Category: Recording

RPM Starts Tomorrow

Tomorrow is February 1st. That means my 15th RPM Challenge will be underway and you, my poor unfortunate reader, will be blitzed with endless posts about a bad musician making bad music. I mean, you get that crap on a regular basis from me, but in February it’s out of control.

I don’t have any plans. I was thinking of using two different guitars, but I am not sure I want to bother with that. We’ll see. The Les Paul needs new strings before I record anything, and if I use the SG as well then that desperately needs new strings. I was thinking of going for a wetter sound over all. Maybe just longer reverbs and some more delays, maybe? My latest gimmicky idea is to use more tempo changes. I used a slight tempo change in one of the last batch of re-recordings and I kinda like how it came out. Maybe more of that.

Beyond those gimmicks, I don’t have any plans. Just 10 songs. 10 faux bluesy, faux proggy rock and roll songs. Dad rock. Stuff like that.

The RPM Challenge started in 2006 but it was just a local thing in Portsmouth, NH. In 2007 they went international, meaning they just put it on the web. I first heard of it late in the month so I missed out. I did one on my own using old songs the following month, then the month after that I tried doing it again with new songs and failed miserably. 2008 was the first time I did it for real and I failed miserably. 2009-2011 were also failures. 2012 was my first success and it made me very happy. 2013-2021 have all been successes too. Well… successes in that I met the recording requirements. Some were more successful than others in terms of the quality, but they are all kinda crappy. I don’t care. I just enjoy it, even if it is really dumb.

Tomorrow is the day. One your marks… get set……. wait for it!……

The Nerdiest Music Nerd Thing I’ve Ever Done

I’ve done a lot of musically nerdy things in my life. I’m a Rush fanatic so I sort of goes without saying.

Years ago I made a playlist on Alonetone that held songs I wanted to re-record. Before I started actually finishing songs I just kept adding songs to the playlist. When I started finishing songs I added those to the playlist and matched them up with the originals. Now that it’s done there are 114 songs on the playlist.

Through all of this time I kept the playlist private. Today I made it public. Good lord what a nerd I am.

The Great 2015 Re-Recording Project Reference Tracks

Done and Done

At last, The Great 2015 Re-recording project has come to an end. Volume six has 11 songs. For a while there I thought it was going to have 12 or 13, but enough’s enough, right? Maybe at some point in the future I’ll pull together another batch of slightly better than shitty songs, but for now let’s consider this nearly seven year old exercise complete.

The last two songs include one that’s basically meh:

And one that might be okay in more capable hands:

I still have to get volumes five and six onto bandcamp, but for now I think I am just going to rewatch season two of The Mandalorian because this is the way.

Tracking is Done

The Great 2015 Re-recording project started in, you guessed it, 2015. I failed to finish it in a timely manner and it kept getting extended and each time I revisited it I added more songs to it and by the time 2020 came around and I really got to it for really reals it was gigantic.

I just put the last guitar track onto the last song. Tracking is officially done.

What was supposed to be 8-10 songs has turned into 58, I think, and instead of one little best-of playlist it’s going to end up with six.

What did I learn from today’s monumental (#sarcasm) guitar tracking session?

Stringjoy strings last longer than any other strings I’ve ever played, but they don’t last forever. When they’re dead, they are really dead, and the strings on my Les Paul Standard are dead. I will change them before RPM starts next week, I promise.

Also… calluses are important. Ouch.

I’ve got two songs left to mix and then The Great 2015 Re-recording Project, aka Quarantine Tunes, will be over. I want it done today. Let’s move on to new things, shall we?

Song Time

I said in the last post that I was going to play guitar tonight but I decided to mix a song instead. The Great 2015 Re-recording Project only has two more songs outstanding after this one. They both need lead guitars and a mix, but after that the whole shebang is done.

Which means that after RPM is done I’m going to have to think of something new to do to waste my time.

Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel

When I say that the sixth and final round of The Great 2015 Re-recording project is scraping the bottom of the barrel as far as available songs is concerned, this is what I am talking about.

Not bad. Not good. Just, meh. I probably should have left this one off.

Here’s a Song

The only song from last year’s RPM Challenge to be added to The Great 2015 Re-recording project is this little sucker. I think this version is better than last year’s, which is nice. Mission accomplished. I also think this needs to be played loud. It doesn’t seem to land as well at a lower volume. That’s probably a sign that the mix is shitty, but I don’t care. It’s done. Again.

My Throat Hurts

Ouch.

I did the last vocal parts for The Great 2015 Re-recording Project this morning. I had two songs remaining, an easy one and a hard one. I started with the easy one and quickly learned that it wasn’t very easy. It may have been easy back in 2014 but it sure ain’t easy now. Maybe I’ll get lucky, thought I, and the hard one will turn out to be not so hard. Nope. The hard one turned out to be really hard.

My throat hurts.

It’s done though, so that’s really good. Happy Happy.

Pics:

Here’s the view from my mobile recording studio window…

And here’s a pointless clock picture, again.

Another RPM Gimmick Idea

I pretty much always use the same time effects on all of my tracks when I mix a song. I like a super short slap back echo on vocal tracks, a dotted eighth note delay on lead guitars, and a short room style reverb on everything. I don’t want my mixes to sound dry, but I do like them to sound almost dry. I want the mixes to sound like they could be a band playing in a small club or a rehearsal room. For as long as I’ve been doing this stuff, that’s been my go-to goal.

I was listening to some Rush the other day. Moving Pictures. I was kinda taken by the reverb. There is a lot of reverb on those tracks. It’s never overpowering or in your face, but it’s there. Maybe this years RPM will include a little experimenting with different reverb types and lengths.

Maybe.

Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel

Right, so I did four rounds of re-recording old songs, then a round of re-recording recent songs, and now one more round of old songs. I am absolutely scraping the bottom of the barrel here, and the barrel isn’t exactly what you’d call deep.

This one comes from the failed 2010 RPM Challenge, which wasn’t finished until late summer 2011, along with the failed 2011 RPM Challenge. It’s slow, it’s dumb, and it’s ridiculously simple, but it’s got a lot of fuzz on it so it’s okay in my book.