Category: Music

One Last RPM Post

I am still waiting on the good folks over at RPM headquarters to mark my album as received.  It usually takes a little while for them to acknowledge everyone’s submissions so I’m not concerned.  There was also the issue they had with the site crashing on the 29th so they let everyone have an extra day to check things in.  I had all of that done before noon on the 1st.

Here is my entry on the RPM profile page:

2020 Album name:

I Only Believe in Truth

Received

–

Date submitted:

02/29/2020

2020 Preferred Track name:

We’re Coming for You

About this preferred track:

Simple (mostly) 12-bar recorded mostly live.

About this album:

My original idea was half electric and half acoustic. That went out the window quickly and I ended up with a mostly disjointed mess of songs that are not so bad.

Favorite moment:

I used to be a sax player first and foremost, but once I started playing guitar while I was in high school I became a full time guitar player. On this album I decided to see if I could still play the sax. I can. Not well, but I can still do it. That felt great.

Words of wisdom:

I lost a full week due to a family vacation, though I did mix a few of the songs while sitting in a hotel in Disney World (we stayed at the Yacht Club). I was able to find the time to get all of the tracking done in plenty of time. You can do it if you need to, you just need to be creative with your time management.

Lessons learned:

I can still play the saxophone. A guitar played through two amps just sounds better than a guitar part played through one amp. Writing out a melody prior to writing the lyrics or sitting at a mic lead to me writing much more creative melodies that were not only more fun (and harder) to sing, but lead to songs that overall seem more interesting to me.

I also wrote a blog post during lunch today to act as a sort of recap for the month. Everything I wrote had been written on this blog at some point or another (except maybe the bit at the end about wishing I could change my mind on the sequencing).

I did it.  That’s nine years in a row with a finished album by March 1st.  I know that in terms of the real world it’s silly and stupid and not important, but for me it’s a huge thing and the feeling of accomplishment I feel cannot be overstated.

The finished product doesn’t look anything like what I planned.  I knew I was going to lose a full week to a family vacation so I kept my expectations kinda low.  I wanted 10 songs.  Five arranged for an electric three-piece rock band, and five arranged for an acoustic group in a coffee shop: Acoustic guitar, cajon and hand percussion, alto saxophone, and vocals.

It didn’t take me long to change the 10 song plan to 14 songs (seven of each type).  That was simply due to me writing too much music.  Even the 7/7 plan went down the tubes as I kept writing electric songs long after I should have stopped.  I ended up with seven acoustic songs and 11 electric songs.

If that wasn’t overdoing it enough, as I was working on a couple of the acoustic songs I starting thinking that they would sound pretty good with a set of drums instead of just hand percussion.  Eventually all seven of them had bass, drums, and electric guitar parts added and I ended up with two different mixes.  One for the coffee shop and one for a rock band.  So now instead of 18 possible mixes to use for the final album I had 25.

I thought about doing a three sided album where side one was all electric, side two was all coffee shop (my coffee shop analogy is starting to get annoying, but I’m rolling with it), and side three was band mixes of acoustic songs.

I scrapped that idea too.  Instead I went through all of the acoustic songs and picked the mix I thought sounded best and then went through all 18 songs and sorted them into three categories: Good, Kinda Good, and Crap.  Two songs went into the crap bucket, and three into kinda good.  I decided to drop them all from the final album and just go with the 13 that landed in the good bucket.

Here they are… 13 disjointed songs that no longer fit to any theme or structure, but which were the least offensively bad of the batch:

I Only Believe in Truth

So what did that leave me with?  Seven alternate mixes and five outtakes.  Two of the outtakes were acoustic so I really had five alternates of album tracks, five outtakes, and two alternate mixes of outtakes.  12 leftover tracks.  I figured the alternate mixes of the album tracks were all still pretty okay so I packed them all together into an alternate RPM album:

I Only Believe in Alternates and Outtakes

The saddest part of all of this is that last night I was listening through the dropped songs and I really think I should have kept one of them.  If I had paid a little more attention during the sequencing I would have made a better decision and the final album would have been a little different.  I am afraid that when I listen to the main album I’ll decide there were things I should have dropped.

