Category: Song Writing

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.

RPM Day 14

I had another slow, but not entirely unproductive day yesterday.  Song #13 is currently planned as the four part suite I talked about in yesterday’s update.  As of right now, parts A, C, and D have been sketched out.  A and C are on my iPad, while D is on my iPhone.  Again, I love living in the future.  B will need to be developed on my MacBook because I want to use a weird time signature and the iOS version of Garageband can’t do that.  I haven’t put any guitars onto these projects yet.  Maybe tonight or tomorrow I’ll get to that.

I also threw together another new project on my iPhone yesterday morning.  The structure is similar to another song that’s in the works, but if I should chose to keep it it will be song #14… which means FAWM could be completed this year.  I suppose that technically FAWM is complete now.  I have in fact written music for 14 new songs.  However, I don’t like to call the challenge complete until I have 14 complete songs, including lyrics and melodies.  That’s going to be the hard part this year, even more than usual.

My cold keeps getting worse.  I can barely talk right now, never mind sing.  I had planned to sneak some singing in here and there in the short space of time between my wife leaving for work and me leaving for work, but we’ve been car pooling on non-kid days.  I do have a vacation day scheduled for late in the month.  Hopefully I’ll be better by then, but I don’t think recording vocals for 14 songs in one day is really doable.

I’m going to have to figure something out.

RPM Day 13

Hello and welcome to day 13 of the 2013 RPM Challenge. Yesterday was not a complete waste, but it was close. The Bruins played the Rangers and lost in the shootout after a dramatic third period come back. This past weekend’s new episode of The Walking Dead reached iTunes and became available to my season pass. I had to watch that, right?

I did put a little more thought into the idea of a new suite type thingie. When I say “suite” I am thinking of something like “A Day in the Life” where you have a John Lennon song with a bit of a Paul McCartney song shoved into the middle. This time I’m thinking of three song fragments making up four sections of the suite. The A section will be a more or less complete song. I actually wrote something for this last night. It’s slow and riffy In E minor. The B section will be faster and in an odd time signature. I’ll probably do what I always do in this cases and write something in 7/8. I’ll change the key too, probably either A minor or B minor. The C section will be a reprisal of the A section, only shorter. Finally the D section will be something completely unrelated. I’m thinking really, really slow, quiet, as trippy as a non-drug user can make it, and instrumental. It will probably just end up being a long guitar solo. I’m also thinking of maybe going modal for this part. Mixolydian maybe?

Coming up with the B and D sections are my goal for tonight, but we have a few very important personal things to take care of today, so I might have to put it off until tomorrow.

I’m still thinking positive, but at the same time I’ve never had to record a vocal while suffering from a cold. This might all be a waste of time this year. Who knows.

RPM Day 11

It is official… I am a Mac user again!  I just opened up this page to write my daily RPM entry and I couldn’t remember the date.  I looked down at my task bar, expecting to see the calendar icon with today’s date on it (as I would if I were on a Macintosh) but it wasn’t there.  Why wasn’t it there?  I’m on a Windows 7 box at work.

Yesterday was mostly spent celebrating my step son’s 10th birthday.  He had a party for friends scheduled on Saturday but it was postponed by the blizzard.  Yesterday was a little gathering for my and Jen’s families.  We had a lot of fun.  The niece and nephews are a blast.  We were only missing one nephew as my sister had to stay home with him due to a fever.  We celebrate his birthday next week though.

There was cake and presents and food and fun and no sign of the RPM challenge other than my guitar sitting there in the living room… throwing off waves and waves of guilt.  “You should be playing me,” it was telepathically telling me.  “You should be recording rhythm guitar parts right now.”  No, I thought back.  You are no longer the most important thing in my life like you were in my youth.  Now you take a back seat to my family and friends.  You are still special, oh Mister Guitar, but you are no longer #1.

That being said, after the party was over and the fun was done, I doodled out another song idea on my iPhone and then recorded the rhythm guitar for that project and two others that were sitting on my iPad.  There are still two unfinished things on the iPad, but I am going to scrap them.  Considering how bad most of my crap is, these must be really horrible if I am scrapping them so soon.

I currently have nine songs arranged with rhythm guitars recorded, and three sets of phrases that are not yet arranged.  That’s 12 potential songs.  Two more and I am set to complete FAWM.  I just need to write lyrics and melodies and get all of the various into the can, as they say.

There are 17 days left.  It should be easy, right?

Did I mention I woke up with another cold this morning?

Time to panic!