I just finished my June album in a month challenge thingie. 10 songs down. I am not sharing any of the songs I finished yesterday or today on this page though because they suck.
They suck.
They Suuuuuuuuuuck.
Oh well. I think we’ll punt on the rest of the May stuff and take a couple of days off before starting the next challenge, to write 50 songs in 90 days without logging onto the actual fifty ninety site at all. Faux 50/90 or bust, kids.
Today is the last day of June. I haven’t mentioned the June music project lately. How is that going? Are you going to reach your goal of writing and recording ten (bad) songs within the 30 days of June?
Maybe?
I mixed two songs yesterday. That put me at seven songs complete. At the start of the day today I had one song that needed lead guitars and two more that were ready to mix. Well, I just put some really pathetic guitar leads down on that one song, which ironically is song #1 for this month. Why is the first song started going to be the last one finished? I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.
Anyway, that one guitar track being finished (poorly) means that tracking for this album in a month challenge is done and I just have to mix three songs. I think I can do that today. We’ll see.
What about the 10 songs from May? I gave myself to the end of the day on July 3rd to finish those 10 songs. I don’t think I am going to make it. I still have one song that doesn’t have rhythm guitars, and six that don’t have lyrics. Yeah, there’s pretty much zero chance of me hitting this new deadline. 50/90 starts on the fourth of July so the May stuff is probably going to be ignored for a few additional months. Oh well. I am not really doing 50/90. Not officially at least. I am going to see what I can do with a faux 50/90. We’ll see.
Okay, time to add a couple of guitar pics and then punch into work on this fine Friday. 8 hours and 45 minutes until the weekend.
My guitar playing streak is over. I lost count of how many days in a row I played for at least a few minutes. It was almost three weeks, I think. I failed to get any playing in yesterday. Oh well.
This morning before leaving for the doctors appointment I was able to get some work done though. Jen is in the office today so I had some quiet time in the house alone and I used it to record some vocals. I put them onto the 10th and final June song and two more May songs. I think I have six May songs still waiting for lyrics and vocals. I have decided to extend the deadline for the May songs to July 3rd. I am not extending the deadline for the June songs. Those need to be wrapped up by Friday. I only have one guitar part to add and then mix the final five and that’s it. No problem, he said with false confidence that probably wasn’t really that false.
I thought I was going to get back onto the photography bus today. Film, to be specific. As I was getting my shit together to go to the doctors appointment I looked out the window and saw sun gleaming into the back yard. Right. I grabbed Dad’s camera. I didn’t know where I was going to go after the appointment, but I was going somewhere. Then when I actually got outside and got in the car, the sky was clouded over and ugly and sad. Oh well. The day is coming. It’s summer now. Film photography. Digital photography. All over the place in Eastern Massachusetts and Southern New Hampshire and maybe even more places than that. I want Boston. I want light houses. I want to go shootin’. Ideally I want to go shootin’ with other folks, but if I have to do it alone at the crack of dawn then that’s what I am going to do. You heard it here first, folks.
What should I do tomorrow? Tomorrow is my work from the office day. I will start the day in Foxborough, which is about a million and a half miles away from my house. I will need to be on the road by 7:30am.
Should I try to get my couch to 5k training in? Tomorrow is the day that it should happen, as I am trying to do this every other day, but I was planning on pushing it off until the day after. If I get up at 5:00am and get right the hell out the door and start, then I should be done by 5:30. That would give me more than enough time to do everything I want to do, including recover from the exercise and watch episode two of Marvel’s Secret Invasion.
I am undecided. If I am out of bed by, let’s say, 5:05am then I will do it. Tomorrow’s plan is to switch from walk for three minutes and run for one minute, repeating eight times to walk for two minutes and run for one minute, repeated eight times. I fully expect my legs to fall off. It’s going to be freakin’ brutal, but it should also take less time than yesterday did. We’ll see.
Okay. That’s enough for now. Back to work, Robert.
This is the other song that I was thinking might get the nod for this month’s Record Every Month Challenge submission, but I am not happy with the mix. The song is groovy and fun. I kept it as ridiculously simple as possible but then made the mix a little too busy. I think I’ll go with the song from the last post instead. I do like this though.
Of the 10 songs I am working on this month, only one can be my submission for the Record Every Month Challenge thing. This song might be it. There’s one other that is in the running, but I kinda like this puppy even though there isn’t much to it.
I wicked overslept today. I wanted to get up before 6:00, do my yogging, play some guitar, have some breakfast, then check in with work. There’s a customer going through a huge project this weekend and there is a chance I could get called in to help out. I wanted a status update to make sure I’m in the clear (I am 99% sure I won’t get called now, things are going well).
Instead I slept until after 7:30. I still did all of that stuff, I just did it hours later than expected. I also changed the litter boxes and filled up the bird feeders and am currently on my second load of laundry. It’s been an active kinda day so far.
Now that all of that is out of the way, I should be able to spend some time mixing some music and writing some lyrics for what I hope will be a huge car music tomorrow morning. Fingers crossed on that one.
Pictures:
I put leads on two songs using my SG and then switched to my Les Paul for the third and final song. I have now run out of songs that are ready for leads. There’s only one song remaining that is ready for rhythm guitar, but I am waiting on that one. I don’t know why, but I am. I am still sticking to the May Music Project plan of only using the new King of Tone pedal. I brought my stay-at-home pedal board out of the closet the other day but I haven’t set it up yet. I will use that once the faux 50/90 starts on the 4th of July. I think. I want to put the King of Tone onto the board too, in place of whatever overdrive is currently following the Klon KTR in the chain. I think it’s the Keeley D&M Drive right now, though I hate to put that one away. I need to see how The King plays with others.
Okay, more music updates later. I think. We’ll see.
It was 10:30 at night. I still had 40% of my move goal left to do. Jen was asleep so I snuck down cellar and yogged for a while. Once my move goal was closed (stand and exercise goals had been closed for many hours by then) I took a little time to recover and then…
That’s right, kids, the guitar playing streak is alive. I only played for about 10 minutes but it counts, babie!
This one isn’t terrible. It’s not good, but it’s not terrible either.
I had four songs ready for me to record vocals and I just got home from recording in the car. I picked off all four songs. Sweet.
Now I have four songs ready to mix, four ready for lead guitars, eight ready for lyrics, and one still waiting on rhythm guitars. How much of that pile of stuff will I get to today? Hopefully a good chunk of it all. It’s a music kinda day today, I think.
Magically, the streak of consecutive days where the guitar was played for at least a couple of minutes has reached 18. I put rhythm guitar tracks onto one of the final two songs from May. Only one more song to go. Last night I wrote lyrics for two of the June songs, and after I finished playing the gitter I wrote lyrics for a third. There will be car music tomorrow, though I am not sure how that schedule will work out.
I used the direct out from the Bassbreaker 15 amplifier. It calls it cabinet emulation, not simulation, but whatever. It sounds… okay. Not great. The little nutube Vox amp probably sounds better. I’ll stick with this for a while and see if it grows on me.
Pics:
As for tomorrow. Here’s the plan. I am going to get up at the ass crack of dawn and do the third Couch to 5k training. I expect I will die during that, but once it’s over I will go inside and eat breakfast and recover. Then after breakfast is done, and the one hour pause after eating before I can drink water again is also done, I’ll jump in the car, drive to a secluded place, and crank out some vocal tracks.
Hopefully. We’ll see if I can stick to that plan or not. Wish me luck.
Inside the Red Head's Head 