I haven’t played my guitar this week and the stir crazy is getting to me. I’ve done a lot of work on 50/90 but none of it on guitar. I’ve got eight songs with vocals recorded that are just waiting for leads. I have three that are ready for rhythm guitar. Tonight. I hope. All totaled, I’m up to 47 songs now. Three more to go and then all I have to do is the gigantic mountain of work left to finish them up.
The Agents of Shield re-watch is up to season five episode one. It opens with a montage set to a Talking Heads song. At least I think it’s a Talking Heads song. It’s definitely David Byrne singing. It lead me to the question: The year is 2020, is it time for me to give Talking Heads a try? I more or less ignored them back in the 80’s. Should I change my mind? Change my tune, so to speak?
Jen and I have been trying to exercise. I’ve been getting 30 minutes or so in each day for the last few days. I’ve been slacking a little today though. One of the things the Apple Watch activity app tracks is calories burned. I had the goal set at 640. I can’t remember if I set that or if it defaulted that way, but it’s been like that forever.
My SleepWatch app has been giving me notifications stating that I get better sleep if I burn 800 calories. That’s interesting. The last few exercise filled days have seen me going way above 800 and I have been sleeping a little better than normal. I guess that settles it. My activity app has been upped from 640 to 800 calories. Yup. I need to go for a 5-6 minute walk now.
I had six songs ready for vocals. This morning, while sitting in the movie theater parking lot, I cranked out four of them… poorly… as usual.
It was foggy out so it was a little harder to see people around me. I saw a couple of dog walkers and a jogger, but that was it. There was a tractor trailer parked near my usual spot so I went someplace new on the other side of the lot. A mall security car did a slowish drive by. I don’t think he was checking on me, I think he was just slow.
On an unrelated note, I have not had breakfast. The last food I ate was just before 9:00pm. I won’t eat anything until lunch at 1:00pm. I am officially trying this 16:8 fasting shit on for size. Also, I am really hungry. Four hours to go!
I added some rhythm guitar to four songs today. It mostly went okay. There were a couple of moments when the tendinitis in my thumb decided to remind me it was there. I had to adjust a couple of things to resolve it, but it was really the first time that my hurt thumb was a factor, even though it was a very small factor.
Gear wise, I started out with what more or less is my Lizardfish setup. If there was a sound that I was forced to call “my sound” meaning my usual go-to it would be this. Gibson guitar into a Klon KTR into a Malaise Forever Black Lives Matter into a lowish wattage amp. In this case, two lowish wattage amps. Sometimes we’ll throw in either an MXR Uni-vibe or an MXR Phase 90 at the front of the pedal chain. Today I started out that way, complete with the Uni-vibe, but it just felt off. It could be that I haven’t played at all in a week or so, but I just wasn’t connecting. I ended up turning everything off except the Klon. Ahhh… there it is. The magic place.
Next thing I knew, I had blown through three more songs. Nice. Next time I might try zeroing the gain on the KTR and maxing the output and letting it push the two 15 watt amps into overdrive. That should be fine. It might be a touch louder than I usually get, but it should be fun.
First, I mixed a song. It was the 26th song for 50/90 overall, but it was also the 10th song written and recorded entirely within the month of August. That means for the seventh month in a row I have completed an RPM Challenge rules, album in a month in 29 days. That is insane.
After that I arranged two sets of ideas, just bass and drums, into something that passes for a song form.
After that, I recorded lead guitars on two songs, then took a break to help my step son with a project, then recorded lead guitars on three more. When I ran out of songs that were ready for leads I added rhythm guitars to three songs.
I am now, temporarily, out of songs that are ready for guitar parts of any kind. I have five songs that are ready to mix, and I expect to pick off one or two tonight, and six songs that are ready for lyrics.
Wow.
I still want to kick off at least three more ideas before August ends. I want to be at least at 40 songs by the end of the month and I’m at 37 now.
Next up is dinner, and then probably a memorial viewing of Black Panther. Then I’ll try to mix another song.
I have a meeting starting shortly and I’m all prepped for it with a few minutes to kill. I’m sitting here thinking about 50/90. I’m at 24 songs completely complete. I’ve got two more ready to mix and I should be able to get to them tonight. That will put me over the halfway mark. It will also be 10 songs started and finished within the month of August, meaning I will have completed the album-in-a-month thing by the 29th once again. Is 10 songs in 29 days some how a natural thing for me now? No, don’t be stupid. The only reason you’ve finished as much as you have over the last seven months is you haven’t had to commute to/from work. Don’t get cocky, jerk.
