Category: Song Writing

What Else?

I’m so hyper focused on music right now that the world is passing me by.  What am I missing?

The New Hampshire primary was last night.  The top three places were all held by people I could reasonably see myself voting for on Super Tuesday.  Sanders was my pick last time around.  Buttigieg seems fine to me.  I’d like to see a little more grass roots and a little less big money, but policy wise he’s fine.  My step son has done some volunteer work for his campaign and I am bursting with pride over it.  Klobuchar was a surprise but I’ve liked her since the day she announced her candidacy.  I have this vague image in my head of her beating the living shit (figuratively speaking) out of the people who are making a bad joke out of the Constitution. I see her as someone who could clean up the shit show.

Warren has been my main focus and I’m a little disappointed at her showing so far.  I saw this primary as a Warren vs Sanders showdown with Biden kinda peeking in from the sidelines.  There’s still time for Warren to improve relative to the others, but if we have to settle for her as our esteemed US Senator, I’m fine with that.

Realistically, whoever ends up winning the nomination is getting my vote and at least a chunk of my money.  That nazi piece of shit in the white house has to go.  Of course he won’t.  The Senate has already approved his attempts at rigging the election, so the very concept of a legitimate election has already been flushed down the toilet.  He’ll rig it and he will win it.  Our democracy is already dead, I’m just clinging to the tiny shreds that are left behind.  Mostly just out of habit.

At least the Bruins are still doing well.  That awful dip in the standings prior to the all star break is going to bite them on the ass.  Their huge lead is gone and Tampa is right on their heels.  I was very pleased with their play of late, but losing to Detroit really grinds my gears.  We get the Canadiens tonight.  There are few things that could cheer me up as my country descends into a fascist dictatorship as much as watching the Bruins beat the holy hell out of Montreal.  No pressure though, okay Bruins.  You just go out there and have fun.

A week or so ago, Larry and I were having a discussion about various Quentin Tarantino movies and he made a joke about a scene in Kill Bill and it went right over my head.  I saw both volumes in the theater and had never re-watched them.  I thought they were both fantastic and I loved every second of them… I just never revisited them again.  I fixed that error over the weekend and watched both movies.  They are just so good.  The violence is way over the top and the story doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but every scene is perfect.  I forgot about so much.  In my memory the first movie is just blahblahblah Crazy 88’s and the second movie is just blahblahblah Superman’s disguise.  I forgot about all the other twistedly delightful stuff.  I kinda want to watch them both again, but instead I’ll watch the two movies I still haven’t seen: Hateful 8 and Django Unchained.

Note: I don’t think “twistedly” is actually a word.

Okay, I have to mention music again.  I can’t avoid it right now.  I did some recording this morning.  After being late to work on Monday because I stayed home a little too long, and late to work on Tuesday even though I left on time, I came up with something to try and keep me on track.  After I set up my laptop to record some voice parts, I brought up Waze on my phone.  I put in my work address as my destination and I left the phone on the table next to me.  As I worked through the two songs for today I kept an eye on the estimated time of arrival.  When it reached 8:45 I packed up and left.  It worked.  I was on time today.

Unfortunately when I was packing up I put my MacBook onto the stand on which it sits on my desk in the office (grammar, bitches), turned off the lights, and left the room.  A couple of minutes later I heard a bang.  What?  My laptop FELL OFF THE STAND!  It was still working okay, but it scared the crap out of me.  I managed to back up this morning’s work onto an external drive, but if my lappy is dead I might be in big musical trouble.  I know it’s not dead, everything was functioning within normal parameters… still… how scary is that.  BANG!

Friday is Valentine’s Day.  We don’t have any plans.  I’ll see if my beloved love wants to do anything after work.  It’s also a kid weekend so my step son will be around.  He went to a mock UN weekend last week and I can’t wait to hear about it.  Tonight will be the first time I see him since he came back.

I went to the gym last night.  I am planning on going again tonight and tomorrow night and as many days as I can between now and Disney World.  I need to build up some stamina for long walks.  I’m still stuck at the 15-minutes-before-my-back-starts-complaining point.  Every little bit helps though.

What else… I’m thinking about playing a little saxophone tonight.  If you hear crying it means I can’t pull it off anymore.  I was a music major and sax was my primary instrument of study.  I haven’t touched it in years, but normally when I start playing again a lot of the old skill is there.  What isn’t there is the muscles in my jaw.  I get a few minutes of solid playing followed by fatigue so bad I can’t play anymore.  My plan for the next week and a half is play a little, rest a little, repeat.  That’s assuming I’ve still got it.  Boy, do I hope I’ve still got it.

When you are 48 years old the phrase, “Boy, do I hope I’ve still got it” comes into play almost every day for a seemingly infinite number of topics, wouldn’t you say?

