Day 59 had some good progress. One song got both rhythm and lead guitars and three others got lead guitars. Later on, all four of those songs were mixed and uploaded to alonetone.com and are officially finished.

With that, August comes to an end. Today is day 60 and the first of September and while we ignore the sad fact that September brings with it the end of summer which is utterly fucking depressing it gives us a chance to reflect on the progress made in August.

In August I started 14 new songs and I finished them all. Simple. That means that my mini challenge to write and record an album entirely within the month of August (by RPM Challenge rules, 10 songs or 35 minutes) is also a success.

To recap the 50/90 project as a whole (which I think I already did in a post last night), The Started and Finished in July bucket over on my Trello board has 20 songs in it. The Started and Finished in August bucket has 14 songs in it. The Started in One Month and Finished in Another bucket has five songs in it. The Lyrics and Melody Written and Ready for Vocal Tracking bucket has three songs in it, all started in July. All other buckets are empty.

Time to start coming up with new song ideas. Bring on September.

I mixed two more songs tonight. That brings the total up to 39. The 50 songs in 90 days challenge is 78% complete and we’re still 38 minutes away from the start of September. Crazy!

Speaking of crazy, at this point in time there are 42 songs in the pipeline and 39 are finished. That leaves only three unfinished songs. They were all started in July, which means every idea that started off after August 1st has been finished. There were 14 of them and I cranked them all out with nothing left over.

Here’s one of the two songs I finished tonight. I am liking this one a lot right now. I think it’s all due to the two pickup notes in the vocal leading into the chorus. I think that is literally the difference between a song I like and a song I am indifferent toward.

Again… weird.

After I finished recording guitars this morning I was left with four songs that were ready to mix down and mark as finished. I have mixed two of them.

Oddly, the two songs, which were kicked off within just a few days of each other are creepily similar. The tempos are different and one has a bunch of key changes that sort of mask some of the similarities but they are close. Particularly the outros. Those are nearly identical.

But you know, it’s an internet based song writing challenge and they don’t ask how they only ask how many so… yeah. I never claimed to be original. I also never claimed to be any good at this shit. I just do it because I enjoy it.

Here’s one. This is actually the second song that was written but the first of the two that was finished.

And here’s the other. Again, the tempos are different and the vibe is different but the riffs are oh so very similar.

Why do I feel like the count of days in the title of this post is wrong? I don’t think it is, but I think it is, you know?

I have already written about everything I did yesterday but I’ll do it again in summary because that’s somehow been part of the workflow this year and I’d feel like I was missing something if I didn’t.

I put vocals on four songs. That’s all. Given that I haven’t been getting much time for car music during the work week I have to say I am really pleased with this occurrence.

That was yesterday. Today, day 59, will hopefully include a blitz of guitar tracking and mixing as it’s the last day of August. Best of luck to all of my fellow participants.

What did I do? I can’t remember. Let me think…

First I added lyrics and melody to one song. Next I started a brand new song and finished the form and the MIDI (ie fake) bass and drums. Then I did something unusual as far as my assembly line is concerned. I wrote the melody and the lyrics for this new song. I usually wait on that until the rhythm guitars are done, but what the hell, right? Later that night I put a MIDI (ie fake) guitar track down to use as a guide. Then I mixed the one song I had left that was ready to mix. That brings the finished song count up to 35. The 50 songs in 90 days challenge is now 70% complete and there is still a month and two days left to go.

I put rhythm guitars onto one song. That’s it. There wasn’t time for anything else.