Anyway, I wasn’t going to do this, but here’s another song that I mixed last night. It’s nothing special, but there is a little three-part harmony near the end.
This morning before work I put vocals on five songs. Tonight after work I put lead guitars on five other songs, and rhythm guitars on two more. That’s a productive day, musically speaking. Depending on how the Bruins game goes tonight I might throw in a mix down too. We’ll see.
One little mildly concerning tid bit. The last two times I played guitar I felt a little numbness in my right thumb. The right thumb being the one that does not have tendinitis. Oh good. It was just a little pins and needles, but it definitely shouldn’t have been there. Maybe I was just nervous about the left hand and squeezing the pick really hard with the right. Who knows. I will keep an eye on it.
For the second day in a row I did some car vocals. Last night I wrote up lyrics for five more songs, all while watching The Bruins let game two slip away. I thought they were going to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat as Tampa Bay completely outplayed them, but no such luck. The Lightning took it in overtime.
So I had five more songs ready for bad singing and I drove to the movie theater again and cranked ’em out. There were no weird spectator moments like yesterday, but I did manage to wrap it up quickly (simply by choosing to not add harmony parts to one of the songs) so I decided to take the long way home.
This used to be the high school. Now it’s city hall. We have a nice, gigantic, city hall.
I asked the barrel to move. It ignored me. I yelled at it. It continued to ignore me.
Last night after work I cooked up some quinoa with chopped up chicken for dinner for me and Jen and it was lovely. Jen was working on a computer hardware project so we ate in the office. I did what I’ve been diligently doing for the last week and a half, I went to Netflix and watched an episode of Agents of Shield (season three, episode one… the blitzkrieg re-watch continues at a break neck pace) while I ate my quinoa.
I had Netflix on one monitor screen and on the other I opened up the Trello board I use to keep track of 50/90. I had a lot of songs in the these-need-lyrics bucket. Next thing I know, it’s 90 minutes later and there are five songs in the ready-for-vocals bucket. I cranked out five melodies and five lyrics in 90 minutes. How the hell did that happen?
This morning I got up early and drove over to the parking lot behind The Loop and put vocals on those five songs. It went okay. None of the gear issues I had the last time. Nothing special, musically, but I made some good progress.
I thought I was going to have my very own Karen moment. I seriously wonder, if my skin were a different color, would something have actually happened? Let me explain:
As I was finishing up the last line on the last song a car pulled up. It wasn’t directly next to me, but it was only two spots away. There was an older woman in the driver seat and as she pulled into the spot she did so very slowly. The whole time she was staring at me. You can bet your sweet ass that I was starting right back. I was sitting there with my headphones on and a mic in my hand and a computer on the seat next to me, and I was giving her the what-the-hell-are-you-looking-at-karen look. There was as much stink eye as my face is capable of.
She pulled into the spot, always looking at me. One heartbeat… two heartbeats… and she pulled out. She went to another spot, a row or two away from me, and sat there. She didn’t get out of the car.
(that white car was empty, and it had been there the whole time I was there)
Now as I said, I had just finished the last line in the last song, so it was time for me to go. I packed up my computer and all of my stuff and put it into the backpack I keep it in. I was a little disappointed. Had I had more to do I would have hung out longer, and karen wouldn’t have the opportunity to think that she drove me off… assuming she actually was a karen and actually would have thought that she drove me off… you know what I mean, right?
I decided to drive past her on my way out. It was out of my way, but it gave me the chance to continue my stink eye. She didn’t look at me as I drove by. I’d like to think it was because she was afraid she poked the bear.
Obviously all this was because she was meeting someone there and thought that maybe my car was that person’s car and when she saw the fat dude with the SM-57 she just went on her way. Maybe she was meeting a tinder date. She was probably retirement age, but maybe she was just looking for a hookup. Maybe she was a spy and she was meeting up with some illicit contact.
Most likely she was just wondering what the hell some fat ass red head was doing in the parking lot of closed movie theater at 8:30 in the morning.
Inside the Red Head's Head 