Remote Control

Check it out, I have been using the Logic Remote iPad app as a… ya know… remote.  I’ve only ever used it as a midi controller to add midi instruments to GarageBand files, but over the last few days I’ve been using it as a remote control while recording guitar parts.

When I put together my workspace I put the computer on one side of the room and the pedal board on the other.  I picked up an extension chord for my headphones, which allowed me to step on pedals while the tape was rolling, but it was the remote that let me stand by the pedals the whole time I’ve been working.

Well, most of it.  I can’t select regions from the remote (can’t I?) and I can’t set up loops (can’t I?) but it does everything else I need to do.  The best part??  It actually works!  The midi controller functionality is a mess (though it’s infinitely better than it used to be) but the remote control works!

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I picked off a vocal this morning, wrote a new song and recorded guitars for it tonight, and recorded the guitars for the only remaining pre-existing song too. I’m up to 14 songs, all with rhythm guitars done (the new song from tonight still needs a bass guitar part though, don’t forget!), and two of them have vocals too.

I have to have all the tracking done before vacation. Will I pull it off??

I think so but I’m starting to feel the crunch. The vocals are the logjam, I have to keep plugging away at them. Two down, 12 to go!

Oh yeah… and saxophone.  Argh!

More #RPM2020 Goodness

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This puppy hurts my arms.

I put the acoustic guitar onto the last two songs that need acoustic guitar, assuming I don’t come up with another one.  They are both strummy and loud and boy are my arms tired.  My arms are so tired you’d think I just flew in from the coast, har har hardy har har.

I’ve got one more song that needs electric rhythm guitar.  That’ll bring the count up to 13.  I want to add one more electric song too.  Then there’s the Blind Chaos thing.

This is taken from a post on the RPM Challenge Forum:

For the uninitiated, blind chaos was a thing that was started in 2009 and ran, I think, pretty much every year until the forums/site was rebooted. The basic premise is record roughly 36 minutes of something and someone mixes it all together into an RPM Album.

I’ve never done one of these before. This, or something similar, has gone on more or less every year that I’ve been paying attention.  If I decide to submit a contribution I would just plug in my guitar, hit record, and make noises for 36 minutes.  Those noises can be musical or not, or some combination of both.  When I first read that forum post a couple of weeks ago I was pretty intrigued by the idea.  What would I do?  Noodle?  Crank the amp and get as much glorious feedback as possible?  Kick on a delay pedal and make as much glorious self oscillation noise as possible?  Some combination thereof?

I don’t know what I’d do if I even did it, and I don’t know if I want to do it or not.  Maybe if I finish absolutely everything on the musical agenda before we leave for Florida.  Not likely, but maybe.

What’s Going On With #RPM2020

That was a good weekend.  My wife wanted to do two things to celebrate her birthday.  She wanted to stay in her pajamas for the whole weekend, and she wanted to work.  Those wouldn’t be my choices, but she’s a genius and she’s amazing and if that’s what she wanted to do to celebrate her birthday, that’s what we were going to do!

I cleaned the bathroom, I went to weight watchers, I went to the gym, I went grocery shopping, I did laundry, I washed dishes, I watched Kill Bill vol 1 and vol 2, and I played shit loads of guitar.  All that while my beloved wife stayed in the office solving all of her company’s issues while wearing her pajamas.

When I went to sleep on Friday I had 10 ideas in progress.  Nine had the song form sketched out and two had their rhythm guitar parts down.  Fast forward to Monday morning and I have 13 songs in progress, 12 have their song form sketched out, 10 have all of their rhythm guitar parts, one has all of it’s vocals, and one has some of it’s vocals.  Of the three remaining guitar-less songs, one will be electric, one will be acoustic, and one will… I don’t know yet.  Maybe acoustic?

I recorded the 12-string acoustic guitar using a Shure SM57 microphone and I doubled each track.  I am not very good at recording an acoustic because I am pretty undisciplined and I move around a lot.  I might have the guitar positioned correctly relative to the mic when I start playing only to find when I finish a take I’ve moved about 20 miles away (figuratively).

I’m also woefully under-experienced playing acoustic.  There’s a volume/touch sensitivity relationship that I just don’t get.  When I play an electric through an amp I can use a very soft pick attack and still produce a nutso level of volume.  I just turn the knob and there it is.  When I play acoustic, my brain still expects the volume but I can’t get it by picking softly.  As a result, I find that I am rarely able to pick softly.  I end up slamming the strings like a sledgehammer smashing up asphalt.  I just beat the crap out of the guitar.  That results in two things: a pathetic lack of dynamics in the recording, and very tired arms.

