Category: Recording

Oh What a Relief – #RPM2020

This morning I packed my computer, a microphone, a pair of headphones, and a USB interface into the car and drove off to a parking spot behind The Loop in Methuen and recorded four songs worth of vocals.  I had the lyrics and melodies written already so it wasn’t too painful an experience.

When I was done (meaning, when the battery on my MacBook was approaching death and I had to go pee so bad I could taste it) I went home and started working on lyrics and melodies for the last four songs.  The first of the two were kind of interesting and one of them I purposely made pretty difficult as a bit of a challenge.  After those two I was really getting tired so I threw the last two together pretty quickly and they are just as bad as that sounds.

After that I hung out with my step son for a while, and made some late lunch/early dinner for the love of my life, and then (after double checking that the MacBook’s battery was back to 100%) I went back to The Loop (a different section of the lot behind the building this time) and cranked out the last four.  I got a little over confident for a bit and a couple of the songs have THREE part harmonies instead of my usual two.  Sick.

So where does RPM stand now… Four songs mixed, three songs ready to mix, three songs needing saxophone, and four needing lead guitar.  Once the full boat is mixed I am going to go back to six of the acoustic songs and add bass guitar, drums, and lead guitar and then remix them.  If I don’t finish that by March 1st I won’t worry about it, I just need to make sure I get a complete mix of each song before I start messing with alternates.  Well, more alternates.  I already have two different mixes of one of the acoustic songs.

I need to have all of the remaining guitar and saxophone finished before we leave for Disney World.  I will have my MacBook with me on the trip so I can sneak in a mix before bed each night, and if I am out of my mind crazy I might even sneak a couple in on the plane.  Then I will take full advantage of the leap year day and mix anything that’s left over once we’re home again.

Is any of this stuff good?  Well, no.  That’s not the point though.  The point of RPM, as always, is that it didn’t used to exist but now it does exist.

There’s still the issue of the half-a-song left for FAWM.  FAWM is 14 songs in 28 days, so for the leap year they say it’s 14.5 songs in 29 days.  Does that mean I have to sneak in one more?  If I do it’s either going to be simple, or 36 minutes of noodling and noise for the Blind Chaos thing I mentioned a few days ago.

I wouldn’t say I’m almost done, but I’m past the one humongous hurdle with time to spare.  I feel happy.

In closing, here is the view from this evening’s “studio.”

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Song #3

First, a picture from last night that has nothing to do with anything you will hear on the audio file…
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Right, now that that’s out of the way…

 

Now to the song.  Allow me to quote the description I used on alonetone, though I’ve written about all of this before…

Long story…
or, What the hell is a cajon anyway?

I listen to a podcast about cover bands. One of the hosts is a drummer and he plays in an acoustic group. He said he played his cajon at the acoustic gigs. I thought, what the hell is a cajon?

Google informed me that it’s this box thing that you sit on and smack with your hands. There is a hole in it somewhere and even some snares and depending on where you whack it you get a bass drum-ish sound or a snare drum-ish sound. It’s kinda neat.

Fast forward a few months and I’m sitting alone in Epcot center, just outside of Soarin’ (true story) and I was tapping away on GarageBand on my iPhone trying to come up with something different from my usual power trio arrangements. Turns out one of the percussion settings in the drummer function had a cajon. I started thinking like a hippie in a coffee house and thought, cajon, acoustic guitar, and cello. Well, GarageBand’s string sounds are crap and the cello was scratched in it’s place I thought maybe I could dust off my alto sax and use that as the soloist. I hadn’t played my sax since 2013 (I think) and it was time.

Nothing ever became of that Epcot Center song idea, but when RPM 2020 came around I came back to that idea. I decided to make half of my album the usual rock band stuff, and the other half this goofy coffee shoppe thing. If time permits I am going to do a rock band mix of the coffee shoppe songs too, but we’ll see.

This song is about how the US Senate gave the fascist in the white house legal permission to rig elections.

Isn’t that a great story?  I’ve still never seen a cajon in the flesh.

Two Songs, Three Mixes

First there’s this… A 12-bar blues in the verse and a chunk of a 12-bar blues in the chorus.  This is the only electric song that I didn’t double track the rhythm guitars, but I got to spread out the stereo thanks to running through two amps which is about as awesome as it gets.

Now the screwball part of the post.  This is the first song from the acoustic half of the project.  It’s the only one of the seven that I didn’t put any percussion on (what the hell is a cajon, anyway?) so it’s just two tracks of guitar, two (actually three) tracks of vocals, and one track of sax….

