Category: Song Writing

Rewrite Or Two Parter

I put lead guitars onto the song that got the vocals during car music this morning. All tracking is done on one song so barring any catastrophic failures I’ll have a song to send into RPM this month.

Before recording that lead track though I recorded the first thing to pop into my head when I picked up my new guitar tonight and wrote a whole song form around it.

You’d think that was a good thing, right? It would be if the first thing that popped into my head hadn’t been 95% the same as the chorus of the car music song. It’s 34 bpm slower, and the turn around in bars four and eight is different, though still similar. Otherwise it’s the same thing.

So what to do with it? Is it a rewrite? No… it’s part two of a two song suite. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Let’s go with that.

Car Music Fail

I knew this was going to happen eventually, and today kinda became the day.

If you go back to all the car music posts from the last year or so, at some point I start talking about having signal flow problems. There are signal drop outs and extraneous noises and things that make takes unusable. Eventually the system I use for my personal Rolling Truck Stones Thing was going to fail. Today I only had two songs to work on and I spent a full hour on one of them, just trying to get the signal to hold together for eight or nine bars. It was so painful.

The frustration comes from not knowing where the breakdown is happening. What could it be?

  1. The microphone
  2. The connection between the mic and the mic cable
  3. The mic cable
  4. The connection between the mic cable and the USB interface
  5. The USB interface
  6. The connection between the USB interface and the USB cable
  7. The USB cable
  8. The connection between the USB cable and the USB to USB C adapter
  9. The USB to USB C adapter
  10. The connection between the USB to USB C adapter and the USB C port on the computer

Today’s issues happened in more than one USB C port, so I know it wasn’t the port. I also know it isn’t the sound card or GarageBand itself because both of those work perfectly when I’m at home and using a different USB interface. That rules out the tail end of the chain, but every other device or connection could be the culprit.

The next time I do this I am going to take a different mic, a different mic cable, a different USB cable, and a different USB adapter. If it still happens then I know the interface itself is the problem.

The upside is that I actually did get that one song finished. It probably sounds like dung, but it’s finished. So the trip was a success as far as the goal to record one song per month is concerned. It was a frustrating, painful fail as far as everything else was concerned.

Pencil In Car Music for Tomorrow

I have four songs underway this month. They all blow chunks. I thought two of them were useable and two were disasters. I wrote lyrics for one of the better ones today and then tried writing for the second better one, only to realize it was garbage. I then listened to one of the disasters and decided it was awful but not too awful so I wrote lyrics for that one. The other disaster is still a disaster but it’s better than I thought. I tried putting lyrics to that one too but I’m kinda burned out.

So car music tomorrow should happen, even though there are only two songs ready to work on. That should be enough for now.

On a totally unrelated note, I just head that two members of the cast of the show Batwoman posted spoilers today that kinda make me want to catch up on season two. I am so easily lead. Baaaaah, babie. Baaaaaah.

July is Coming

After working on a couple of seriously atrocious song ideas tonight it’s got me wondering about the near future. The 4th of July is right around the corner, and for a musical net nerd like me, the 4th of July means 50/90.

Should I do 50/90? I’ll definitely do Record Every Month, so there’s three songs. Should I try to bang out the other 47 as well?

I’m not sure. I’ll be pulling shifts at my parents house again probably starting next week, so there’s a lot of time where I won’t be recording. I’ve used that time to put initial ideas down, and to mix, but I can’t do guitars or voices.

I guess we will have to just wait and see where my head is a couple of weeks from now.

Play

I did it. I snuck in some guitar playing. Dinner is going to be late tonight so I went straight from work to the new Les Paul.

I worked on rhythm parts for two really terrible songs. Les Paul Standard 50s into a Rock Your Repaired Amp The Klone overdrive pedal into a Vox AC15. Life felt good for a few minutes there. Excellent.

Up next is some hamburgers cooked on the grill where life will continue to feel good for a few more minutes.

Baby steps, babie. Baby steps.

June Tune

I played guitar a little last night. Nothing specific, just noodling. Today I forced myself to work on a new song idea. Well, sort of new. I played a little lick into Music Memos last month that I never used. I worked it into the first and so far only June song so far. Two minutes of bad pop rock.

It’s not much, but it’s something.

One Last May Song

As I warned earlier, here’s another song for this month. This is the third of three. I wanted to try to get to 10 and I think there are three or four more that are nowhere near finished. I got three. That’s okay.

I’m going to submit the song from earlier today for the RPM Challenge Record Every Month thing. I like the hook on this one, but over all it’s a bit of a mess. I need to stop mixing with AirPod Pros. I don’t think they fit my head very well and it throws off the bass response. I’m pretty sure that if I were to listen to this mix through different headphones, or through speakers, the bass part would be super way too loud. Oh well. Live and learn, or something like that.

Another Song for May

Things have been pretty quiet here on Nana Sitting duty. She had a good night last night. Today started out all right, had a bit of a pain hiccup, but has since calmed down again. Fingers crossed for a quiet day.

I watched Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead last night. Eh. Not terrible. Kinda dumb, but not unenjoyable. I actually started it last night and finished it this morning. Every time I put it on my mother would come into the room and I’d pause it to avoid questions of gore. I was watching on my laptop with AirPods in, but I didn’t want to risk grossing her out. When I was 18 I probably would have just let it go. I guess I’m more mature now.

Speaking of mature, the 50 year old red head mixed a song. How grown up of me!

Have I mentioned my beloved wife bought me a new Les Paul for my birthday? Have I mentioned that all of the guitars on this song are that new Les Paul? Have I mentioned that I love my new birthday Les Paul? Not as much as I love my wife, but that gitter is sah-weeeet.

I’m not sure if I am going to submit this one to the RPM site for the Record Every Month thingie. I have three. This one, the last one I posted, and one more that isn’t mixed yet. I haven’t decided which one sucks the least.

New Song

In my fear of going to sleep I mixed a song. Two problems here. First, I used my AirPods Pro so I have no idea how this really sounds. It’s probably going to end up way too bassy. Second, there’s a song from February’s RPM Challenge with the same title. I have to stop doing that. Doofus.

Anyway, this song was entirely recorded on my new Les Paul Standard. Forgive me for loading it up with goop at the beginning. It sounds more like itself once the song gets going.