Category: Recording

Time to Get Ready

Today is a good day.  I got a bonus from work today.  That’s good.  I got my tax documents from work too.  By the time this posts my taxes might even already be filed because my wife is amazing.  That’s also good.  I just spent my lunch break working on a time sensitive issue and I figured it out with a minimum of stress.  That’s good too.

The RPM Challenge starts in less than nine hours.  That’s good, but I highly doubt I’ll be awake at midnight to celebrate.  We have a gig tomorrow night.  That’s good as well.  I’m not nearly as stressed as I was for the last gig and that is doubly good.

There are some things that royally suck but I am not letting them bring me down.  The triumph of authoritarianism over democracy is progressing in the US Senate right now as the republican party makes a farce out of the constitutionally mandated impeachment process.  That royally sucks.  I am beginning to think that secession is a viable option.  Brexit takes place today.  Midnight Brussels time, 11:00PM London time, That’s 6:00PM Boston time, I think.  That royally sucks too.

I’m weighing the good against the incredibly bad and choosing to ignore the fact that, in the grand scheme of things, the bad is infinitely more important than the good.  Today I am deciding that the good will outweigh the bad even though that is amazingly, shockingly naive.  Screw it, I’m going to Disney in a couple of weeks.

For now though, I have to start planning my packing for the gig tomorrow.  I need my Les Paul and my SG, my Bassbreaker 18/30 and my Vox MV50 with the 12″ cab, my full pedal board, the handful of new cables I bought (bright orange so you can see them from space), a couple of backup pedals (looking at you, Keeley D&M Drive) and power cables for each one, the microphones, stands, and cables I took home from the rehearsal room recently, the little pick/slide holding microphone stand attachment, and a new glass slide.  Then I’ll go to Mike’s house and get the rest of the mics, stands, and cables, my gig bag with all my emergency stuff in it, and the little stand I sit my amp on when we play.  Oh yeah, and I have to change the strings on both guitars!  Can’t forget about that!

Sunday after the gig I’ll put the amp and the pedal board (and the associated cables) back into my room where they currently sit (see the pic from last night), Setup a mic, stand, and cable on that amp and on the Bassbreaker 15 that is not leaving my room for the gig, then plug those into the 16 channel USB interface that I also took home from the rehearsal room recently.  I will plug the USB cable into my MacBook and make sure I can get both mic signals into GarageBand.  Once that’s done, I’ll be ready to record guitar parts in stereo.  When I record the acoustic guitar or a vocal or a saxophone I can just swing up one of the mic’s that will be on a guitar speaker and use that.  I also dug out my little acoustic guitar pickup that I got a few years ago and still haven’t taken out of the package.  I can use that to record as well.  I’ll keep the laptop and my iPad and my iPhone good and charged so if an idea comes to me I can play it into one version of GarageBand or another.  Once that’s all taken care of I just have to… you know… write a shit load of songs.  Yikes.

This year is a leap year so we get a whole extra day for the RPM shenanigans.  So really it’s no problem at all this year.

Yikes indeed!

But it’s still a good day.

 

What the Hell is a Cajon?

I can’t remember when it was, maybe about two years ago?  I was listening to a cover band podcast and one of the hosts was talking about an acoustic duo he played in.  One guy played an acoustic guitar and sang, the other was a percussionist/singer who played a cajon.  I thought to myself, what the hell is a cajon?

It’s this.  It’s a box.  There is a pad on one side of it that has wire snares built into it.  If you slap the middle of the box you get a thump.  If you slap the edge you get a snare drummish snap.

Fast forward to October 2018.  I was in Epcot Center, at the cafe outside of Soarin’.  I was sitting at a table by my lonesome and I don’t remember why.  I wonder… was this Summer 2018 and not October 2018?  Maybe.  Whatever, it doesn’t matter.  I was thinking about a songwriting challenge, either NaSoAlMo or 50/90 and I was trying to think of things that I could do to mix up my usual workflow.  I thought about arranging a couple of songs for acoustic 12-string, a cello instead of a bass, and hand percussion instead of a drum kit.  I never did it, partly because the strings function in GarageBand for iOS kinda blows, but while looking at GarageBand Percussionists in the Drummer function I found one with a cajon.

This past summer, just before another trip to Disney World, I was working on 50/90 ideas and I came back to that guitar/cello/percussion idea.  I scrapped the cello for an upright bass at first, and I declared that all hand percussion would revolve around a cajon… because why the hell not?  Then I got a really crazy idea.  Why have a bass at all?  Why not just go 12-string, percussion, and voice.  That would be way out of my comfort zone.  Then the kicker came to me.  Where I would normally play lead guitar… play saxophone.  Oh we’re just one step beyond now!

Of course I never did any of that at all.

