That’s 10!

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).

To Do List

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.

Burned

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.

One Day

Did I mention that for some idiotic reason I started a couple of new songs today? Well I’ve finished one of them already.

When I woke up there was a dumb strummy little riff in my head. It was a telecommute day so I was able to record it and turn it into a whole (kinda lame) song. I recorded all of the rhythm guitars to a basic guide drum track. At lunch time I wrote the lyrics and the melody and recorded the vocals and the lead guitar. After work I replaced the midi drums with a GarageBand drummer and I added the midi bass. In the hour or so before bed I mixed it and uploaded it everywhere.

Its not a very good song, but it’s kinda cool to go from nothing to finished over the course of a single day. I did the same with another new song but didn’t get a chance to add the drums and bass or do a mix. Everything that requires a microphone is done. There is a third new song that is just bass, drums, and a piano melody with some lyrics. I’m hoping I can get all of the recording for that one done before work in the morning. There is also one other song that still needs a lead guitar. Fingers crossed I get both songs finished before I have to leave for work.

Lots of Progress – #RPM2020

I did a musical ton today, including writing and recording two entirely new songs. Why the hell did I do that?

I did a ton of guitar before work this morning.

I did vocals for the two new songs during lunch.

I also did more guitars at lunch. I was burning through stuff really fast, which probably means it’s all crap.

After work I mixed a song. It’s one of the songs that I am doing two versions of, so it isn’t “new” as far as the project is concerned, but it’s new in that it didn’t exist a couple of hours ago.

Song… Number Six, I think? And Seven too!

I think this is the sixth song I’ve finished. Yeah, I have seven files and two of them are different versions of the same song, so that leave six. Yeah. I think the running time is up to round 19 minutes too.

I’m liking the guitar sounds. The rhythm used the Klon KTR and I’m in tonal love. The lead is the KTR after a Big Muff clone (Wren and Cuff Tri Pi ’70) and it’s just filthy and wonderful.

I think I knew what the lyrics were about at some point, but I don’t remember.

The RPM Challenge website is down. Raise your hand if you’re panicking.

(Robbie slowly, timidly raises a panicked hand)

ADDENDUM:

I forgot to click publish on this post and went ahead and mixed the seventh song before I realized it. So you get a bonus song in this post! Aren’t you happy? Free stuff!

This one is… meh. Enough said.

Hey, Hey Guys!

Guys, hey guys, hey you guys, guess what you guys, hey, guess what, guess what you guys….

The saxophones are done.

Oh What a Relief – #RPM2020

This morning I packed my computer, a microphone, a pair of headphones, and a USB interface into the car and drove off to a parking spot behind The Loop in Methuen and recorded four songs worth of vocals. I had the lyrics and melodies written already so it wasn’t too painful an experience.

When I was done (meaning, when the battery on my MacBook was approaching death and I had to go pee so bad I could taste it) I went home and started working on lyrics and melodies for the last four songs. The first of the two were kind of interesting and one of them I purposely made pretty difficult as a bit of a challenge. After those two I was really getting tired so I threw the last two together pretty quickly and they are just as bad as that sounds.

After that I hung out with my step son for a while, and made some late lunch/early dinner for the love of my life, and then (after double checking that the MacBook’s battery was back to 100%) I went back to The Loop (a different section of the lot behind the building this time) and cranked out the last four. I got a little over confident for a bit and a couple of the songs have THREE part harmonies instead of my usual two. Sick.

So where does RPM stand now… Four songs mixed, three songs ready to mix, three songs needing saxophone, and four needing lead guitar. Once the full boat is mixed I am going to go back to six of the acoustic songs and add bass guitar, drums, and lead guitar and then remix them. If I don’t finish that by March 1st I won’t worry about it, I just need to make sure I get a complete mix of each song before I start messing with alternates. Well, more alternates. I already have two different mixes of one of the acoustic songs.

I need to have all of the remaining guitar and saxophone finished before we leave for Disney World. I will have my MacBook with me on the trip so I can sneak in a mix before bed each night, and if I am out of my mind crazy I might even sneak a couple in on the plane. Then I will take full advantage of the leap year day and mix anything that’s left over once we’re home again.

Is any of this stuff good? Well, no. That’s not the point though. The point of RPM, as always, is that it didn’t used to exist but now it does exist.

There’s still the issue of the half-a-song left for FAWM. FAWM is 14 songs in 28 days, so for the leap year they say it’s 14.5 songs in 29 days. Does that mean I have to sneak in one more? If I do it’s either going to be simple, or 36 minutes of noodling and noise for the Blind Chaos thing I mentioned a few days ago.

I wouldn’t say I’m almost done, but I’m past the one humongous hurdle with time to spare. I feel happy.

In closing, here is the view from this evening’s “studio.”