I mixed my third RPM Challenge song of the year tonight. I was able to spend some quality time working on music tonight, but not nearly enough. At least not as much as I had hoped to do.
Mixing a song is always a good thing though, even when the song is meh like this one.
Nothing. I was totally shut out. I had no time to do any music work at all yesterday. I still have TONS left to do before the month ends this coming Friday night.
Shit.
It was hard to find time to work on RPM Challenge music on Day 21 but I got a few things in. More than I expected, actually.
I started my day by adding a new song to the pipeline. Song number 18 has a full song form, MIDI drums, and acoustic guitars. No MIDI bass yet, but I’ll get there soon enough. During my lunch break at work I added two more song ideas. Nothing solid yet, just a few bass riffs grouped together. That brings me up to 20 songs. That was my goal. 10 electric songs, 10 acoustic songs. Still very unsure if I will finish them all, but at least we’ve gotten this far.
Before I managed to fall asleep last night I mixed a song too. That’s two songs mixed and finished. I didn’t think I was going to have time for any mixing last night but I just couldn’t turn off my brain to fall asleep.
Today is day 22 and there is a strong chance I am going to get completely shut out and have no progress at all today. There is one week left (counting today) so… yeah. Get crackin’ red head.
I know I said I was going to sleep, but I just had to take some time to finish another mix. Two RPM Challenge songs down and anywhere between eight and 18 still to go.
There’s no electric guitar on this song. None at all. There’s acoustic guitar and saxophone, but no electric guitar. I originally saw this as sort of a throw away. Just a little blow off thing to pad my numbers. Somehow though I am finding I kinda dig it. Weird.
Right… Day 20… I took a vacation day to focus on the RPM Challenge. It was a fairly successful move.
When the day started I had zero songs mixed, zero songs ready to mix, six songs ready for lead guitars and/or saxophone, and seven songs ready for vocals. Now that you know the back story…
I put vocals on seven songs, saxophone on five songs, and lead guitars on 10 songs. As the night came to a close I mixed one song.
That means the current state of the project is that I have one song mixed and finished, 11 songs ready to mix. One song is still ready for vocals.
Yeah, that was a full day. I’m not sure what I will get to today (Friday, day 21), and tomorrow has a very strong chance of seeing exactly zero progress. There are a lot of non-musical things on my agenda for this Saturday.
We’ll see.
After 20 days I finally have a finished mix of an RPM Challenge song. The mix is pretty shitty but I don’t care. As I was working on this one I had visions of it being the single pulled from this year’s album (that’s assuming singles were still a thing that people like me thought about, which they really aren’t) but the closer I got to finishing it the less it felt like a stand out. It’s not my worst song but it’s not my best either. So far all of this year’s songs feel that way, though they are all much closer to being the worst than they are to being the best. The pickings are slim this time around.
After a second round of guitar playing and a second short round of sax playing I can honestly say I have reduced myself to mush. The tips of my fingers on my left hand are looking a little like ground beef, and my lips and my jaw don’t work anymore and I am kinda drooling everywhere.
So worth it.
When I started my day I had zero songs ready to mix. Now, as I am about to start cooking dinner for the love of my life, I have 12 songs ready to mix.
What a day!
WOW! Five years is a LONG TIME.
The saxophone came out of its case and amazingly, miraculously, I can still play it.
Can I play it well? Oh my sweet christmas I CANNOT. I SUCK! I put sax parts onto three songs including the instrumental where the sax plays the melody. It sounds awful, my playing is awful, and the whole thing is just awful and I don’t care because oh my goodness was that fun.
I lasted about 10 minutes before my body started to reject the whole experience. I mentioned calluses in the last post. When you don’t play guitar often you lose your calluses and it hurts. It is a similar thing with wind instruments except it is about muscle strength. There are muscles in your mouth and around your jaw that you don’t use very often that are used A TON when you play a woodwind instrument. I made it about 10 minutes before those muscles decided they were done. I would then play for 20 seconds or so and follow up with a 2-3 minute rest. After about half an hour of that I had to stop. For now at least. I am going to break for lunch and maybe watch a TV show and then see how I feel. It’s entirely possible the 2025 saxophone experiment might be over. We’ll see.
Speaking of lunch, one thing about playing sax that I forgot all about is that it makes you wicked hungry. I think that’s a wind instrument thing in general because I remember everyone in my high school band complaining about how they were starving at the end of each rehearsal. Yeah, I needs me some lunch now.
Saxophone, babie! I can still play!
Over the last hour and a half or so I have added lead guitar tracks to five songs. My finger tips are in a state of pure burning agony. That’s what happens when you don’t play enough and your calluses fade away. Ouch town, population me, bro.
I need to give my hands a break. Know what that means? It means it’s time for some saxophone. It’s been five years since I’ve taken my cheap little alto out of it’s case. Can I still play? Let’s find out!
I just got home from some car music. I think it was a success. I’m not sure though because I am literally frozen solid and can’t tell if I am even alive or not. It is soooo freaking cold out right now.
I spent about an hour and a half in the car in the (mostly) empty movie theater parking lot, singing my lungs out while trying to keep my extremities safe from frost bite. It is tough to use a laptop while wearing winter gloves, but I sort of made it work. I put vocals onto seven RPM Challenge songs all while the temperature topped out at 19 degrees Fahrenheit (that’s -7.2 or so for our metric, Celsius using friends).
Right now I am sitting in my living room, hoping that the feeling will return to my toes soon. Once it does, I will go down cellar to my music nook and start recording lead guitar tracks. Today is Music Day, boys and girls, and it is off to a cracking good start.
Inside the Red Head's Head 