Oh well.  February is over.  As with all RPM Challenges it’s now time to figure out what I want to do next.

What do I want to do next?

So yeah… what do I do next?

My Final #RPM2020 Album

…and with that, it’s all done.

After all the talking about saxophones I only ended up using three of the seven songs I played it on.  Five of the seven acoustic songs made it to the album, but I used the band mix on two of them.

I needed 10 songs and I ended up using 13.  I still feel iffy about a couple of them.  Maybe I should have stuck to just 10.  The running time is supposed to be 35 minutes and I ended up with a little more than 43.  I never gave that much thought this year though as I knew I was going to have way more than 10 songs to work with.

Do I like this album?  As of right now, I kinda do.  Ask me again in a couple of days and I’ll probably vomit on you (figuratively).  Does it feel like an “Album”? No.  It feels like a disjointed mess, but I knew it would.  As soon as I came up with the idea of making the album one part electric and one part acoustic I knew it would feel sloppy.

Speaking of sloppiness, I lowered my standards for the minimum level of performance required for one of these projects.  There is a lot of less than wonderful guitar playing and some down right shitty singing.  The sax playing was going to be bad even at its best.  You can’t take seven years off from an instrument and then suddenly play like John Coltrane… not that I ever played like John Coltrane, of course.  I’m literally being figurative here, not literal.

Anyway, here it is in all it’s messy glory:

The Alternate/Outtake Album

I usually wait a week or two before uploading my finished RPM album to bandcamp, but I was up early today and figured what the hell.

Over the last few years I have been creating a separate playlist on alonetone to hold all of the songs that I cut.  Those songs usually don’t go to bandcamp.  Last year I didn’t cut anything and had enough for two full records, so everything went.

This year I had five acoustic songs that went on the final album and each one had an alternate mix that I think was good enough to use, and at one point I thought about putting them both on the final album.  Instead I decided to use them as the first half of the second playlist and to include that second playlist on bandcamp.

I uploaded those first so that the “real” album would show up as the most recent.

Here it is:

The first five songs are alternate mixes of songs on the actual RPM album.  The next five are songs that I dropped, three electric and two acoustic.  I put the preferred mix of the acoustic song first.  The last two songs are the non-preferred mix of the dropped acoustic songs.

 

Guitar Goofy

Here’s one of the songs I finished today.  I started this a day or two before we left for Florida but I never got a chance to add the guitars.  I was able to carve out enough time to do it today.

It’s goofy… I own three Gibson guitars.  This song used them all.  The rhythm guitar is my 1979 ES 335 Pro, the melody/solo coming mostly out of your left speaker is my 2018 SG Standard, and the melody/solo coming mostly out of your right speaker is my 1978 Les Paul Custom.

Silly, but fun.

I took a picture of each guitar too but one of them didn’t make it to Flickr and I don’t know why.  It’s on my phone, but my phone is in the other room so you’ll just have to wait.

I Am Done with 63 Minutes to Spare – #RPM2020

I am finished with my 2020 RPM Challenge album with 63 minutes to spare.  Kick ass, dudes!

I ended up with 18 songs, seven of which had two mixes.  I was going to go with half electric and half acoustic or something, and maybe have the alternate mixes as their own thing.  In the end I just listed to each song and put each one onto one of three lists:  Good, kinda good, crap.  The good list had 13 songs, kinda good had three, and crap had two.  I then listened to both mixes of any acoustic songs on the good list and decided which mix I liked better.  I was a little surprised that some of the cajon mixes were the better of the two.  Last I took the 13 songs on the good list and kinda sorta ordered them from my favorite to my least favorite, and that became the final album.

hearthis.at is being bitchy and won’t let me upload any new songs tonight.  The RPM Challenge website is completely down too.  The internets are being a jerk.  Alonetone, however, is five by five.  Here’s a link to the final record:

I Only Believe in Truth

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!