The Stir Crazy Files – Episode 36

The weather is spectacular today.  Sunny, 67 degrees, the slightest touch of a breeze, not a cloud in the sky.

When I looked at the forecast I was excited that I’d get to open every window in the house and make it feel like a Springtime paradise.

Nope.

Three houses down from us, our neighbors are having work done on their roof.  The crew doing the work are listening to music at a borderline absurd volume.  When I opened the windows in our bedroom (current home of my work-from-home desk) I was assaulted by lame music.

Damn it.

I was hoping for a quiet day with just the breeze to keep me company.  Instead I have to play my own music to drown out their music*.  Granted, my music is awesome so it’s okay.  It’s just not what I wanted today and I want what I want god damn it!

 

*The Sonos speaker in the bedroom has been playing through a playlist consisting of all Genesis records that include Steve Hackett on guitar.  I’ve already burned through Nursery Cryme and Foxtrot.  Right now I’m on Selling England by the Pound track three, “Firth of Fifth.”  Steve Hackett’s shining guitar solo moment.  A career defining moment if ever there was one.  So my music is amazing.  The roofers’ music… not so much.

Good and Bad

I recorded some guitars today, which is good, but while I was doing it I missed a Richard Thompson live stream, which is bad.

Go to royalalberthall.com to watch the recording… I’m watching it now.

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Backward

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My new Klone pedal has been added to the May music project.  I put rhythm guitars on three songs and used my birthday-present-to-myself on all of them.  It sounds so good it’s silly.  I needed to goose the treble knob up a little higher than I do on the KTR to get a nice sweet spot, but I haven’t been able to use it on a high watt amp at volume.  It will all change when I use it for real.

I did something else with one of the songs that’s also silly… and fun… and awesome.

The rhythm part is just hit a chord and let it ring for two bars, more or less over and over.  After I finished the actual recording (double tracked, one panned left and one panned right) I added the first of two extra tracks.  First I recorded an additional take of the last eight bars of the song.  I then reversed the track.  That was a guide.  Next I muted the bass and actual guitar tracks so that all I could hear was drums and the backward guitar.  After that I used the second extra track to record myself trying to play along with the backward track.  It wasn’t easy and it came out pretty wrong, but at least I had the same chords playing on the two tracks.  One was forward and the other was backward but they more or less rang out correctly.

The last step was to delete the first of the two tracks, reverse the second track, and pan it right in the middle and unmute all the muted tracks.  Now when I play it back I have the normal parts and an additional backward part kinda playing along with each other.

It didn’t work out as I had planned it but…….

Coolest thing I’ve ever done.

COVID Blues

246/365

Three songs in the pipeline right now. I put guitars on all of them. Two of the songs seem okay so far. The third is a sloppy awful mess. It’s a 12-bar blues. Should I call it The Covid-19 Blues?