Just when you thought it was safe to come to this page without being inundated with soul crushingly boring discussions about mind numbingly bad music…
I recorded some guitar today. I snuck it in before I left for work. Nothing special, no doubling, no multiple amps. I didn’t even use any pedals, just straight into the amp. I can almost hear r/guitarpedals screaming in horror from here.
I am still waiting on the good folks over at RPM headquarters to mark my album as received. It usually takes a little while for them to acknowledge everyone’s submissions so I’m not concerned. There was also the issue they had with the site crashing on the 29th so they let everyone have an extra day to check things in. I had all of that done before noon on the 1st.
Here is my entry on the RPM profile page:
2020 Album name:
I Only Believe in TruthReceived
–Date submitted:
02/29/20202020 Preferred Track name:
We’re Coming for YouAbout this preferred track:
Simple (mostly) 12-bar recorded mostly live.About this album:
My original idea was half electric and half acoustic. That went out the window quickly and I ended up with a mostly disjointed mess of songs that are not so bad.Favorite moment:
I used to be a sax player first and foremost, but once I started playing guitar while I was in high school I became a full time guitar player. On this album I decided to see if I could still play the sax. I can. Not well, but I can still do it. That felt great.Words of wisdom:
I lost a full week due to a family vacation, though I did mix a few of the songs while sitting in a hotel in Disney World (we stayed at the Yacht Club). I was able to find the time to get all of the tracking done in plenty of time. You can do it if you need to, you just need to be creative with your time management.Lessons learned:
I can still play the saxophone. A guitar played through two amps just sounds better than a guitar part played through one amp. Writing out a melody prior to writing the lyrics or sitting at a mic lead to me writing much more creative melodies that were not only more fun (and harder) to sing, but lead to songs that overall seem more interesting to me.
I also wrote a blog post during lunch today to act as a sort of recap for the month. Everything I wrote had been written on this blog at some point or another (except maybe the bit at the end about wishing I could change my mind on the sequencing).
I did it. That’s nine years in a row with a finished album by March 1st. I know that in terms of the real world it’s silly and stupid and not important, but for me it’s a huge thing and the feeling of accomplishment I feel cannot be overstated.
The finished product doesn’t look anything like what I planned. I knew I was going to lose a full week to a family vacation so I kept my expectations kinda low. I wanted 10 songs. Five arranged for an electric three-piece rock band, and five arranged for an acoustic group in a coffee shop: Acoustic guitar, cajon and hand percussion, alto saxophone, and vocals.
It didn’t take me long to change the 10 song plan to 14 songs (seven of each type). That was simply due to me writing too much music. Even the 7/7 plan went down the tubes as I kept writing electric songs long after I should have stopped. I ended up with seven acoustic songs and 11 electric songs.
If that wasn’t overdoing it enough, as I was working on a couple of the acoustic songs I starting thinking that they would sound pretty good with a set of drums instead of just hand percussion. Eventually all seven of them had bass, drums, and electric guitar parts added and I ended up with two different mixes. One for the coffee shop and one for a rock band. So now instead of 18 possible mixes to use for the final album I had 25.
I thought about doing a three sided album where side one was all electric, side two was all coffee shop (my coffee shop analogy is starting to get annoying, but I’m rolling with it), and side three was band mixes of acoustic songs.
I scrapped that idea too. Instead I went through all of the acoustic songs and picked the mix I thought sounded best and then went through all 18 songs and sorted them into three categories: Good, Kinda Good, and Crap. Two songs went into the crap bucket, and three into kinda good. I decided to drop them all from the final album and just go with the 13 that landed in the good bucket.
Here they are… 13 disjointed songs that no longer fit to any theme or structure, but which were the least offensively bad of the batch:
So what did that leave me with? Seven alternate mixes and five outtakes. Two of the outtakes were acoustic so I really had five alternates of album tracks, five outtakes, and two alternate mixes of outtakes. 12 leftover tracks. I figured the alternate mixes of the album tracks were all still pretty okay so I packed them all together into an alternate RPM album:
I Only Believe in Alternates and Outtakes
The saddest part of all of this is that last night I was listening through the dropped songs and I really think I should have kept one of them. If I had paid a little more attention during the sequencing I would have made a better decision and the final album would have been a little different. I am afraid that when I listen to the main album I’ll decide there were things I should have dropped.
Oh well. February is over. As with all RPM Challenges it’s now time to figure out what I want to do next.
What do I want to do next?
So yeah… what do I do next?
Here’s one of the songs I finished today. I started this a day or two before we left for Florida but I never got a chance to add the guitars. I was able to carve out enough time to do it today.
It’s goofy… I own three Gibson guitars. This song used them all. The rhythm guitar is my 1979 ES 335 Pro, the melody/solo coming mostly out of your left speaker is my 2018 SG Standard, and the melody/solo coming mostly out of your right speaker is my 1978 Les Paul Custom.
Silly, but fun.
I took a picture of each guitar too but one of them didn’t make it to Flickr and I don’t know why. It’s on my phone, but my phone is in the other room so you’ll just have to wait.
I am finished with my 2020 RPM Challenge album with 63 minutes to spare. Kick ass, dudes!
