I really should have gone to bed about an hour ago. I have to work in the morning you know. It’s a school night, why am I staying up late?
Because I was mixing a song, that’s why. It’s done now so I can go to bed.
Sweet dreams, my readers and only friends*.
Nerd boy is referencing A Clockwork Orange again.
I was able to sneak into the cellar and play the guitar twice today.
I got a lot done for 50/90, which was nice, but I reached the point on the second go-round where my hands just wouldn’t do it anymore. That’s actually not a bad thing. I really need to build up more stamina, but I’ll get there.
On a gear note, I have my little recording nook in the master bedroom that has my current recording pedal board and my little 15 watt Fender amp. My big use-with-the-band pedal board and my Vox 15 watt amp (and my 30 watt Fender amp) are all in the cellar because Covid was slowing down and I thought they would be traveling to Mike the Bass Player’s house soon… and of course that hasn’t happened because the universe has intervened. The upside is I could set all of that stuff up in the cellar to keep working on 50/90 while I’m locked out of my bedroom. I bring my new Les Paul and my MacBook Pro up and down with me, as there is no way in hell those puppies are staying down there in the humidity. I set everything up far away from the flood zone, but you may note from the previous pictures that none of the electrical stuff is actually on the floor. The pedal board is, but the pedals themselves are not. That’s for flood damage prevention reasons.
So that is what I am doing to keep 50/90 going this week.
I also wanted to start with the exercising again. I started a couple of weeks ago and then fell off the wagon. I wanted to start up again today, what with it being a Monday and the iPhone Activity app starting its week on Monday. Jen wanted to do the same thing and she totally kicked ass all day today. Me? I was at two minutes of exercise as of 7:00pm tonight. Looked like I was going to fail for the day. Well, screw that folks. I’m up to 17 minutes now with 3.5 hours left in the day. I’ll get to 30 minutes, you betcha.
Okay. I need to go get a bottle of water and do another few minutes of exercise.
Looking for the bright side of self isolation. It’s tough to find, but it might be out there. Probably not, but maybe I might be able to pretend.
Mental Health required this. Just need to make sure it all stays clear of the flood zone.
I sat at the desk in my step son’s room all night tonight. My wife was down the hall. A few times we masked up and had distanced visits in our own home. Yeah, this sucks.
Once I am at work on Tuesday you can expect lots of shit like this:
I am going to be working this weekend too, on top of all of the other stuff, so maybe you’ll get something before Tuesday. I don’t know.
I wrote a song for 50/90 tonight too, so that’s positive, right? Right? I strongly believe that if you sit alone in your car in some random parking lot and don’t interact with other living creatures then you are still within your quarantine. So maybe car music tomorrow. Or maybe the next day. Or maybe the day after that. I don’t know.
I miss Jen. She’s right down the friggin’ hall, yet I miss her. Boo.
There was stuff going on outside of my parents house tonight and it’s all resolved happily. Kick ass, dude!
While trying to disctract myself from, well… everything, I mixed a second song. That’s it. Nothing else is ready for mixing so this is all you get tonight.
I don’t hate this one. I almost like it. The one I posted an hour or so ago is tons better, but this little 5/4 thingie is better than most of the shit I write.
On the parent sitting front, the floor fan in the living room is starting to squeak. If that sucker dies it will be like losing my closest friend. I love that little spinning bastard. It’s been so good to me over the last five months. I don’t know what I will do without it. HANG IN THERE MY FAN FRIEND!
Both of my parents are asleep. That is good. I’m not. There’s stuff going on that I want to stay awake for. I’m distracting myself from the fact that I am here when I don’t want to be here by mixing some music. Magically, there’s a song that I think might be pretty good. Short and sweet and good.
I mixed two songs tonight. They both kinda suck so I won’t post them. The first of the two was completed mix number 25. I have reached the halfway point of 50/90. Hooray, right? The pipeline is up to 41 songs now so I won’t have that much more to add in September. I’ll just have to finish off whatever is left. Good.
I mixed three songs tonight. Hot Damn! My brain feels like mush now, so I am going to bed.
My mother was asleep when I checked on her a minute ago, but she was still up. Explain? Okay. She’s sitting up on the edge of her bed, slumped over to one side asleep. I woke her up and told her she should lie down. She said she will and then went back to sleep without moving. Her back is going to be searing agony tomorrow. It’s like talking to a brick wall sometimes, except you can usually get pissed off when people act like that. I can’t get pissed off now. I don’t think she can actually process that she’s doing anything that will have a negative consequence.
It’s pretty friggin’ frustrating.
I’m on a bit of a mixing roll right now. Only partly because my mother is having a rough night. She had all of her discretionary meds. If she doesn’t fall asleep soon I don’t know what we’re going to do. It’s quiet in her bedroom right now, and she hasn’t come a-wandering out in a little while. After I post this I will go check on her.
The song is nothing special, but I kinda like it. The rhythm guitars sounded like crap so I had to EQ them. I always feel like a failure when I have to EQ guitars. I should be a talented enough recording engineer to actually capture my own friggin’ instrument correctly. I’m only being partly sarcastic when I say that, but rest assured I am being sarcastic.
On the up side, my father was flipping back and forth between the Red Sox game (that’s good) and a little league fucking world series game (oh, that is so not good). The little league game is over. Thank the baseball gods for that.
I have been playing games with gear of late. There are two overdrive pedals on the rhythm guitar tracks. Both have their gain control on zero and their volume control maxed. The amp is a low wattage tube amp, and pushing in a crap load of input signal is enough to push the tubes into overdrive. There are a couple of songs coming that added a third overdrive pedal set the same way and it’s a really sweet distorted sound. It’s almost like I know what I’m doing.
Inside the Red Head's Head 