Category: Song Writing

Forming Bad Habits

Two days in a row now I have skipped my daily exercise. Uh oh, bad habits forming over here!

Why? So I could record guitar tracks for RPM Challenge songs. That seems like a good reason. It will probably happen again tomorrow but instead of guitar it will be recording vocals in the car… assuming I can write the vocal parts for the last two songs before I fall asleep tonight. That’s a pretty big if.

Should I manage to get up early enough tomorrow I might be able to sneak some guitar playing in before work too. What about saxophone? I’m not sure if any of the remaining songs have plans for sax or not. I think one or two might. I also think I might just make a game time decision and change those planned sax parts to guitar parts. We’ll see. I put sax on four songs so far. That’s 20% of the entire project. That seems like an acceptable amount… though 25 or 30% seems more acceptable. We’ll have to see.

Once all of the songs are mixed (and hopefully that means all 20 songs and not some smaller number because I just declared mixing done while there were still songs outstanding) I have to pick an album running order. I might actually do three playlists. One with the 10 electric songs, another with the 10 acoustic songs, and then one with just the best 10 overall. That would be the one that I declare the Official 2025 RPM Challenge Album Submission, whatever that means. I thought about using AI to generate an image for the album cover but AI is fucking evil so I will just “borrow” something off of wikipedia. The working title of the final album is still Groundhogs Wear Top Hats but I might change that to Groundhogs and Top Hats to make the image search a little less ridiculous. We’ll see.

For now though, here are this morning’s stupid pics. I switched from the 85mm f1.8 lens to the 40mm f2.0 lens to give myself a little bit of a new option for the same old pics. The first one is today’s photo a day picture (179/365).

179/365
DSC_3749
DSC_3748
DSC_3747

RPM Challenge Day 25/28

I’ve been doing so much at random points through the days that I am sort of losing my handle on exactly what I did, and that’s making these little recap posts difficult. What did I do yesterday on day 25?

I started the day by skipping my morning exercise routine. I put acoustic rhythm guitars onto one song. It just so happened that that one song already had vocals from the last car music session so I switched to electric guitar and added leads. I also added leads to an additional song. Then I drove to work for the day.

After work I really tried to focus on wrapping up the mix down for as many songs as I could, but I kept getting pulled away by things that are way more important… like cooking dinner… right? I mixed three songs. I was hoping to get at least one more in, but I sort of fell asleep twice during the process and quit while I was ahead.

I’m back in the office today. I did manage some stuff this morning but there is sooo much more to do. I’m not worried about having a finished RPM Challenge album, I’m only three songs short of qualifying for that, but I am worried about finishing everything I planned on top of the minimum requirements. So much to do and so little time.

Five Songs Down

Five songs down… 15 to go? Well, at least five but as many as 15. Who knows.

This is short and sweet and also a sloppy mess.

I doubt I will post every song I finish for this year’s RPM Challenge. We’re just early enough in the mixing bonanza that I’m still feeling it, if you know what I mean. My ears have not been reduced to mush yet.

Shake Things Up

Since today is an office day for me and I am in a state of near panic over the current status of my RPM Challenge project, I decided to screw up my daily routine. Instead of getting up early and getting my daily exercise in, I got up early and recorded some guitar parts. I didn’t get up as early as I had planned, so I didn’t get through as much tracking as I had planned, but I did add rhythm (acoustic 12-string) guitars to one song and lead (electric 6-string) guitars to two. Actually, one song got both.

Acoustic guitar…

DSC_3746

Electric guitar (which also serves as today’s photo a day challenge picture, 178/365)…

178/365

There is a very good chance I am going to make the same change tomorrow as it too is an in the office day. I am out of control and it’s all RPM’s fault!

RPM Challenge Day 24/28

Yesterday’s haul (on day 24) was pretty decent, but not nearly as much as I had hoped.

I started by putting vocals onto five songs. I had four vocal parts written out before leaving the house for the morning car music, but after I finished the fourth song I had enough time to write the lyrics and the melody for the fifth song as I was recording it. I would have tried to do a sixth song too but my bladder was full and… well… yeah.

After work I came up much shorter than I had hoped, but I was able to work out the song form for songs 19 and 20. I had a basic idea for song number 21 and maybe song number 22 too, but I didn’t get anywhere with them. Maybe I could sneak them in before Friday. Probably not. There was an inkling of an idea for a 23rd song too. I guess when you’re on a roll you’re just on a roll, right?

Finally, before bed I managed to mix one song. That was it for day 24.

Day 25 is an in the office day for me (so is day 26) but (spoiler alert) I managed to get a little work in before I left the house.

I Need to Practice

Listen to the section of this song where the saxophone and the guitar are trading four bar solos. The first four bars of sax sound okay. The second four bars of sax… I don’t know about anyone else, but I can literally hear my body decide it has had enough sax playing for a while and needs a rest. It’s something in the amount of breath support behind each note. The tone just gets thinner out of the blue. Again, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I find that hysterically funny.

Here’s song number four for this year’s RPM Challenge.

Pre-Work Music

Did I mention that I did some car music this morning? My weird, random bout of insomnia last night meant I was up super early and had more than enough time to drive out to the movie theater parking lot to record vocals. I made it through five songs. One of them had the lyrics and the melody written on the spot. I haven’t done that in quite a while. I still have two more songs to add vocals to. I am going to be in the office the next two days (Tuesday and Wednesday) so hopefully I’ll have them all ready to go by Thursday morning.

The RPM Challenge is stressing me out big time this year, and none of the songs are any good. It has me questioning whether it’s all worth it or not. I still think so… but by how much? Who knows.

Obligatory Clock pic from the drive home which will act as today’s photo a day challenge picture:

177/365

RPM Challenge Day 23/28

On day 23 (yesterday) I made some good progress, but given the late date and the mountain of stuff left to do I probably didn’t make even close to enough progress. It was the final weekend day of the month after all.

I put a MIDI bass track onto one song, then I added lyrics and melodies to four songs. The only songs still in play that don’t have melodies yet are three songs that don’t have rhythm guitars yet either. I added a MIDI guitar as a guide track to one of them in the hopes that I could come up with lyrics for it but I ran out of gas and never got any further. I did manage to add one mix down though.

There are a total of 20 songs in the pipeline at the moment. A whopping three are finished… and they all need to be finished by Friday. Yikes.