The folks over at the RPM Challenge website have been running a second challenge for a few years now. Record Every Month. Write, record, and submit one song each month, just to sort of keep things warmed up for the next February album in a month thing. I usually play along, but I sometimes miss a month here and there.
I’ve been planning on doing it this month but here we are on the 22nd and I had nothing to show for it. Until tonight that is. Last year I broadened the scope of the thing to record a single every month. Two songs. An A-side and a B-side. Tonight I worked out a song form with MIDI drums and bass for two songs. The ball is officially rolling, folks.
While I was working on these two stink burgers, this happened:
I woke up this morning with every intention of working in the office. Now it’s 9:07am though and I am sitting at my desk at home.
I woke up a touch later than I wanted to, and that was the first issue. By the time I finished my morning exercise (jogging [pronounced yogging] in place for 45 minutes) I just couldn’t bring myself to drive into the office. Instead of packing up my stuff I just ate breakfast and finished the episode of The X-Files that I was watching (the one where the baseball player in the ’40’s is an alien in disguise… not the best episode).
I am still planning on making tomorrow (Saturday) a major musical day. Jen is going to be at a conference all day so I am on my own. The to-do list includes getting a haircut (which I desperately need) and an oil change for one of the cars. Other than that, it’s music. The Record Every Month Challenge and Quarantine Tunes Volume Seven… and maybe a start on Volume Eight too.
I promise you, owe internets, that there will be guitar playing, song writing, and recording done on Saturday. Unless I change my mind and just sleep and watch TV all day, of course.
Anyway, here’s today’s photo a day challenge masterpiece.
I am going to work in the office today and tomorrow. There won’t be any time for morning music. There isn’t even time to post this world-shattering blog entry.
Saturday… I will play guitar on Saturday. I’ll setup some GarageBand files tonight and tomorrow. Maybe a couple of re-recording things and an entry or two for the Record Every Month challenge that I haven’t even given a single thought to yet even though it’s March 21st.
Check it out, I said I was going to mix a song and here I am with a second mix! It’s bonus song time!
This was the title song from an RPM Challenge a couple of years ago. It’s okay. It was probably borderline worthy of re-recording, but now that it’s done I am all right with it. It’s not a disaster, though the goofy panning tricks I did at the beginning and end are probably mistakes.
I mixed a song, just like I said I might in my last post. I guess I am just the kind of guy who keeps his promises to himself and his blog.
This one was written and originally recorded last summer (June, I think) for the Record Every Month challenge thing that I haven’t even thought about this month. I should probably come up with something new soon seeing as the month is half over. Anyway. I liked it a lot right away and immediately added it to the Quarantine Tunes list. Now it’s done and I still like it. I can’t say if I like this new take better than the old one, but I do think it’s all right.
First, allow me to let the great Jeff Beck answer this question (with some help from Rod Stewart and Ron Wood):
No, I am not superstitious. Sorry to let you down. Didn’t we just have to answer something about whether or not we believed in fate? Was that here or was that one of the 1000000 lame ass polls I’ve seen on Threads? I don’t recall.
Nope, I don’t believe in superstitions. I don’t believe in astrology. I don’t believe in fairy tales, especially ones about dudes who claim to be their own fathers. I don’t believe that walking under a ladder is going to cause me to have a bad day. I don’t believe in any of that stuff.
I do believe in Stevie Wonder though, and even more hero-worshipfully, I believe in Jeff Beck. I also believe that Jeff Beck did a session for a Stevie Wonder record and in payment Stevie wrote Jeff a song that he could use with his new metal band, Beck Bogert Appice. I believe that song was freakin’ epic.
While I believe in the epic nature of that song, I do not believe that the BB&A version was better than the Stevie Wonder version that Mr Wonder was asked to record by his label because they were afraid he had given away a potential classic… which of course he did. As big a fan as I am of the legendary Mr Jeff Beck, Stevie’s version is way better.
Both of those versions, however, are better than the version my band, Lizardfish, recorded at a rehearsal one day. Yeah, we played Superstition too.
