Category: Song Writing

New Song

National Solo Album Month needs to come up with a better name because I’m not writing that dumb acronym again. I’m just calling it November Music, m’kay? That works for me.

Three songs down. I don’t have a count in mind as a goal, I just want to hit the challenge mandated minimum of 29 minutes and however many seconds. Eight seconds? I don’t remember. Let’s round it up to 30 minutes. This puts me at 15 minutes, but one of the songs is disgustingly terrible so if I drop it I’m at 11 minutes. The songs tend to be running a little long this month so I am still in good shape.

I want to like this one. I am not sold yet, but I am hoping it turns out to be track one and kind of the signature song for the month… I just don’t know if I pulled it off.

I’ve been listening to a lot of prog lately… it shows.

Sunday Tunes

I worked on some November music today. I started a new song, which is just rhythm guitars and a drum loop so far, added rhythm guitar to one song and leads to two. There’s one semi-proggie song in the pipeline that I am hoping will come out okay when it’s done. Fingers crossed, right?

The Good and the Terrible

I mixed two songs tonight. I was only planning on doing one. I had a song from the November list that was ready to finish off so I was going to take care of it, upload it to alonetone, maybe add it to a post here, and then go to bed.

Unfortunately it is the worst dog shit of a song that has ever come out of my untalented brain. It just sucked so bad. What was I thinking? What is wrong with me?

So rather than go to bed with that awful taste in my ears, and also with that song at the top of my alonetone queue, I decided to finish off a song for the new round or re-recordings. The Great 2015 Re-Recording Project and all that.

I feel a smidge better about my place in the universe after working on this one. Consider my ears’ palette cleansed.

Bang your head, kids.

New Song for November

Yesterday I posted a new recording of a song from this past summer. Tonight I post a brand new song for the November National Solo Album Month project. Caution: This one has keyboards. I buried them in the mix to be safe though so I think we’re okay.

More Car Tunes

I spent about 45-50 minutes in the movie theater parking lot recording vocals for November tunes. I had four songs ready to do and I only got to two of them. That’s okay. There is still a lot of November left.

There were a lot of cars around and people out for walks (at least until it started raining). It wasn’t quite as private as I like and I was distracted. Oh well. Maybe more over the weekend.

Pics!

Planning for the Morning

I left a lot of stuff unfinished when I ended this morning’s car music. Enough that I’ve sort of been planning on another go tomorrow too.

Tonight I added two songs to the ready-to-sing list. I’ve got the two re-recordings I didn’t get to today, and now I have two November songs too.

I think a Friday morning session is sort of a must, don’t you?

Quarantine Tunes Again

I was going to save up all of the re-recordings I’ve been working on and share them all at once rather than piecemeal as I finish them, but screw it here’s the first new mix. It’s a tad faster than the original from July, and it’s got a key change at the end now.

How I Spent My Day Off

Here’s what I did on my day off:

  • Car music
  • Sat at my computer watching Futurama on Hulu.
  • Ended today’s fast 90 minutes early
  • Played some guitar
  • Sat at my computer watching Futurama on Hulu.
  • Mixed a song.
  • Cooked dinner.

This list is accurate but it fails to emphasize just how much Futurama was watched.

I mean… I watched a shit-load of Futurama today.

Nutube: Totally Not a Gimmick

I had a little window of time in between Jen’s scheduled meetings so I snuck in some guitar tracking for the November tunes. I put rhythm on song number five and leads on songs one and two.

I am still sticking to the plan to use my little Vox MV50 Clean amp for all of November, even though it’s sitting on top of a Fender Bassbreaker 15 which at it’s worst sounds about 10000000000 times better than the little Vox dude. Still, Nutubes… The MV50’s preamp section runs on a Nutube and Nutubes totally are not a gimmick. Right? Right? I mean there are only two (maybe three, but I’m pretty sure it’s down to two) factories on Earth that still make actual vacuum tubes and if the guitar community wants to continue having that glorious tube amp sound we have to prepare ourselves for the day that we can’t get the real thing anymore… and Nutubes are as close as we can get at the moment, assuming they are not a total gimmick that is just a façade in front of a regular plain old solid state amp. So many questions… so very many questions.

Anyway, the little MV50’s are at least cute to look at, and the Nutubes give off a warm glowing blue warming glow…

Also, playing anything gives me an excuse for lame, faux artsy guitar pics. Today we made use of the iPhone’s portrait mode. Like a telephone photography boss.

Morning Tunes

I spent about an hour and a half on car music this morning. I had three new songs and three redone old songs queued up and ready to sing. I did the three new songs and one of the oldies. I think I might have been able to get to one more but my bladder had other ideas. I made it home with a little time to spare. Ahhhh.

Judging by this photograph, my car has the dirtiest windows in the known universe.

More music to come later today, methinks.