As for electric guitar parts, last year I limited myself in the gear I could use.  I had one guitar, one amp, and three pedals; a Klon style overdrive, a phaser, and a wah.  As things were moving this year I found that I was constantly using the same gear, basically mirroring what I had last year.  I used the same guitar on every track, two amps instead of one, a Klon style overdrive pedal, and a phaser and a wah.  Interesting to note that none of the gear I have used this year was used last year.  Everything is different but somehow the same.

The phaser and the wah are used for effect, not so much for tone.  The stuff I am doing on the recording doesn’t sound like what I do in the band.  In the band there is tons of distortion.  In the recording it’s only a small step or two dirtier than clean.  I made a conscious decision to change that up toward the end of my playing last night.  I brought in a second overdrive pedal and I used a couple of additional effects, just to shake things up.  I still have one electric rhythm guitar part to record, and I hope to add two more to the list before I’m done.  I’m going to try and shake things up on those too.  I’m hoping that one will get a fuzz box.  Maybe not for the whole song, but at least part of it.

The vocal stuff so far has been the same as always.  I sit in front of a mic (a Shure SM57 instead of my usual Shure SM58) and sing the first thing that pops into my head as I listen to the song.  Last year I played with the idea of coming up with a melody using a keyboard and then writing lyrics that fit.  I still want to do that, I just haven’t had the time.

This morning I cranked out a vocal part quickly.  I wrote melody and lyrics for two verses, a bridge, and a chorus, and recorded two vocal tracks for each, some doubling and some in harmony.  It went quickly and easily and I had a few minutes to spare before I had to leave for work so I started a second song.  I came up with something that, in my head, sounded cool.  Unfortunately the rhythm I was singing turned out to be a pain in the ass.  The song is in 7/4 time and I had it so that the end of the first line is sung on top of the start of the second line, and I kept on screwing up when the second line enters.  I eventually got it for the first half of the first verse, but I had to leave for work.

As always, the vocal part is what scares me the most.  I’m not good at it and I don’t enjoy it nearly as much as I enjoy playing the guitar, or building the bed tracks, or mixing.  It takes the most time and gives me the least reward.  I also can’t take a day off from work to do it all at once because I’m already taking a week off for Disney World.  I need to either record vocals before work in the morning, like I did today, or I have to drive to some secluded place and record while sitting in my car.  I might end up doing both.  We’ll see.

I also need to get all of this done, including the lead guitar and the saxophone, before we leave for Florida.  I’m planning on using bed time in Florida to mix at least some of the songs, and then using the tiny window of time after we get home to finish off the last of it.  I need absolutely all of the tracking to be complete before we leave.  I can’t very well record vocals during vacation… unless Mickey wants to join in.

Thematically, I am still on the half electric, half acoustic bandwagon.  I’m also wondering if I might monkey with the acoustic songs a little.  Once I have all of the mixing done, I might replace the percussion track with an actual drum kit, and add a bass guitar.  If time allows I might replace the sax with guitar too.  I would end up with two entirely different versions of the same song.  Only the acoustic guitar and the vocals would be the same.  Think of the alternate mixes as a mini-album within a mini-album.

That’s a lot of shit to do with very little time left to do it.  What the hell am I thinking?

 

Tired

https://hearthis.at/rpm-works-in-progress/rpm-2020-03-ipad-2820-6.26-pm/

I’ve had a decent recording day today.  I added the rhythm guitar to the last four acoustic songs, and one of the electric songs.  I’m bushed.  My back hurts, my hands hurt, my head hurts, but I got a lot done.

Les Paul into KTR into Two Bassbreakers… it sounds like overdrive heaven.  It’s so sensitive that every little touch rings out.  It’s very unforgiving too so every spec of sloppiness comes through, but it just sounds soo damn cool.  That file up above (assuming as always that it pulled into the post) will be deleted the next time I work on that song.  For now let’s just use it as an example of how groovy this setup sounds.  Also, the song is complete shit.  I’m only interested in the trashy goodness of the guitar sound.

I’m guessing within five minutes of posting this I’m going to be embarrassed by how shitty it really sounds.  Oh well.

 

Making Progress

I believe it was Ringo Starr who said it best when he said, “I GOT BLISTERS ON ME FINGERS!”

At least I think that was Ringo.

Anyway. I’ve always found playing an acoustic guitar is more of a work out for the arms than playing electric, and boy are my arms getting tired. (No actual blisters yet though)

It Finally Worked

I’ve mentioned that we’re going on a trip to Disney World soon. I’ve also mentioned that my foot has been all screwed up and painful lately. I may have mentioned that I sometimes have a lot of back pain too.

The foot has been okay of late and the back pain hasn’t been much of an issue, but I get sore and tired pretty quickly and there is going to be miles upon miles of Disney walking so… I started going to the gym. I’ve been three times this week.

Now before you get all pissy, this isn’t going to be one of those lets all get healthy kinda posts. Screw that, this is about music.