Now here’s the same song with the sax replaced by an electric guitar and bass and drums added.  I call the first mix the Coffee Shoppe Mix, and the second mix the Bar Band Mix although I don’t think I wrote that onto the file name….

….and with that, I have two songs complete.  I just have to decide which version of the acoustic song goes on the final album.

Bad Sleep

I’d say I’ve been having lots of bad sleep lately, but that implies I’ve had lots of sleep.

I’ve been staying up too late and getting up too early and I’m feeling it.  I am tired.  So very tired.  I’m still using the CPAP machine every night, and still wearing my Apple Watch so I can have some numbers to analyze each morning.  The numbers aren’t very good.  Not enough restful sleep, too high a heart rate, too screwy a sleep schedule, too many interruptions.  The usual.

There is one additional sticking point right now.  My nose.  More specifically, the huge pimple at the very top of my nose, right between my eyes.  It doesn’t bother me at all when I wear my glasses, but when I put the CPAP mask on it hurts.  It also makes the mask seal feel a little weak and I seem to be leaking air more often than usual.  Mostly it just hurts and it either makes it harder to fall asleep or it wakes me up.  Stupid zit.

I have a bunch of non-music things to do this weekend that will likely throw off my February routine.  I am kinda hoping I can embrace that disruption a little bit and allow myself more sleep.  It probably won’t happen, but I’ll try.  It’s also a long weekend so it’s a safe bet I’ll be driving to some semi-secluded location to record some vocals while sitting in the car.  I was able to pick one off this morning before work but it took a long time.  Much longer than it usually takes me to vomit up a vocal idea.  Whatever the difficulties, the song I worked on today is on the short list to become track one once everything is finished.  I also may have put together potential album covers this morning.

Here’s to a good night sleep and getting the vocals right in one take.

Mother Nature Hates Me

I just don’t get it.  Why does Mother Nature hate me so much?

I only telecommute one day each week, and I need the time between Jen and Harry leaving for work and school and me needing to punch into work to work on vocal tracks for RPM.  I seriously bank on that time to get through a lot of what I need to get done.  It’s really important.

Last week was the first Thursday in February and it snowed.  Harry had a snow day.  No singing on mic for me.  Today is the second Thursday in February and guess what… it snowed again.  We didn’t get a whole lot but it was enough for him to get a two hour delay.

What the actual….

It’s Mother Nature screwing with me, isn’t it.  This is all about me.  Two Thursdays, two snow storms.  I hate snow!  I really need my Thursday mornings, damn it.  Knock it off!

At least today I was able to get a little recording in during lunch.  Two more songs done, both of which had been started earlier in the week.  I’ve got that going for me at least.

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Sax Continued

Okay so tonight’s recording-in-my-bedroom session has answered two important questions.

  1. Can I still play the saxophone?
    The answer to this question is yes.  I can still play the saxophone.
  2. Can I still play the saxophone well?
    The answer to this question is an emphatic, hilarious, no.  I cannot still play the saxophone well.

I can still improvise on a blues scale in C though.  It’s like riding a bike.  Totally second nature.  It took a little more time to get acclimated to improvising on a blues scale in F, but I blundered my way through that one as well.

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I think I may have answered another question too. I mentioned in a previous post today that my computer fell off my desk this morning. I had no idea how that could have happened. Then when I came back to the office after my little recording-in-my-bedroom session tonight I saw this:

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Ms Patches sitting pretty, shamelessly right in the middle of the laptop stand. I think Scotland Yard has itself a chief suspect in this case. Elementary, my dear Patches.

Sax

I posted something on the RPM Challenge site last night that included a passing mention of me needing to record some saxophone.  Someone commented asking if I played.  I wrote a reply and I figured I would add it here for posterity… or not, whatever.  I’m posting it.  Sheesh, the judgmentaling going on.

Sax was my first instrument. From 89-91 I was a music major in college and sax was the instrument that got me in.

When I started playing guitar in high school though it took over all of my musical interest. Every now and then I feel a need to re-establish my sax skills and I’m feeling that right now in a big way. I don’t think I’ve played at all since… 2013? Maybe?

The biggest hurdle is going to be stamina. The muscles in my jaw are not ready for me to start playing again and I expect I’ll get a solid five minutes before I’ll have to stop and rest for a while. I’m hoping I can play a little and then rest a little and repeat until I finish everything.

It’s going to take a while and it’s going to sound bad, mostly, but I kinda need to do it.

Also… I don’t own a tenor sax. I only have an alto. As saxophones go, tenor is the shit. Alto is meh. I need to get my hands on a tenor.

I really just wanted an excuse to use blockquote tags.