Category: Song Writing

Early Morning Visit

Look who came out for a visit this morning.

HipstaPrint

The rest of this post is yet another music home demo recording nerd post.

I have three songs in the works right now.  Thanks to the acoustic guitar that suddenly needs a new nut (uh oh) and the leaky, mostly out of tune sax, one of them is ready to be mixed.  A second is missing just a lead guitar.  The third still needs all guitars and vocals.  That one might not get finished until next week.

So I seem to be on a pretty quick pace right now.  I have posted four songs since March 1st, which followed the 14 from February.  My free soundcould account is going to run out of room again.  That means this year’s RPM will get deleted and all of those previous posts that include embeded soundcloud files will lose their audio.  Oh well.  I think I might make a new page for playlists of recent music.  I will use bandcamp to host the playlists, and keep soundcloud for works in progress kinda things.

I’ve also decided that the four songs I have finished this month, and two of the three I’m playing around with now do not belong with the left over songs project.  I started a new playlist for the re-recorded songs.  That is meaningless to everyone on Earth except me, but what are ya gonna do, right?

I will take my lunch break at 1:00.  My MacBook and my Les Paul are ready and waiting to finish tracking another song.  I might be posting two new ones tonight.  We’ll see.

Finished

The 2013 RPM Challenge album is finished.  Or at least as finished as it will ever be.  I’m done, I’m toast, I’m fried.

I was debating on whether or not to drop one of the 14 songs.  I came close.  Last year I actually dropped two.  This year… ah screw it, I’ll keep ’em all.

I kinda think its kinda cute that you have to wait until track three to hear 4/4 time.  Neat, huh?

Here’s the soundcloud.com playlist:

Here’s a link to what I consider the “official” home of all of my stuff, alonetone.com.  Unfortunately the WordPress.com police won’t let me embed alonetone’s playlist.  If they did, you’d never see a soundcloud playlist ever.

(just for snitzengiggle’s let’s try embedding it and see what happens…  Nothing, just as I expected)

I need to head out tonight and get a disc in a jewel case and a padded envelope so I can mail this sucker into headquarters tomorrow.  I also need to find the design a CD cover website I used last year and then print it out at work tomorrow (when no one is looking).  Then if I can drop it in a mailbox tomorrow it will be on its way.

RPM Day 21

So I recorded vocals for three songs today.  One of them is sort of okay.  The other two sound… just… awful!

So I now have vocals recorded for seven of the 14 songs, but two or three are unacceptably bad.  I have to do those again.  At least I have lyrics and melodies already.  Monday is the big day for vocals.  I took a vacation day and will spend the whole day on RPM/FAMW.  I hope to at least have all of the vocals finished by the time my wife comes home from work on Monday.  I will try to get the lead guitar parts on the five songs that have some form of vocal between now and then.

We’ll see.

RPM Day 20

February 20th and the heat is on.

I have two songs completed, or as completed as they are going to get.  The first one really needs to have the vocals re-recorded.  If I get a chance before the 28th I’ll do it.  It also needs to be mixed a little better.  I don’t consider what I am doing here to be anything more than demos, so I am not going to freak out if the lead guitar is a little too loud (I am a lead guitarist, so the lead guitar is ALWAYS going to be a little too loud, but I digress) but in the case of the first song I think it might be a little too, too loud.  Oh well.

This morning I took 25 minutes before leaving for work to come up with a chorus and two verses worth of bad lyrics for another song.  I recorded them quickly and I think they sound okay, but they don’t really fit the gloomy mood of the music.  That’s kind of a normal problem with the rush job that is RPM.  I had that song’s master file up in GarageBand, and I had a couple of lines worth of lyrics in my head, so the lyrics went with the music regardless of how well they actually go together.  If I were not on a deadline I might have found a better fit, but as it is I just don’t care.

I may have a little time for more lyrics/vocals this evening, but I said that last night too and it didn’t happen.  I telecommute tomorrow, so maybe I can squeeze in more than one song with the extra time I will have before work.

Thinking positive, but also looking at the calendar and starting to worry a little.

RPM Day 19

Is it really February 19th? How the hell did that happen? It was Christmas just a couple of days ago, wasn’t it? I guess the older you get the faster the calendar moves, and those calendar pages seem to be flipping pretty quickly for me these days.

Anyway…

I mentioned yesterday that I wrapped up the last section of the last (14th) song and sketched out an arrangement. I also recorded the last of the rhythm guitar parts. I completed the first vocal yesterday morning while my wife was briefly out of the house and threw on some lead guitars and declared it my first sort of (I guess) finished song. I think I want to do the vocal again, and the leads are kinda lazy. Who knows.

This morning I managed to not oversleep, and not procrastinate through my morning routine. I ended up being ready to go to work 40 minutes early and that was enough time to write and record another vocal part. If I get a chance tonight I’ll add some leads and that will be two songs finished. My wife might have to work late tonight. If that happens (I really hope it doesn’t) I might try to sneak another vocal. I find that the only way I can ever come up with lyrics is to have the mic on in front of me and the clock ticking. That might explain why my lyrics suck so badly, but I don’t care. I consider anything I write to be temporary until some mythical future day comes when I am in a band with an actual real live lyricist who will replace the crappy place holders I write today.

I’ve got 12 more lyrics to write and vocals to record and I’ve only got nine days to do it. >gulp<

Still thinking positive (or trying to at least).

RPM Day 18

Happy Presidents Day, USA. There are 10 days left in the project. Time to buckle down.

Yesterday I took five of the remaining six projects and arranged them into song forms. This morning I had the house to myself for a few minutes and managed to add vocals to one of yesterday’s songs. It’s up on soundcloud.com, but I’m not going to post it again yet.

My goal for today is to add the leads to the song with the vocals and write one more section for the suite thingie I’ve been procrastinating on. If I can write some more lyrics I will do that too, but I usually draw a blank until the last possible moment.

Think Positive!

RPM Day 17

My useless streak is over.  My stupid streak is in full swing.

I believe that I have all the rhythm guitar parts recorded.  I’ve been going pretty minimal this year.  Only one song has more than one rhythm part, and I’ve used my Les Paul for everything.  No acoustics or 335 at all.  I think I’m going to stick to the one guitar plan throughout, but who knows.

I still need to write one more section of the mini-suite thing (which still could be dropped in favor of using the A and C sections as a stand alone song) and to arrange the last five songs.  Those are tonight’s goals.  After that its vocals time, which is where my RPM projects normally die.  We shall see.

On the stupidity front, I did the recording last night in the dining room.  I cleaned off the table and gave it a quick wash.  Then I folded up my iPad’s smart case to use as a stand while I did my thing.  When I was finished I closed the cover and put it away.  Later that night I went to check my email and there was a spot of some kind of incredibly sticky Indian food sauce that I missed when I washed the table.  It got onto the inside of the cover, and when the cover was closed it got on the screen.  Crap!  I have to get something to clean the screen with, and I’m just going to replace the stupid case.  I’m pissed at myself.

 

Oh we’ll.

RPM Day 15

I did nothing yesterday. I sort of half heatedly tried to write lyrics but nothing came to me immediately and I stopped trying. That was the extent of my musical adventures yesterday. Sorry. I’m hoping for a big rhythm guitar recording push over the long weekend.