I’m a moron.  Here, let me tell you why.

I can’t sing in the house when other people are home.  I can’t do it, I just can’t.  That’s not why I’m a moron though, that’s just back story.  In recent years I have gotten around my vocalizing hang ups by recording in the car.  I would drive the kids to whatever event they had that day, then park the car as far away from humans as possible, open up my computer, plug in a mic, and sing like the little birdies, all while pretending that no one can hear me.  It’s worked out pretty well for me.  Unfortunately, now that the older of the kids is driving my opportunities for car singing have diminished drastically.

Last night was an exception.  One of the kids was at school until 9:00 pm.  I had to pick him up but I got there about an hour early.  I had my computer and my audio interface and a microphone and a warmed up set of pipes.  I was ready.

Now I get to the moron part.

My home computer is a laptop.  I have a swanky new MacBook Pro.  It’s awesome.  I love it.  The one beef people have with the latest and greatest MacBook Pro is the lack of ports.  It has four USB C ports and that’s it.  No problem.  I use a couple of adapters and BAM, all my stuff works.

Can you see where this is going?

As I was pulling into a parking spot, far away from the building, it hit me.  I didn’t bring an adapter.  My audio interface is USB 2.0.  My port is USB C.  They aren’t the same connection.  Oh crap, what a moron.  I was already to start writing some lyrics and some melodies and tracking some bad singing and I screwed up.  I sat there in the car for an hour, listening to the audiobook version of Ready Player One.  What a waste of time.

I tried to make up for it by working out the song forms for the three most recent ideas, and then recording the rhythm guitars.  It turned into a kinda productive night, but for the second day in a row I completely blew my chance at taking a chunk out of the most difficult part of this challenge.  I’m really not sure what I am going to do.

I currently have 16 songs in progress.  All but one have rhythm guitars and are ready for vocals.  I’m kinda screwed.  I put in for a vacation day next week.  I’ve got my fingers crossed.

Wasted day.  I had plans to add guitars and if lucky maybe a vocal or two.  Nope.  None of that.  I noodled out another 12-bar idea, but that’s it.  Day 15 is already a wasted disaster too.  I think I need to book a vacation day next week.

Day 12 is easy to recap. Nothing. Nada.

Day 13 was close to a repeat of day 12, but I did manage to sneak in a little GarageBand time on my iPad late tonight. Two new ideas in the works. One might end up with a lot of acoustic guitar, but will probably turn out to just be clean electric… is it Stratocaster time? That is song idea #14. I told myself no 12-bar blues until at least song #15… so you guessed it, I started working on 15 as well, and it’s a 12-bar.

I’m a little late with this post, but I think we’ll all survive.

Sunday was a good day.  I recorded guitar parts for five songs.  On one of those I also sketched out the song form.  I actually did it after I recorded the guitars which means I did some serious editing.  As of this moment I think it sounds okay.  I don’t know if I’ll still feel that way tomorrow, but for now we’re good.  I also worked out the song form for the only idea currently in progress that doesn’t have any guitars down.  That puts me at 13 songs.  I need 10 for RPM, 14 for FAWM, and 20 for my stupid can-I-make-two-RPM-albums personal challenge.

That’s the good news.  The bad news is, not a single vocal has been written or recorded yet.  Yikes!

Gibson Les Paul into the D&M Boost into the Tall Font Russian (Big Muff clone) into the little Vox MV50 Nutube amp direct out into GarageBand.

That’s the signal chain for about three quarters of the rhythm guitar parts I’ve recorded for my RPM Challenge project so far.

I might be a little biased at this point, but it sounds MEGA.

I spent a solid couple of hours this morning in the cellar recording guitar parts and it went pretty well. I managed to pick off four songs. I’m hoping I can pull off the same feat tomorrow morning. I have band practice in the evening so I need to spend some time prepping for that as well. I felt the guitar sounded pretty good, and I am pleased with the day’s output. At the same time though… I have very, very far to go.

I knew that I wouldn’t have any time to work on the project today, but I did manage to add two more bass/drum GarageBand files on my iPhone today. I have this idea for one that it will be three or four different verse/chorus/verse pieces all tied together. We’ll see how it goes.

Tomorrow… tomorrow there will be lots and lots of guitars recorded. I promise*.

 

 

*by saying “I promise” what I really mean is “I hope.”

Not much today, but not a shutout. I added song #11 to the list. Fully spec’d out, but just bass and drums like most of the others. I had time to work on rhythm guitars today but I flaked and didn’t do anything. I hope that doesn’t bite me on the ass later. That gives me 11 songs and 35:59 of running time. Is my goal this year to make a double album and hit 20 songs? It very well might be.

Another day with very little time for music. I still managed to add another song to the in progress list as well as fill out song forms for every song that was still just random ideas. I now have 10 songs in the works.

I sort of salvaged a wasted day today. I had no time at all, and was thinking I wouldn’t be able to do any work, but I did one bookkeeping sort of thing after dinner.

While I was recording guitars this weekend, I used the iPhone Music Memos app to make quick recordings of three little guitar noodles. Tonight I ported those noodles into a GarageBand file. That was going to be the big accomplishment that saved me from being completely shut out.

Fast forward a couple of hours and I’m laying in bed unable to sleep. Well, why not take advantage of wakefulness? I kicked off a couple of new ideas in GarageBand on my iPad. Nothing special, but they might turn out kinda fun.

And just like that, a wasted day becomes slightly productive. What do you know, right?