Category: Song Writing

RPM Challenge – Day 22

We are going for a drive today in the hopes of getting desks and desk chairs for the kids.  When we woke up we had a very small window of time for anything other than getting ready to go.  I used that time wisely and recorded the leads for song #5.  It was far from perfect, but far from my usual terrible.  What was weird was that I nailed each part on the first take.  Woah!  I must be in the groove.  (that is sarcasm, the groove and I never see eye to eye, let alone meet up)

Even weirder is that I recorded a 16 bar guitar riff that will become song #15.  Now that is weird!  Here I am convinced I won’t have time to finish 14 songs and I go and start a 15th.  Somebody stop me!

RPM Challenge – Day 19

Not much today. I mixed one song last night and recorded one vocal this morning. I am off work the next two days, but will not have the house to myself tomorrow. I will try to do some more whispered guide vocals if I can write some damn lyrics. I think I will be using the random wikipedia article trick quite a bit this year.

Here is the song I mixed last night. I am not happy with the mix at all. The vocals are too low. Of course with my singing, too low is infinitely better than too loud. Am I right, or am I right?

http://alonetone.com/robertjames1971/tracks/confidence.mp3%20

RPM Challenge – Day 18

I mixed two songs last night. I don’t like either of them, or anything else I’ve worked on this month. It’s good, because I don’t think I am going to have enough time in the house alone to finish all of the vocals.

This is the first song I worked on, and the first song I finished:
http://alonetone.com/robertjames1971/tracks/small-3.mp3%20

This is the 12th song I worked on, and the second song I finished. As you can guess, I am jumping around all over the place right now.
http://alonetone.com/robertjames1971/tracks/not-in-this-lifetime.mp3%20

I have one more song that is ready to mix. I was just too tired to finish it off last night. Yesterday I wrote lyrics and a really rough melody for three more songs. This morning I recorded two of them. My vocal performance was terrible at best, but it’s done and I don’t think I am going to have time to fix anything that irks me when I start listening back to it. I didn’t take the time to put rough mixes up onto Soundcloud.

So that’s five vocals recorded, and a sixth that is written and ready to record. I need to get four more done to qualify for RPM, and eight more to qualify for FAWM. FAWM is starting to look like a lost cause. I took Thursday and Friday off from work, but I don’t think I am going to have time on those days to handle vocals. I’m starting to honestly consider driving to an empty parking lot somewhere and recording in the car. It’s looking more and more like that’s the only way I will be able to finish everything. Cold weather be damned, you know?

RPM Challenge – Day Eight

I’m up to song nine last night. Song eight has a lot of structure left to figure out. I did it on the iPad last night and haven’t ported it to the Mac yet. Song nine is the obligatory 7/8. It’s just bass and drums so far, but I used the drummer function again. It worked out pretty well in this case.

On a net-nerd front, I had been using my “B” soundcloud account for works in progress. Today I figured that was silly so I loaded everything into the main account.

Here’s a playlist that will be deleted once the project is complete:

RPM Challenge – Day Six

Last night before bed I started work on song #6. It’s just base and drums for now but it is a return to form for me. Last year’s RPM project was the first one I’ve done that did not include a 12-bar blues. Well this year I have rectified that error. Song #6 is a 12-bar! Welcome back!

Tonight I started work on song #7. It’s a little melody I tinkered out on the iPad using GarageBand’s Heavy Metal Organ sound. Gotta love that. I ported it over to the Mac and used the GarageBand Drummer function again. It worked. I’m satisfied with it this time.

This project needs more time signature variety. I’ve got one 6/8, one 5/4, and five 4/4s. It might be time to break out the old prog rock favorite, 7/8. Maybe over the weekend.

RPM Challenge Day Four

Last night I started song #4. It uses the ancient riff I’ve been talking about for the last four days. I had it sketched out before I went to bed, but tonight I added an organ part to it.

When I was satisfied with song #4 I started playing with new ideas. I wanted to keep noodling with the organ sound so I stayed with that. I also wanted an odd time signature so I set the GarageBand project to 5/4 time. I ended up with a 5th song project, but I’m not happy with it. I forced it tonight. It didn’t come to me the way the good ones do. I dragged it out of my head, kicking and screaming and the end results will show that. I didn’t outright dump it. Not yet at least.

I am working on RPM and FAWM at the same time, as always. RPM needs 10 songs, FAWM needs 14. I think I have two that are destined to be FAWM only (songs 2 and 5). I’ll finish them for the project’s sake, but I don’t see them being anything I’d listen to again. Last year I managed to like everything I had enough to put it on the RPM CD. There was one that I was on the fence with until the last minute, but something made me keep it. In 2012 I had 15 songs (FAWM, leap year style) and only used 13 on the CD. At this rate I’ll be lucky to end up with 10 songs that I don’t hate.

New Playlist

Here’s that four song playlist I said I’d be putting up on bandcamp. I have no idea why it’s only pulling in the first song. I’m too frustrated and pissed off to figure it out now.

Oh wait, I think I figured it out. Duh. Robbie es Moron.

Music Projects

I have been loading music to my bandcamp.com site (please please please do not buy any music from me). I have taken my two projects from this past March-October and declared them complete… even though they aren’t actually as complete as I had hoped.

I took all of the leftover songs from past projects and collected them into this album:

I took my re-recording old songs project and shut it down… well… I actually split it into two projects. One band Mike and I had played in for a while recorded four songs at Northeast Broadcasting School. I have already re-recorded three of them. I decided that the next thing I work on will be the fourth of those songs, and then I’ll put them together as an EP sort of thing. That means that the other 10 songs can be called a complete project:

There are still more unfinished songs, but they will be added to yet a fourth pointless project. Fun, fun, fun.

The Seventh and Final Crappy Song

That’s seven songs written, recorded, and mixed. All within the month of November. Look at that kids, I’ve finished NaSoAlMo!

I re-recorded just about all of this crappy song today. The one thing that wasn’t changed was the vocal. Of course, the one thing that needs to be redone is the vocal. Figures. Anyway, it sucks and I don’t care.

I’ve got an hour and a half left in the month. I am going to try to splice this garbage into a 33 minute suite thing. Yippee.