work with all of you. Stop surfing around the internet reading boring old people’s brain droolings.

11 hours to game time! Go Red Sox!

*This is sarcasm. The Red Sox’s Covid outbreak recently was awful and dangerous and nothing to laugh at. Also, the Florida state government’s insulting response to Covid is nothing to laugh about. The governor of Florida seems to think the best way to drum up support for a run for president in 2024 is to let as many of his constituents die of an easily preventable disease as possible.