Category: Music

Stuff to Do at Home

I forgot to take a card reader to Florida with me so I had to leave all of my pictures on the card until I got home.  I’ve sorted through the 1300 or so and weeded it down to maybe 500.  I used to use Google’s Picasa application for that because it made it easy to sort through all of the duplicates, but that app won’t run anymore.  I used Apple’s Photos and it kinda sucked.  Once they were sorted out I started editing them, using filters and the wizard in Photos.  Nothing special.  I’m about 1/3 through the keepers now.  I’d like to finish that today and get them all uploaded into Flickr so I can post some of them here.

It’s not likely to happen though as I still have three songs to finish today.  Two need quick lead guitar overdubs, and the other needs all of the guitars, rhythm and lead, and then all three need to be mixed.  I have the cover art, but once all the mixes are done I need to decide which songs get dropped and then which of the two mixes of each acoustic song gets dropped.

So much to do and so little sleep to do it on.

Actually, I did get a good night’s sleep last night.  I’m just overtired from the last few days combined.  I’ll get it all done tonight.  Well, I’ll get the music done at least.  I can sleep when I’m dead.  Or, you know… tomorrow.

No More #RPM2020 For This Vacation

I just posted this to the RPM Challenge website:

Everything that I can do while on vacation in Florida has been done.  Nine electric songs mixed, seven acoustic songs mixed, six of those seven acoustic songs’ alternate versions mixed.

I have a few songs worth of guitars still to do once I get home on Saturday.  Every guitar part I have done this year has been played through a pair of amplifiers (one Fender Bassbreaker 15 and one Fender Bassbreaker 18/30 at 18 watts) and the 18/30 is a seriously loud little bastard.  I have been playing it with the volume set as low as I can get it and still produce a sound.  The 15 watt guy needs to get cranked a bit in order to keep up.

Last Saturday I tried to pick off the last three songs worth of guitars but my family had reached their limit and told me to shut up (in the most polite, supportive way possible).  I got pissy and shut it all down.  On Saturday I am going to finish those damned songs using just the 15 watt amp so that I don’t deafen my family.  I have leads to add to one of the acoustic songs, and leads to add to one of the electric songs.  The last thing is an instrumental idea that needs rhythm and two leads.  I want to finish all three, mix them, and then sequence the album, including figuring out which songs need to be dropped.  I think two or three electric songs need to go.  I don’t know if any of the acoustic songs are bad enough to eliminate, but one might be.  We’ll see.

Everything I can do in my hotel room is done.  Saturday is the final day of the month so it will be musical crunch time.

For now though… sleeeeeeeep

Dedication

On Sunday we flew across half a continent and then went to Epcot Center and I walked until I couldn’t walk anymore.  Then on Monday we went to Hollywood Studios and then to Magic Kingdom where we stayed until late late and I was so tired that I could barely move.  Today we went to Epcot again and stayed for something like seven hours and then went to The Boardwalk and continued the endless walking and my legs hurt so much I can’t see straight.

…..and after all that I still mixed a song for The RPM Challenge and uploaded it all over the world using the guest wifi at Disney.

That is some grade A dedication right there, kiddos.  Testify!

RPM Freakout – #RPM2020

from my RPM Challenge account:

I have 10 songs mixed, so I should be breathing a sigh of relief.  Nope, I’m more stressed than ever.

Revised to do list:

Song #7 needs lead guitar.

Song #15 needs bass and drums.

Song #18 needs lead guitar.

Song #19 needs rhythm guitar and two lead guitars… because I started working on it yesterday.  It’s going to be an instrumental though, so no hiding where no one can hear me sing necessary.

No need to freak out… but still freaking out.  Going on vacation at 4:00am tomorrow.  All tracking needs to be done by bed time tonight.

Freakin’ out.

Note, I put the hash tag into the title of this post so that it will show up in Twitter.  That’s the only reason.  I’m a nerd.  What can you do.

 

That’s 10!

The RPM Challenge defines an album (for the purpose of the challenge at least) as 10 song or 35 minutes of music.

I just finished mixing my ninth and tenth songs of the month.  I could stop now and the challenge would be completed.  There’s still FAWM which requires four more songs, but I always think of FAWM as an afterthought,  RPM is where my February Music Heart lies.

