I worked on guitars for two songs tonight. Rhythm on one and lead on the other. Just like last night the rhythm went okay but the leads sucked. My sense of timing is all out of whack. I’m just not feeling it. Practice! I need to practice!
I swapped out the Keeley D&M drive for the Wampler Plexi Drive Mini. That pedal wasn’t doing it for me before but I tweaked the settings and finally got it to play nicely with the Klon KTR in front of it. It might stay on the board for a while.
I had three songs to work on for car music today. Technically I had four. One of the three is two old songs that I glued together to make one bigger song. It makes sense, I promise. I started with the two non-double songs and was just about to finish up the second song. I was feeling pretty good and was thinking about starting in on the double song. I had been out there for about an hour. My battery was holding out, so was my bladder and my water bottle. Why not?
As I was singing the last line on the second song something weird happened. The MIDI bass track went out of tune. You can do that in MIDI by pitch shifting, but it doesn’t happen magically on its own. You have to tell the track to do it. I did not.
Hearing the out of tune track, which was 100% definitely not out of tune when I recorded the guitars yesterday nor was it out of tune when I did a couple of practice run throughs today, threw me off completely and I had to go back and try a second take. This time the bass was not out of tune? What the hell? Not being out of tune threw me off again and I had to try another take. This time, the third try, it was out of tune again. What the fuck?? I just looped a few bars around the offending moment and let it run. It was out of tune every other playback.
Oh for crying out loud.
I didn’t start working on the double song. I totally lost whatever mojo I had and I had to stop for the day. Oh well.
Here’s the obligatory drive home photo. It is not out of tune, I promise.
I worked on four songs today! Woohoo!
I put rhythm parts on two songs and it went okay. Certainly not good, but okay.
I put leads on two songs and oh my god was it awful! Just atrocious! Train wreck-esque. Wow. I might have to redo it all but I’ll probably just live with it.
What fun!
What was that? Oh, nothing. Just some three part harmony in the car. That’s all.
I played my new Les Paul today. First time in over two months. I had two songs to work on and I only got to one, but it was awesome. I love that guitar. I celebrated a wedding anniversary with the woman who bought me that guitar for my 50th birthday last year and somehow that makes it all that much cooler.
I put rhythm guitars onto two songs tonight! The playing was rotten but I feel so good about it I could burst! It’s been too long. Way too long.
I played my SG through my new pedal board. I also tuned down to Eb for some reason. It felt good.
The Les Paul might come out tomorrow. We will see.
Remember the RPM Challenge’s Record Every Month challenge thingie that I did all last year but failed to finish anything in March or April this year?
I just threw together a simple, quick, and dirty little thing that could end up being a May submission.
For the first time in a year I failed to come up with anything for Record Every Month. Im a little sad about that, but it’s okay.
What will April bring? Probably not much. We have so many home improvement things going on that I don’t know if I’ll have any time for recording.
Still no dates for Lizardfish rehearsals. Im hoping we can get something in during April because im going to be out of commission for most if not all of May.
I had to take down the cellar music nook for reasons. It’s all in cellar storage now. Im mad at myself too because the reason I stopped using it came down to a misunderstanding. Jen said it was too loud for her to concentrate and I thought she meant that in general. She didn’t. She just meant it was distracting that day.
Oh well. My mistake.
Hopefully I’ll have some time for writing and recording before I go under the knife. I’ll write lots of songs about being scared shitless.
Rock on, fat boy.
I am supposed to be working on the Record Every Month challenge. Why hasn’t there been any new music?
I have two songs in progress. They are both ready for vocals. It’s March 29th. What’s the delay?
Well, the main delay has been that there is always something going on in the morning right now. I haven’t been able to eek out any time for car music to put the vocals onto those two songs. I was hoping to get it in tomorrow morning, but my doctor’s appointment was just rescheduled from 10:30am to 8:00am. I might be able to do it after the appointment. Then I would have Wednesday and Thursday evenings to put down the lead guitars and throw together a mix.
I think I can pull that off. It’s been so long since I listened to these two songs that I am not even sure how they go anymore. We’ll have to see tomorrow, right?
I’m still planning on more re-recordings. I am much more interested in that project idea than Record Every Month, but I haven’t had time or energy to work on any of that either. I have one song in progress but I haven’t even recorded the rhythm guitars yet. There is just too much going on. It’s a little nuts.
So to sum up, musically speaking… let’s see what happens.
It’s been almost a month since I played the guitar at all. Finally I got some noodling in today. I kicked off a couple of song ideas for the Record Every Month challenge thing and I put rhythm guitars on them. They both suck pretty hard, but it’s okay. Something is better than nothing, I hope.
My new Les Paul through the Klon KTR into the Keeley D&M Drive into the Vox AC15. That’s a happy noise.
As always, forgive the dust.
Inside the Red Head's Head 