So no, I am not superstitious, but I do know a couple of killer songs when I hear them.
I mixed a song for The Great 2015 Re-Recording Project, aka Quarantine Tunes (Volume Seven). I should really wait until tomorrow to share it anywhere because I am so freakin’ tired that I can’t tell if this sounds anywhere near decent or not.
I actually finished recording this song in June of 2022. Coming up on two years ago. Why did I wait so long to mix it? Because I fear that I actually freakin’ love this song. The chorus just slaps. Well, at least to my ears it does. The rest of the song is okay, but the chorus just makes me want to bang my head and scream. It is very rare for me to feel that way about one of my own songs. So rare that when it happens, the idea of screwing up a mix really scares the shit out of the tiny little creative portion of my tiny little brain.
I don’t want to screw up a good song, dig?
Anyway, here’s the good song that I probably screwed up. I’ll listen to it tomorrow after I’ve slept and see if I still find the mix acceptable. I doubt I will, and if I don’t then I’ll remix it.
Okay, it’s March 9th which means this post is about nine days late. Here’s my final mention of the 2024 RPM Challenge.
Two playlists. One is the “album” I submitted to the RPM Challenge website. The album is called The Potato Situation, after something Jen said to me about making dinner that was really funny and I decided would live on forever in album title form. 10 songs. One or two might be better than crap. The rest are meh at best.
The second playlist is also 10 songs and officially qualifies as an RPM Challenge win in it’s own right, but I did not submit it to the website. Why? Because these are the 10 songs that weren’t good enough to make the final cut. As meh as the official album is, these are worse. There are some really boring stinkers in this pile, but the point of the challenge is to ignore your internal censor and just make stuff happen. In that respect, this playlist is a winner.
And there you have it, folks. Two, 10 song playlists representing two sides of the same project coin… or something like that. Another successful February. I wish the quality were a little better, but I’m happy with the win. I’ll take it.
Now I can get back to the Quarantine Tunes Volume Seven that I’ve been picking away at for a couple of years. Maybe I’ll mix a song or two this weekend. We’ll see.
Well, the RPM Challenge is complete. I just submitted my “album” which is really just a collection of rough mixes of shitty demoes of shitty songs. It’s just not very good this year.
I don’t have a playlist to embed yet. I’ll put that together tomorrow sometime. I do have the “album” all uploaded and sequenced with cover art and all over at alonetone.
I feel good about being done even if I don’t feel terribly good about the results. I’ll figure out a sequence of the leftovers “album” tomorrow too. For now though… I’m spent.
Happy Leap Day, everyone! February 29th! IF today’s your birthday then you’ve been waiting four years for this day. Congratulations and make the most of it!
Leap Day means it’s the last day of February which means the RPM Challenge ends today. I have mixed two of the remaining six songs this morning but I have to put off the rest of them until after work tonight. I also have to finish cleaning out the kitchen so that everything is ready for kitchen demolition day tomorrow. I also also need to setup a little kitchen-esque space in our bed room, just in case we decide we need to cook something.
The mixes have been very quick and dirty and rough at best this year so I am sort of plowing through them with the minimum amount of time and effort. I’ll get the last four in tonight without too much of a problem. The question is whether any of them will be good enough to use on the final album.
I have 20 songs. I need 10 to submit an album to the RPM Challenge website. I will pick the best 10 songs and bundle them into something that resembles an album. I will take the remaining 10 pieces of dog shit and bundle them into something that resembles an outtake album. I’ll submit the 10 good songs and not submit the dog shit. Unfortunately, there are probably only four or five songs that I think are good enough to submit… so some shit is going to make it’s way into the submitted album. Oh well. That’s normal for me. I just have to decide what songs to include.
Here’s one I just finished. It will probably be included, though in a better year it would not have been. Oh well.
Four songs left to mix, then I need a cover image and a sequence. That’s all that remains for this year’s RPM Challenge. Almost there, folks. Almost there.
Inside the Red Head's Head 