I ended up with 18 songs, seven of which had two mixes. I was going to go with half electric and half acoustic or something, and maybe have the alternate mixes as their own thing. In the end I just listed to each song and put each one onto one of three lists: Good, kinda good, crap. The good list had 13 songs, kinda good had three, and crap had two. I then listened to both mixes of any acoustic songs on the good list and decided which mix I liked better. I was a little surprised that some of the cajon mixes were the better of the two. Last I took the 13 songs on the good list and kinda sorta ordered them from my favorite to my least favorite, and that became the final album.
hearthis.at is being bitchy and won’t let me upload any new songs tonight. The RPM Challenge website is completely down too. The internets are being a jerk. Alonetone, however, is five by five. Here’s a link to the final record:
I just posted this to the RPM Challenge website:
Everything that I can do while on vacation in Florida has been done. Nine electric songs mixed, seven acoustic songs mixed, six of those seven acoustic songs’ alternate versions mixed.
I have a few songs worth of guitars still to do once I get home on Saturday. Every guitar part I have done this year has been played through a pair of amplifiers (one Fender Bassbreaker 15 and one Fender Bassbreaker 18/30 at 18 watts) and the 18/30 is a seriously loud little bastard. I have been playing it with the volume set as low as I can get it and still produce a sound. The 15 watt guy needs to get cranked a bit in order to keep up.
Last Saturday I tried to pick off the last three songs worth of guitars but my family had reached their limit and told me to shut up (in the most polite, supportive way possible). I got pissy and shut it all down. On Saturday I am going to finish those damned songs using just the 15 watt amp so that I don’t deafen my family. I have leads to add to one of the acoustic songs, and leads to add to one of the electric songs. The last thing is an instrumental idea that needs rhythm and two leads. I want to finish all three, mix them, and then sequence the album, including figuring out which songs need to be dropped. I think two or three electric songs need to go. I don’t know if any of the acoustic songs are bad enough to eliminate, but one might be. We’ll see.
Everything I can do in my hotel room is done. Saturday is the final day of the month so it will be musical crunch time.
For now though… sleeeeeeeep
I have fourteen songs finished this month so FAWM is successfully complete. Sigh of relief… sort of.
Too bad the song is a dog.
from my RPM Challenge account:
I have 10 songs mixed, so I should be breathing a sigh of relief. Nope, I’m more stressed than ever.
Revised to do list:
Song #7 needs lead guitar.
Song #15 needs bass and drums.
Song #18 needs lead guitar.
Song #19 needs rhythm guitar and two lead guitars… because I started working on it yesterday. It’s going to be an instrumental though, so no hiding where no one can hear me sing necessary.
No need to freak out… but still freaking out. Going on vacation at 4:00am tomorrow. All tracking needs to be done by bed time tonight.
Freakin’ out.
Note, I put the hash tag into the title of this post so that it will show up in Twitter. That’s the only reason. I’m a nerd. What can you do.
The RPM Challenge defines an album (for the purpose of the challenge at least) as 10 song or 35 minutes of music.
I just finished mixing my ninth and tenth songs of the month. I could stop now and the challenge would be completed. There’s still FAWM which requires four more songs, but I always think of FAWM as an afterthought, RPM is where my February Music Heart lies.
Oh yeah, and that to do list I posted earlier? I didn’t do any of it yet. In fact, I may have added a whole new song. What a moron!
Anyway, here’s song #9, which goes on the rock band half of the album…
And here’s #10 which goes on the acoustic side of the album…
And now I can go to bed before my battery dies, Nighty Night, Disney World (not until Sunday though).
I’ve probably mentioned most of this before, but why not do it again? I put up a new blog post on the RPM Challenge website. Here’s what I wrote:
I am leaving for Disney World on Sunday before dawn so all of this crap needs to be done before I leave. I think I can do some mixing in my hotel room at night before sleep, but if I don’t get to it all I’ll be home to finish it off on the 29th. I need all of the tracking done before I go and any song that isn’t done goes onto the dropped list.
So what’s left?
Song #7 needs a bass, drums, and guitar leads.
Song #10 needs bass and drums.
Song #12 needs bass and drums.
Song #18 needs guitar leads.
That’s it. The three bass and drum tracks are just midi in GarageBand. I can do those with headphones on tonight before bed. The guitar leads will be noisy, I’ll have to find some time to do that tomorrow in between packing and vacation prepping.
No problem!
The Florida trip starts on Sunday, but my actual vacation starts in just over four hours.
I’m ready.
I’m so completely ready.
I stuck around the house this morning so that I could do a little more recording. I didn’t get to everything I wanted to get to but I’m almost done with the tracking. Tomorrow I will wrap it all up.
I was able to stay home later than usual because it is Massachusetts school vacation week, which means greatly reduced traffic, and it’s Friday which also means greatly reduced traffic. I was watching Waze as I worked and my expected travel time never topped 40 minutes.
At least it didn’t until I was actually on the road. With Waze listing my estimated time of arrival at 9:00 on the dot it suddenly recalculated my route and asked me to get the hell off of route 93 South like pronto. Uh oh. The arrival time jumped up to 9:12 and the traffic in front of me stopped dead. There was an accident between Dascomb Road and Route 125 somewhere. I was able to get off at Dascomb, but the traffic in Andover was awful and I limped back to the highway one exit further down. I ended up being 15 minutes late. Damn it. I got stuck in some traffic on 128 South too because of an accident on 128 North. Rubberneckers are jerks, am I right?
Change of subject, I am still putzing along on my Flickr Photo a Day Challenge. I took yet another picture of a guitar after I wrapped up my “session” (heh heh) this morning. That puts me at 174 days. I thought my previous best was 174 too so I was thinking of writing something goofy tomorrow when I broke my record. I looked back at the blog post where I sketched out all of my previous failures and it turns out my previous record was 154, not 174. Dumb ass. So, yippee. New World Record. 174/365.
Inside the Red Head's Head 