Well now we’re three+ days away from the RPM Challenge and I’m looking for ideas again.  Due to still another Disney World trip (this is becoming a trend) I am going to be in quite the time crunch.  I thought about maybe doing half of the songs as usual, and then half as trippy instrumentals.  Last year I did 20 songs, the equivalent of two RPM albums.  Maybe this year I stick to 10 songs but make it two separate five song EP’s.  Then I thought about that damn cajon again.  How about five rock songs, five trippy instrumentals, and five acoustic songs.  The rockers would be guitar/bass/drums/voice, the trippy instrumentals would be guitar/keys/bass/drums with shit loads of sound effects, and the acoustics would be 12-string guitar/hand percussion/alto sax/voice and the percussion would center on a cajon.  Three EP’s which would let me have a complete RPM project and a complete fawm.org project (which I haven’t even considered shooting for this year).  That sounds awesome.  Super awesome.  Super epic awesome.

Granted there is zero chance of it happening.  I’m going to end up with 10 bluesy rock songs in odd time signatures arranged for a bad power trio.  Eh, that would be cool too.

Three days, 10 hours until RPM officially kicks off.

50/90 – Day 10

Two of the last three nights have been 50/90 progress free. Am I slowing down? Yeah, probably a little. Is it okay? Well, I’ve got 18 songs in the works and there are still 80 days left… so yeah, I think it’s okay.

If there is a hangup, it’s in the demo recording. I don’t want to use any amp sims at all. I want all of the guitar sounds to be my Fender Deluxe Reverb. All or nothing. I’ll probably change my mind on that eventually, but for now I’m sticking to it. That means no recording in the living room while the kids are watching tv. That’s a big deal. We’ll see how far this goes.

Most importantly, I’m still having fun.

Nerd Alert

I often make a Google Document for keeping notes on my RPM Challenge progress. Start a new idea, add it to the doc. Write some lyrics, add them to the doc. I just sometimes need something to help me keep my thoughts in order. Sometimes I use a Google Spreadsheet to keep track of which guitars I use on each song, or which amplifier patch, or beats per minute, or really anything you can think of.

Today I upped my nerd game. I created a Trello board to keep track of this year’s project. There is a list for songs that are just in the idea phase, songs that are in the recording instruments phase, songs in the vocals/lyrics phase (lyrics and melodies are always the last thing I write), and songs that are in the mixing phase. Each time I start a new idea I will add a card to the idea list. Then as I add to it I can make notes on what I did in each card, and move it between lists as it progresses.

I’m waiving my nerd flag high this year.

New RPM on the Bandcamp Page

I uploaded the new RPM music to bandcamp. Please don’t pay for this. If you want it you can get it at my alonetone site for nuttin. If you insist on shelling out some dough, I would ask you to donate it to rpmchallenge.com.

13 Songs Finished

I mixed a song at lunch time today and it immediately went onto the cut list. I just don’t like it. So I am not posting it here. Then after playing karate chauffeur to the kids all evening I mixed this one. It also probably belongs on the cut list, but it isn’t so bad.

And One More Makes 11

Song #11. I started this one last night, after I had already sketched out song #14, with 14 songs being the goal. So this is sort of overkill, but I like it more than most of the other songs so it’s a keeper.

RPM Song #9

Let’s take stock of the ol’ RPM Challenge, shall we?

The goal is 10 songs or 35 minutes of music. Right.

I currently stand at 9 songs and 34:41.

SONOFA!! 19 seconds short!

I have four more songs in progress. None of which have lyrics yet. That’s the sticking point right there now isn’t it.

I’ll have before work time on Tuesday. On Wednesday I took a vacation day, but the kids are on school vacation so I will only have a couple of hours in the morning before I go get them at their dads. Thursday is telecommute day, but the kids will be home. If I can’t get the rest of the songs tracked (including one more that hasn’t even been started yet) by the early afternoon on Wednesday then FAWM is a bust. I need 14 songs to finish that one. RPM looks good. One more lyric/vocal and it’s done, and I can do that Tuesday morning. After getting the kids on Wednesday the plan will be to mix whatever is left. I suppose if I’m close to 14 I could always sit in the car and sing. Maybe drive to some empty parking lot somewhere.

Song Number Eight

Eight down, six to go. One of those six is ready to mix (I think) and two don’t exist at all yet. Things ain’t looking good for FAWM, but the RPM Challenge is looking nice and rosy.

Song Number Seven

I started noodling out this little rocker this morning after going grocery shopping. The lyrics were recorded while sitting in the car outside of my step son’s guitar lesson. Later, after going to my nephew’s 4th birthday party, I recorded the guitars. Then after a break for some TV time I mixed it.

Not that good, but it’s there.