When I go to the gym I almost always just walk on the treadmill until my foot or my back start complaining. It doesn’t take long. I’ve been shooting for 15 minutes to start with. Hey, screw you and your in-shape-body, stop laughing at me! Bullies. Anyway, I always bring my phone and my air pods (I used to bring ear buds but let’s embrace modern technology!) and I listen to music. I always hope that I can just let myself focus on whatever I’m listening to and not even think about the amount of time I’ve been treadmillin’. It never happens though.

Until today.

Today I put on that stupid Spotify playlist that I added to the side panel over there —-> yesterday. The plan was to put 8-10 songs that I’ve been in the mood for lately onto said playlist and updated it every so often. So much for that, it’s about 20 hours long now. Sorry. My plan is to shuffle it, but that is redundant since I only have a free account and that means anything on my phone is shuffled. Fine by me.

So there I am, walking along, listening to music, not being distracted from the clock slowly ticking upward toward the goal of 15 minutes. Then it happened. The shuffle brought me to “Still Got the Blues” by Gary Moore and I just got lost in it. That song is perfect, that recording is perfect, that guitar playing is perfect, that song is perfect (I think I said that already). I let it take me to where ever it needed to take me and the next thing I knew I had been walking for 20 minutes.

Thanks, Gary. Rest in Peace, Sir. I don’t know if you were playing Peter Green’s ’59 Les Paul standard on that one or not (the guitar that is affectionately known as Greenie and is currently owned by Kirk Hammett of Metalica) but I am choosing to believe you did and that is part of why the tone is just perfect.

Anyway, here are some Spicket River pictures and one from downtown Methuen because it’s Saturday and that’s what I do on Saturday…

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As I mentioned in a couple of posts yesterday, we are celebrating my beloved bride’s birthday this weekend. She asked for two things: One, to stay in her PJ’s all weekend, and two, for me to let her work all weekend. I will make it happen! I have a few chores to do this weekend, and I need to go grocery shopping. The rest of the time is (hopefully) going to be spent on RPM (probably not though, let’s be realistic). In fact, I’m going to go spend a few minutes recording some acoustic guitar right now.

Happy Saturday, everyone and thanks again to Gary Moore.

12 Strings

My RPM album project is now officially electric/acoustic.

I added 12-string guitar to song #9.  That means the rhythm guitars are done on two songs.  Let’s see if I can sneak another one in before work tomorrow.

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Checking In After Day Four – #RPM2020

I just posted this onto the RPM Challenge site:

I’m up to eight songs now. Seven have the song form sketched out and one has rhythm guitars (technically that’s a day five thing as I did it before work this morning).

Three of the songs are going to go with the acoustic guitar/hand percussion arrangement. My initial hope was to have five acoustic and five rawk-power-trio. Not sure how that’s going to shake out though.

The RPM Challenge needs at least 10 songs. FAWM needs 14.5 (it’s a leap year). RPM does not need newly written songs, FAWM, by definition, does. Given that I’m losing the entire last week of the month I have more or less decided to give FAWM a miss this year and shoot for 10 songs. If I can get two more and then get them all recorded quickly I might pull some old ideas into the project.

Last summer I spent a day with my acoustic 12-string, sitting on the patio, noodling chord progressions and strummy riffs. I was thinking of doing the whole acoustic guitar/hand percussion/sax thing then too and I actually started a few decent sounding ideas. I never finished them though. I might revisit some of them. I also did an album-in-a-day project a couple of months ago and there was one song that I might want to re-record.

It all depends on how quick I can get through the songs I’ve already started. We’ll see.

As mentioned, I was able to get a little recording in this morning.  I finished all of the rhythm guitar parts for song #1.  I double tracked it, as usual, but this time each take was two tracks, for a total of four tracks.  I have been wanting to record through two amps at once for ages.  I did it a few years ago but the two amps were both direct input into the computer, they weren’t mic’d.  Today, they were both mic’d.  Today it was… real.  I guess.

The signal path was my Les Paul into the Klon KTR overdrive pedal with the gain cranked into a Radial ABY box (one input split into two outputs) into both of my Fender Bassbreakers (the 15 watt version and the 18 watt channel on the 18/30) to two Shure SM57 mics.  I’m not sure what the reality of the situation is, but it sounded pretty flippin’ sweet to me!

Last year I made a rule stating I could not copy and paste sections of a song.  That means I couldn’t record a verse section of a song once and then use it for three verses, stuff like that.  I want to do that again this year, but the song I worked on today was kinda hard.  Not really hard, just a little hard.  It required a lot of takes to get everything kinda/sorta right.  Unfortunately that took a lot of time.  It actually took all the time I had available this morning.

Maybe I need to start waking up earlier?

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