Category: Music

Does This Work?

Years ago I was posting music on this page using HTML5 audio tags and links to my alonetone account. For some reason I stopped doing that. I think its because the audio file links were auto-downloading instead of just opening up in a new browser tab.

Everything on the wordpress.com side has changed too, but I wonder if I can still use the tags. I found some ancient posts (from 2014, I think) that are still functional. Can I use those tags again?

ADDENDUM: Nope. Doesn’t work in this editor. I tried a whole bunch of different variations on the tag attributes but nothing worked. No big deal. I’ll keep using hearthis.at when I want to post audio here. Okay, sorry to waste your time.

Guitar Rig

Okay folks, the guitar gear is setup and ready to record some new music.

I put the new Analog Man King of Tone overdrive pedal onto my stay-at-home pedal board and plugged the whole thing in. I have three amps setup. The Fender Deluxe Reverb will be used when I can make oodles of noise and want to record with a microphone. The other two amps are the Fender Bassbreaker 15 and the cute little Vox MV50. They are both connected to the ABY switch so that I can run them both at the same time, and they are also both plugged directly into the USB audio interface so that I can run direct at times when I cannot make any noise.

Now I just have to actually play. Any minute now, right?

309/365

2023 50/90 Challenge Day 2/90

As expected, working in the office meant I was in the car commuting when I normally would be trying to make a little music so there wasn’t a lot of progress made on the current musical challenge.

I did come up with three little eight bar noodles that may be worked into a song somehow. Better that than nothing, right?

2023 50/90 Challenge Day 1/90

One day of the 50 songs in 90 days challenge is down. Well, it will be in about 2.5 hours, but I am definitely done for the day so I’m calling it now.

How did I do on this rainy and dreary 4th of July?

Not bad, if I do say so myself. Three songs underway. No guitars or voices or actual real life musical instruments yet, but all three songs already have all of the changes, the song form, a guide guitar (MIDI only) track, a vocal melody, and complete lyrics.

Like I said, not too bad.

Day two probably won’t have much of anything as it’s a work-from-the-office day, but at least day one went well.

New Music Project

It’s the 4th of July. I think I mentioned that in a post already. That means it’s Independence Day but it also means it’s the first day of the 50/90 music challenge. Write 50 songs in 90 days between July 4th and October 1st. I’ve completed this back breaker a few times in the past (2016, 2020, and 2021, I think). Will I pull it off again this year?

Not likely.

I did, however, kick off song #1 for this year’s challenge. It’s just a rhythm exercise, really. I have never written anything in 13/8 time so I started out with a drum loop in 13/8 and just waited to see what happened. An hour later I am sitting here with the first song of the challenge completely written. It’s short and sweet and not very good and it’s only MIDI tracks in GarageBand at this point, no real live musical instruments are involved yet, but it exists.

Now let’s celebrate with a couple of pictures of Lily being lazy, and then I’ll go to the Apple Store to run an errand for the love of my life.

Happy 4th of July, everyone!

Finished

I just finished my June album in a month challenge thingie. 10 songs down. I am not sharing any of the songs I finished yesterday or today on this page though because they suck.

They suck.

They Suuuuuuuuuuck.

Oh well. I think we’ll punt on the rest of the May stuff and take a couple of days off before starting the next challenge, to write 50 songs in 90 days without logging onto the actual fifty ninety site at all. Faux 50/90 or bust, kids.

June is Ending

Today is the last day of June. I haven’t mentioned the June music project lately. How is that going? Are you going to reach your goal of writing and recording ten (bad) songs within the 30 days of June?

Maybe?

I mixed two songs yesterday. That put me at seven songs complete. At the start of the day today I had one song that needed lead guitars and two more that were ready to mix. Well, I just put some really pathetic guitar leads down on that one song, which ironically is song #1 for this month. Why is the first song started going to be the last one finished? I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.

Anyway, that one guitar track being finished (poorly) means that tracking for this album in a month challenge is done and I just have to mix three songs. I think I can do that today. We’ll see.

What about the 10 songs from May? I gave myself to the end of the day on July 3rd to finish those 10 songs. I don’t think I am going to make it. I still have one song that doesn’t have rhythm guitars, and six that don’t have lyrics. Yeah, there’s pretty much zero chance of me hitting this new deadline. 50/90 starts on the fourth of July so the May stuff is probably going to be ignored for a few additional months. Oh well. I am not really doing 50/90. Not officially at least. I am going to see what I can do with a faux 50/90. We’ll see.

Okay, time to add a couple of guitar pics and then punch into work on this fine Friday. 8 hours and 45 minutes until the weekend.

303/365
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The Streak is Over and What About Tomorrow?

My guitar playing streak is over. I lost count of how many days in a row I played for at least a few minutes. It was almost three weeks, I think. I failed to get any playing in yesterday. Oh well.

This morning before leaving for the doctors appointment I was able to get some work done though. Jen is in the office today so I had some quiet time in the house alone and I used it to record some vocals. I put them onto the 10th and final June song and two more May songs. I think I have six May songs still waiting for lyrics and vocals. I have decided to extend the deadline for the May songs to July 3rd. I am not extending the deadline for the June songs. Those need to be wrapped up by Friday. I only have one guitar part to add and then mix the final five and that’s it. No problem, he said with false confidence that probably wasn’t really that false.

I thought I was going to get back onto the photography bus today. Film, to be specific. As I was getting my shit together to go to the doctors appointment I looked out the window and saw sun gleaming into the back yard. Right. I grabbed Dad’s camera. I didn’t know where I was going to go after the appointment, but I was going somewhere. Then when I actually got outside and got in the car, the sky was clouded over and ugly and sad. Oh well. The day is coming. It’s summer now. Film photography. Digital photography. All over the place in Eastern Massachusetts and Southern New Hampshire and maybe even more places than that. I want Boston. I want light houses. I want to go shootin’. Ideally I want to go shootin’ with other folks, but if I have to do it alone at the crack of dawn then that’s what I am going to do. You heard it here first, folks.

What should I do tomorrow? Tomorrow is my work from the office day. I will start the day in Foxborough, which is about a million and a half miles away from my house. I will need to be on the road by 7:30am.

Should I try to get my couch to 5k training in? Tomorrow is the day that it should happen, as I am trying to do this every other day, but I was planning on pushing it off until the day after. If I get up at 5:00am and get right the hell out the door and start, then I should be done by 5:30. That would give me more than enough time to do everything I want to do, including recover from the exercise and watch episode two of Marvel’s Secret Invasion.

I am undecided. If I am out of bed by, let’s say, 5:05am then I will do it. Tomorrow’s plan is to switch from walk for three minutes and run for one minute, repeating eight times to walk for two minutes and run for one minute, repeated eight times. I fully expect my legs to fall off. It’s going to be freakin’ brutal, but it should also take less time than yesterday did. We’ll see.

Okay. That’s enough for now. Back to work, Robert.