So another Christmas holiday comes to an end with the posting of yet another new version of an old song. This one started out in 2011 and has been recorded three times. I am not sure why I keep coming back to it. It’s not very good. This is definitely the best of the three though.
Happy Holidays.
I snuck in a mix for a new take on an old song today. This was before our canceled family Christmas was brought back to life.
Written in 2009 for a failed crack at the RPM Challenge. This is really the first time I’ve looked at it since, but it’s always stuck in the back of my head.
Is it a good song? No. No it is not. Not even close. It’s kinda fun to play though.
This is what I am thinking of for the running order for volume five. I’m not set on this yet. I may take song #10 and put it first. I haven’t decided.
I mixed the last song on the list for Quarantine Tunes Volume 50/90. This one makes 10 songs written over the summer, redone for the winter… or something like that.
There is really nothing to this song so I went overboard on the gimmicks and effects and now it’s a soupy, saucy mess, but I like it.
Now I need to come up with a running order for the 10 songs and I can declare the fifth volume of re-recorded songs finished and get back to work on the sixth volume.
Merry Christmas Eve, everyone. Maybe next year I’ll mix a Christmas song on Christmas Eve. For now, you’re stuck with this guy.
HoHoHo.
I haven’t finished Quarantine Tunes Volume 5 yet, but here I am mixing the first song for Volume 6. This is just getting silly now.
Written in February 2007, rearranged slightly and rerecorded in 2013, and now rererecorded in 2021. I keep coming back to this, even though it’s really a crap song. Also, this is a seriously ratty, crap performance, but it is a lot of fun to play.
I just wrote this post a few minutes ago and it included what I thought was a new version of a song from this past summer, but the hearthis.at player actually grabbed the original version. Weird.
Let’s try again and see if we get the right one this time….
I thought this song was coming out pretty good but now that it’s done it doesn’t really do anything better than the first version. It is faster so I guess that’s something.
Two more songs to mix and then I’ll be done with this batch of songs.
The RPM Challenge was in February. The new Record Every Month thing kicked off in March. I’ve had at least one song each month now for 10 months. Granted I did forget to submit a few of them to the website, but I didn’t forget this one.
I am lucky that this isn’t too terrible because it’s the only newly written thing I have this month. Whew!
To quote the great Austin D. Powers, International Man of Mystery, when he finishes a photo shoot, “and I’m spent.”
I already wrote how I spent my lunch break cranking out vocal tracks. Tonight Jen and I had dinner and watched the girl from LA Story break up with the boy from Northern Exposure* and then she went off to the World of Warcraft and I went to the world of shitty guitar playing and shittier song writing.
I spent about two hours recording and was so into it that I forgot to eat anything ahead of tonight’s intermittent fasting time, or drink anything. I’m already hungry and I’m so dehydrated I have a sore throat.
I didn’t finish everything on my plate, but I did a ton. I put leads on the Record Every Month song. It’s ready to mix now. I put leads on the final re-recording vol. 5 song. It too is ready to mix. I put leads onto one vol. 6 song, and put leads and rhythm onto two more. All three are now ready to mix.
There was one more vol. 6 song ready for leads but I was so fried that I could barely move my fingers. I’m also not mixing anything tonight. My ears are toast too.
The four vol. 6 songs are all from before I started using GarageBand. Two of them are from the first RPM Challenge I did after moving into Chez Duplex with Jen. I didn’t finish the challenge on time, but I did finish it a couple of months late. There were only two songs worth listening to that year and I worked on new versions of both of them tonight. How’s that for nerd nostalgia? Is your heart feeling all warm and fuzzy now? Awwww.
*Sex and the City
I wanted to record some guitars tonight but I didn’t. Given the choice between guitar and hanging out with my wife there was no choice. She wins.
I was thinking of car music tomorrow. I had two songs ready to sing and I was hoping to get them tracked before my step son comes home on Thursday. I want to be able to hang out with him and start trying to find the elusive christmas spirit without having recording thoughts nagging me from the back of my skull. So car music tomorrow, finish off the two songs that are ready to go and maybe sneak in some lead guitar tomorrow night and that should hold me for a couple of weeks.
Then I nerd leveled up like you’ve read about.
I had the bass and drums done for another re-recording. Well tonight, sitting up in bed and avoiding the sleep I very much need, I put a MIDI guitar track down to use as a guide so when I do the car music tomorrow I can put vocals on this puppy too. How lame is that. A re-recording getting vocals before the rhythm guitars are recorded? That’s unheard of. It’s down right blasphemous.
But wait, there’s more.
Once I was done with that lame guide track, I took another song from the to do list and put together the drums and the bass and a guide fake guitar for that one too. Now I have four songs to sing tomorrow. Even more, I edited the arrangement for this fourth song pretty seriously. Also, I rewrote a chunk of the lyrics. What the hell am I doing? Go to bed! You’re not going to be able to record vocals for four songs tomorrow, you’re just torturing your musical nerd self! Stop it!
So I guess the question then, as the clock approaches 11:00pm, is whether or not I get out of bed early enough to do this tomorrow.
We’ll see.
Inside the Red Head's Head 