My wife, Jen, just accidentally named my RPM Challenge album.
She was reading over the instructions for one of the dinnerly.com dinners that was delivered today and she mentioned:
The Potato Situation.
Oh, hells yes! Album title confirmed! I expect I’ll take a photo for the cover at the grocery store this weekend.
Two songs down, somewhere between eight and 18 still to go.
I don’t hate this one. I don’t love it either. I’m still feeling okay with the really wet mix. It is possible that I am just telling myself I am okay with it when really I am not okay with it. I don’t know.
I played my ES-335 today with it’s new frets and it felt good. I still don’t have any calluses on the finger tips on my left hand so it was still painful as can be, but other than that it felt good. I put rhythm guitars onto the final two songs for the RPM Challenge and then I put leads on three songs. The third song was bad as I was reaching the point where the pain and rust were too much to get around. I hope to sneak in some more playing later today. I took a vacation day so I should be able to find some time. We’ll see.
Pictures!
One RPM Challenge song down, somewhere between nine and 19 still to go.
I am in the mood for a really wet, reverby mix tonight. I’m guessing I will not be in the same mood tomorrow and will end up remixing this turd.
I hate to admit this publicly, but I suspect this waste of time and energy is going to end up being the best song of the whole bunch this year. That’s pretty depressing, but the point is to turn off the internal censors and just see what happens… and this is what happened.
I don’t think I’ve ever used Flickr to host a video here. Does it work? I had this idea of a post about me driving somewhere for some early morning car music today but then I didn’t post it until I got home after finishing the car music. Oh well.
I put vocals on four songs today. That means there are only five songs left to write and record the vocal parts for. 15 songs have their vocal tracks finished. Excellent!
No pics of the clock downtown today. I didn’t take the long way home, I took the fastest route possible. There are tons of things going on today and I didn’t want to delay my return home for even a minute or two.
Things unrelated to music projects that were in the planning, semi-hypothetical stage 24 hours ago have ramped up to the imminent and stressful stage. Bring it on! Roll with the changes, as the song goes.
Today is February 20th. For me, personally, in RPM Challenge terms, the 20th is officially the day that I start to panic. Enjoy!
The 20th is the day where the end suddenly feels very close. We get an extra day this year, thank you leap year, so it’s not quite as bad as usual, but I definitely feel a sudden need to get off my ass and get shit done. I have nine days left after today. I need to get busy.
I put rhythm guitars onto one song and lead guitars onto another this morning before work. My playing was terrible. Absolutely awful. I am so rusty it’s silly, and what playing I have done in the last couple of weeks has not been enough to shake off any of that rust. I feel like I am getting worse… probably because I am.
Where do we stand with the album in a month project as a whole? There are 20 songs in the pipeline. I have not mixed anything yet, so no songs are 100% finished. Six have been completely recorded and are ready to mix. Five have their vocals done and are ready for lead guitars. Two have lyrics and melodies written and are ready for vocals. Five have rhythm guitars done and are ready for lyrics and melodies. Finally, two have their song forms worked out and are ready for rhythm guitars. In addition, the song that I put the rhythm guitar tracks on this morning needs to have the bass guitar (MIDI) rewritten because the bass and the guitar don’t really work well together. I need to change something so they lock in. That sort of goes against the RPM Challenge ethos (is that the right word?) as I don’t like going back and redoing anything. It takes time that I don’t have. In this case though, it sounds worse than dog shit so I have to change the bass.
There you have it. The state of the RPM Challenge project at this point in time. The minimum goal is 10 songs or 35 minutes of music. I am shooting for 20 songs, and then I’ll pick the 10 best and use them as the album I “submit” to the RPM website. Just as a heads up for the future, I really don’t think there are any good songs this year. The best of the best is very much meh. This is not going to be a good album. It’s feeling like my worst ever. Blah, indeed.
Logically I think I am an a good place to finish everything off by midnight on March 1st. Logic does not really apply here though, so my feeling is that I am currently buried under an avalanche of things still to finish. Oh good.
