Musical Vacation Day

Two Days Worth of Music

Lots of progress on the second round of The Great 2015 Re-Recording Project.

Yesterday I finished the rhythm guitars for the last three songs and added lead guitar to one. Today I added vocals to four songs. That makes nine with rhythm guitar, seven with vocals, and one with leads. I actually want to re-do most of the MIDI tracks, bass guitar and drums. A couple of songs have keyboard parts and those are more or less finished too.

My first car singing session was odd in that everything was much harder than I remembered it from the first time I recorded the three songs I worked on. Today it wasn’t so much the songs that were the problem, it was me. I did four songs but I probably should have stopped after two. My voice got tired really fast today. I brought up the first song and cranked most of the sections out in one or two tries. By the time I was wrapping it up though my voice was starting to crack and get a little froggie. The second song was more challenging, but by the end I was croaking on at least a few words on every other take. I don’t think that’s ever happened to me before.

I was hoping to get through three songs but I forced myself to do four. I’m guessing when it’s all said and done you’ll be able to pick that fourth song out without me hinting. I was at it for more than an hour and a half or so, not quite two hours, and my throat is sore from yelling. Do real singers go through shit like this, or are they just trained to avoid it.

Ribbit.

Caught Up

I am now caught up on both The Walking Dead and the new spin off, World Beyond.

Is World Beyond good? I don’t know. It feels kinda…. Scott Gimple, if you know what I mean. I’ll watch episode two and reevaluate. The soundtrack included a PJ Harvey song which was fantastic, but it’s not one I knew.

At the very least, World Beyond can’t be worse than the last season of Fear the Walking Dead. Season five was the worst season of television I’ve ever subjected myself to. Season six starts on Sunday. Will I watch it? Damn it… I probably will. Idiot.

Now go give PJ Harvey’s Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea a spin. Go on. Do it.

Musical Progress

I did some singing in the car this morning. I’m working on part two of The Great Re-Recording Project of 2015. I put down vocals for three songs. The goal with this project is to make it sound slightly better than the demo quality I usually shoot for. Part of that is there is no copy/paste allowed. That means if a song runs through the chorus section more than once, I sing it more than once. I also doubled almost everything. I’m not sure if I’ll keep both takes in the mix or if I’ll comp them together. It could go either way at this point. Strangely, the three songs I worked on today didn’t have any vocal harmonies in the original versions. I added a little into one song but I didn’t double that. I’m stuck with it as is. I also may have changed one line of the lyrics to one song. I did it on the fly, but it was on purpose. I didn’t screw something up and then decide to keep it because I didn’t want to go back and fix it. I’ve done that before, but not today.

The weird thing was how difficult it all was. When I did part one of this dumb project I was pleased how easy it was to crank out vocals for all of the old songs. Almost as if I was a terrible singer and an amateurish song writer and I purposely made the vocal parts easy. I didn’t, but that’s how it felt. Today was just tough. Literally everything was near the top of my range (which could be a lot smaller than it used to be, I’ll admit it) and I had to pretty much scream to get it all out. There were times when I was incapable of keeping my eyes open because I was belting so hard. Worse, there was one time where I seriously thought I yelled hard enough to make myself throw up. I didn’t, but it was a close call for a second or two.

I had six songs ready to go but in 90 minutes or so I only got to three. If this were the usual album in a month thing I probably would have finished them all. Instead I was adding extra takes and not using copy/paste and just in general being a lot pickier with what I kept. Hopefully that will lead to a better end result but realistically… probably not.

When I started this up again in June I had songs lined up in four groups of eight. After all of the album in a month craziness I have added two more from this year’s batch of crap. I was going to make part 2 be 10 songs but instead I shuffled some things around and now parts 2 and 3 are nine songs each. What does that mean?

Absolutely nothing.

Bad

Worked on the Great Re-Recording Project of 2015 today.

I wrote these friggin’ songs, why can’t I play them? What the hell is wrong with me? I mean, clearly if they came outa my head they aren’t hard to play. Why the constant screw ups?

I’m up to four songs ready for vocals though, so that’s not so bad.

That Pedal Show Slays Me Again

They just did a full episode on Fender Deluxe Reverbs. My Deluxe Reverb has been at my bass players house since COVID started. I miss it so much right now I can’t put it into words.

I joked with Jen that I’ll just have to buy another one. She said, “maybe.” my brain heard, “go ahead and buy one tonight.” WOOHOO!*

*Just kidding…. or am I?

A (musical) Personal Challenge

I took last night and tonight off from recording. After 50/90 I needed a breather. Mentally though… let’s just say that doing these stupid musical things is a source of therapy for me. It helps me keep my head straight when the Covid-19 nightmares threaten to take over.

Tomorrow after work I pick up on the October projects. First and foremost, get back to The Great Re-Recording Project of 2015 and record new versions of 10 old songs. It was going to be eight songs, but I tacked on one song from February’s RPM Challenge, and one song from the just finished 50/90. The goal is to make these new versions of old songs sound better than just home demos.

Once that is finished, spend the rest of the month writing and demoing as close to 10 new songs as possible. I doubt I’ll have time for 10, but I want to get as many as I can. I’ve reached this goal in each of the last eight months. I want to keep the streak going.

Rock on, brothers and sisters.

I’m Tired of Quarantine

I’m sick and tired of this whole quarantine thing. It can go suck an egg.

That does not mean I’m going to start ignoring all of the Covid-19 safety precautions, I am still 100% on board. I’m just sick of it.

I miss playing in a band. I miss being on stage, seeing Jen in the crowd with a huge smile on her face. That is a great feeling. I’m missing that feeling.

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Done

Allow me to officially declare the 2020 50/90 challenge complete. I finish with 51 songs written and recorded in 88 (I think?) days. Note that the challenge doesn’t include recording songs, it just asks you to write them. Whatever.

I know the playlist I’m including here isn’t going to work but what the hell. You can get the official, legal (hehe) copy here.

I was also trying to make sure I kept my personal little album in a month during quarantine challenge alive for the three months 50/90 covered and I did. 11 songs were written and recorded entirely in July, 12 entirely in August, and 14 entirely in September. The remaining 14 were started in one month and finished in another,

So what next? I’ve actually already started working on the first song for Quarantine Tunes Vol. 2. I’ll try to write more in October too, but I’m not really pushing for 10 new songs the way I did every month since February. I don’t want to stop playing and recording, but I think my song writing brain might need some time off. National Solo Album Month is coming in November, of course.

When I left off last night I had three songs left to work on. They all needed lead guitar parts. Today I decided to nerd it up like a mad man. I used all three of my Gibson guitars, one on each of the three songs. The Les Paul and the ES-335 both have fresh strings but the SG hasn’t been changed since… January? I haven’t played it since at least May… I think. Maybe it was June, but I’m pretty sure it was May. The strings were dead, but I pulled it off.