March 2020 did what March 2014 failed to do. It followed February’s RPM Challenge rules album-in-a-month with another RPM Challenge rules album-in-a-month. In 2014 the March music wasn’t finished until May. In 2020 it was finished with two days to spare, babie! Got it in early!
Today I recorded three vocals, six lead guitars, and I mixed six songs. I am so tired I can’t function. Enjoy!
All of the tracking for all 10 songs is done! Sweet.
It just occurred to me that if I mix the last six songs tonight I will have finished March in the same amount of time as February. Yeah, I am losing it a little.
Shout it from the rooftops, the March Music vocals are done (poorly)!
Every single song could realistically be titled Shelter in Place.
I know that no one else on Earth gives even the slightest fuck about yet another stupid song writing project. We all have much bigger fish to fry. I don’t care. You’re getting another March Music post and that’s all there is to it.
I’ve got three days left. Tonight while watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, I wrote the lyrics and the melody to the last three songs. I now have three vocal parts to record, and six lead guitars to record. I am hopeful that I can get them all done tomorrow, though that will require another trip to an empty parking lot for the three vocals. No problem.
That will leave me with Sunday night, and Monday and Tuesday before and after work to mix the six remaining songs. Easy Peasy, Lemon Squeezy.
Once that’s done all I will need to worry about is the global pandemic and the news stories detailing a growing sense of panic in some parts of the world… some of which are not too terribly far from me.
Until April 1st that is, when I start another month long writing challenge.
I finished two songs. One last night and another just a few minutes ago. I’d post them both here but hearthis.at is being a pain in the ass and not uploading the second song. I couldn’t get the first one to upload last night either, but it worked this morning.
Both songs are crap, but they exist so there’s that. If the second song ever uploads I’ll share it. Until then, you’ll just have to settle for one stink burger.
I did two crazy things this morning and it’s still not even time to punch in to work.
It was risky behavior, not because I left the house. Sure, I left the house but I never left the car. I never even cracked the windows. No, it was risky behavior because the security guard working at the strip mall whose parking lot I was hiding in buzzed me twice in his mall security mobile. If he had come over to me I would have had to explain what I was doing and boy would that have been embarrassing. I’m glad I avoided that hassle.
My mobile studio:
Here are the two songs I finished recording yesterday. I mixed them this morning. I bent my low-fi idea a little and put some more effects onto some of the tracks than I was planning on, but it’s still pretty simplistic. No doubling anywhere (though there are more vocal harmonies than I was planning to do. I have a hard time not putting harmonies into choruses).
And just for schnitzengiggles (we watched Beerfest last night) does wordpress.com recognize hearthis.at sets yet?
DOOOD! IT RECOGNIZED THE SET! (at least it did in preview mode, let’s publish the post and see what happens)
Addendum: The playlist displays, but it doesn’t seem to play anything but the first track. That could be my browser though.
I finished two of my March Music songs today. Everything’s done but the final mix. I wrote two songs worth of melodies and lyrics, and then recorded two songs worth of vocals and lead guitars.
Given that these are the first two songs I’ve brought along this far this month it might be safe to assume they are my favorites of all of the things currently in progress (there are eight songs so far) and you would be correct.
After today’s contributions though, these are now officially the two worst songs I’ve ever written, the two worst vocal performances I’ve ever recorded, and the two worst guitar performances I’ve ever recorded.
I suck.
I tried to make myself feel better by going a little nutty with Hipstamatic. Shake to Shuffle didn’t shake my current musical sucking.
I doubled the number of songs with guitars recorded tonight. I had three, now I have six. They all suck and my attempts at keeping things low-fi are making them suck even more. What can you do, right? Two of the songs are in 7/8 time because prog, and two are in 3/4 time because… I don’t know, waltz maybe?
So… COVID-19. WHO has declared it a pandemic. Duh. It is pretty global now so, yeah. Pandemic. Dig it?
I’m seeing all sorts of people calling the responses so far “panic”. They don’t seem to get it. It’s not panic, it’s resource management. Every single infectious disease expert is telling us to put “social distance” into practice. Why? Resource management. There are going to be x number of infections, based on the data we have from China, and y percent of those infections will require hospital care. Finally, we only have z number of hospital beds available at any given time. y is less than x, but y is greater than z. Dig? Statistically speaking there will be more infections requiring hospital care than there are hospital beds to put them in. If we put “social distance” (I fucking LOVE that term and I’ve been practicing it since I was about four years old) into place then we spread out the infections over time, thus reducing the number of cases requiring hospital care at any one time so that suddenly y is less than z. Boom. Problem if not solved then partially alleviated. Statistics, babie. Stats for the win.
Read this from the New York Times: Flattening the Coronavirus Curve
Read this from WBUR: Harvard Global Health Expert: Mass. Hospitals Face Capacity Problem If Coronavirus Cases Spike Quickly
Back in 2014 when I insanely did an album in a month project almost every month for the entire year, I started with RPM in February and then kicked off a new project in March. I was looking at an old blog post where I referred to this 2nd month as RPMarch. I also referred to how the nickname is ridiculously stupid, but I kept using it anyway.
Welp kiddies, RPMarch 2020 is well underway. Three songs arranged with rhythm guitars. One more is just a two bar guitar riff that I haven’t done anything with yet. I will though, it’s mildly groovy in a dad-rock-bluesy kinda way (in other words it’s about as cool as rotting cheese). I am such a tool.
The plan is simple. Literally, that’s the plan. Guitar, bass, drums, voice. No doubling, just one rhythm guitar track played with as few punches as I can manage. I’m also (gasp) not using any pedals (gasp, again). I told you this was insane. It’s just my Les Paul straight into my 15 watt Bassbreaker. I’m not even using my tuner pedal. Last Christmas I got a clip-on headstock tuner from my Secret Santa. I’m using that. I am only using one cable. It’s utter madness!
Recording stuff before work also gives me a built in chance to cheat my way through the Flickr Photo a Day thingie. Happy day #191.
Inside the Red Head's Head 