Anyway, here are a few pics that I took as I was listening to a playback of a terrible sounding guitar solo this morning. Ugh.
I’ve used my Les Paul Custom for every note of guitar that I have recorded this month. There’s a good chance that everything I put down after I get home from the guitar shop tomorrow will be played on my ES-335. We’ll see. I might sneak my Les Paul Standard into a few things too, if I can.
Two days in a row. I’ve played guitar two days in a row. It feels good, except for my very sore, callus-free fingers. Ouch, babie.
I worked on four songs. I put rhythm tracks onto two songs and leads onto two others. All of that plus the four vocals this morning makes it a pretty good day, RPM Challenge wise. I have a lot more that I need to get to today though. With tomorrow being a vacation day for me, I want to do more vocals in the car in the morning. I don’t have any songs that are ready for that yet, so I want to try and write lyrics for 3-4 songs before bed.
In closing, the obligatory pics. This time with Hipstamatic and shake-to-shuffle.
How’s your Sunday going? Relaxing? Nice weekend day off? I hope so.
I am finding motivation very hard to come by. I got up a little late, did my exercise, ate my breakfast, wrote my daily writing prompt post, recorded a bunch of songs worth of crappy vocals, made the bed, and…
Apart from making lunch for me and my wife (burgers in a frying pan and french fries in an air fryer) I haven’t been able to push myself to accomplish anything else. I am going to try and play some guitar right now. Maybe for an hour or so. I am going to make dinner later, another Dinnerly meal like last night only hopefully my wife will cook it with me. If she does, she does. If she doesn’t, that’s okay too. I just wish I had a little more pep in me step, so to speak. I slept okay last night. Not great. I woke up at 3:30am and couldn’t get back to sleep right away. Eventually I did, and then I overslept a little. Funny how that happens on the weekends. Tomorrow is a vacation day (not related to the presidents day holiday which post-trump I will no longer capitalize) and I am wondering if the oversleeping will happen again. Who knows. Who cares.
It’s been an hour since I ate anything which means (by gastric bypass rules) I can drink something now. I think I’ll top off my water bottle with some sugar free Crystal Light lemonade and trek down to the cellar to play some guitar. What do you think? Good plan?
Get to it, red head.
I did some RPM Challenge work this morning after finishing my exercise and my breakfast and my daily writing prompt. What did I do? Vocals. I drove off to an empty parking lot in town and recorded the vocal tracks for four songs while sitting out in the cold. I really wish I wasn’t so shy about recording myself singing. It would be so much easier to just do this at home. The negative then would be all the noise I make and how annoying it would be to my wife, rather than me just being a wimp who is too shy to sing when other people can hear me. I’m fine singing with the band, but in those cases there is enough noise that I can trick myself into thinking I am hiding behind it. Also, I am playing guitar at the same time and for some illogical reason that makes a difference. Why? Who knows.
The only interesting thing about today’s car music is that I only had three songs prepared with a melody and lyrics. After I cranked out the vocal tracks for those three songs I wrote the lyrics and melody to the fourth song while I was recording. I wouldn’t say I improvised the vocal parts, but they are lame enough that you might think they were improvised. Who cares. I sure don’t. This means I have 11 songs with vocals, and the RPM Challenge definition of an album is 10 songs or 35 minutes… which means that even if I don’t record another vocal track for the rest of the month, I can still finish a full album. Nice.
Here are some pics from my “studio” for today.
Can you guess where the snowplows dump the snow when they clear the mall parking lot? I can.
Also, here’s the obligatory down town clock, because reasons…
Also, because I can’t resist, I happened to catch the cats sitting together on the old cat tree just before I left the house, so you get that picture too.
I haven’t played enough guitar lately to rebuild my lost calluses on the tips of the fingers on my left hand. That didn’t stop me from playing today for almost two hours. My finger tips are killing me!
I put rhythm guitars onto three songs for the RPM Challenge, and then I put lead guitars onto three more. Do you know what that means? It means I have three songs that are finished recording and are ready to mix. Finally!
Inside the Red Head's Head 