Oh yeah, and that to do list I posted earlier?  I didn’t do any of it yet.  In fact, I may have added a whole new song.  What a moron!

Anyway, here’s song #9, which goes on the rock band half of the album…

And here’s #10 which goes on the acoustic side of the album…

And now I can go to bed before my battery dies,  Nighty Night, Disney World (not until Sunday though).

Vinyl? Me?

Oh this is silly.

A fellow RPM Challenge participant informed us of a site that offers to press your music on vinyl.  That’s kinda funny.  There are actual recording artists trying to release their music on vinyl who can’t because there are so few manufacturing sites that the demand has created a gigantic backlog.  This company is offering it though.  Good for them.  I hope they rake in the business.

I imagined that they would likely charge by the unit with volume discounts.  I was sure their minimum order would be in the thousands.  I Googled them and found this page.  I was right about charging by the unit.  I was wrong about the volume discounts.  More importantly, I was wrong about the minimum order.

Their actual minimum order?  One unit.

Gasp

They charge $30 a unit and their minimum is one unit.  Good lord, how will they ever make money?  Bedroom playing clowns like me will bombard them with single unit orders!

I will admit that the idea of having one of my own projects pressed on vinyl is tempting, but I don’t want to do it.  Nothing I have done is worthy of even that low a cost.  Maybe if I ever finish the best-of thing I’ve been talking about every March for the past five March’s I would think about it for real.  For now though, it’s just a silly nerd daydream*.

 

 

*Also, there is a glaring typo on that page.  I don’t think I can put any faith in their QC if they can’t even proof read.  Sure, I make idiotic typos all the time (in pretty much every post) but I’m not selling anything.  I don’t have to look professional, they kinda do.

To Do List

I’ve probably mentioned most of this before, but why not do it again?  I put up a new blog post on the RPM Challenge website.  Here’s what I wrote:

I am leaving for Disney World on Sunday before dawn so all of this crap needs to be done before I leave.  I think I can do some mixing in my hotel room at night before sleep, but if I don’t get to it all I’ll be home to finish it off on the 29th.  I need all of the tracking done before I go and any song that isn’t done goes onto the dropped list.

So what’s left?

Song #7 needs a bass, drums, and guitar leads.

Song #10 needs bass and drums.

Song #12 needs bass and drums.

Song #18 needs guitar leads.

That’s it.  The three bass and drum tracks are just midi in GarageBand.  I can do those with headphones on tonight before bed.  The guitar leads will be noisy, I’ll have to find some time to do that tomorrow in between packing and vacation prepping.

No problem!

The Florida trip starts on Sunday, but my actual vacation starts in just over four hours.

I’m ready.

I’m so completely ready.

Burned

I stuck around the house this morning so that I could do a little more recording.  I didn’t get to everything I wanted to get to but I’m almost done with the tracking.  Tomorrow I will wrap it all up.

I was able to stay home later than usual because it is Massachusetts school vacation week, which means greatly reduced traffic, and it’s Friday which also means greatly reduced traffic.  I was watching Waze as I worked and my expected travel time never topped 40 minutes.

At least it didn’t until I was actually on the road.  With Waze listing my estimated time of arrival at 9:00 on the dot it suddenly recalculated my route and asked me to get the hell off of route 93 South like pronto.  Uh oh.  The arrival time jumped up to 9:12 and the traffic in front of me stopped dead.  There was an accident between Dascomb Road and Route 125 somewhere.  I was able to get off at Dascomb, but the traffic in Andover was awful and I limped back to the highway one exit further down.  I ended up being 15 minutes late.  Damn it.  I got stuck in some traffic on 128 South too because of an accident on 128 North.  Rubberneckers are jerks, am I right?

Change of subject, I am still putzing along on my Flickr Photo a Day Challenge.  I took yet another picture of a guitar after I wrapped up my “session” (heh heh) this morning.  That puts me at 174 days.  I thought my previous best was 174 too so I was thinking of writing something goofy tomorrow when I broke my record.  I looked back at the blog post where I sketched out all of my previous failures and it turns out my previous record was 154, not 174.  Dumb ass.  So, yippee.  New World Record.  174/365.

174/365