Category: Song Writing

Random Stuff

It’s Sunday. My thumb hurts, and the rash on my arm is bigger than it was yesterday. I’m falling apart completely. Quarantine is finally breaking me, it seems. So what’s a red head to do? How about some reflection on the state of his world? Also known as a post full of random stuff? Sounds good to me!

Today is kind of a big day. Symbolically, if not literally. Today is the last weekend day that the kids are at our house before Bellana goes back to school. We’re going all out. Jen is making her favorite dinner tonight. Harry is making her favorite dessert right now. I’m so worried about the future. I want her to go and have a great second year at college, but I don’t want her to go and be at risk of catching the plague. I want her to stay here and be safe. Basically all the same arguments I made last August, with a few pandemical twists. Mostly I just don’t want to miss her again. Selfish, yes, but it’s still true. At the same time, if they can keep the Covid bubble closed and stop her and the rest of the students from being exposed, then I want her to have a great semester. I want her to have a ball. She doesn’t leave for a little over a week, but her last weekend is a dad weekend so we’re giving her a send off a little early.

I feel a little better about my step son’s school plans now that I know he’s only going in person half of the time instead of all the time. I guess you could say I feel half better than full bad? Get it? I would feel full better if he was going full remote, but that’s probably going to require an outbreak in the high school and I don’t want that either. I want him home and safe.

Sports: The Bruins won their first Tuukka Rask free game. They are up two games to one in their first round series against the Whale. I have confidence in Jaroslav Halak, that’s not the issue. I just had more confidence in Rask. A Cup win seems less likely with Halak carrying them, but really given the way they played in the first few games into the return to play, I had lost most of my Cup confidence anyway. We’ll see how far they can go. I’d like to at least beat the friggin’ Whale.

The Red Sox are utterly atrocious. They are very close to being on pace for the lowest win/loss percentage in franchise history, and the franchise has been around for about 120 years or so…. that means they are really, really bad. We all knew it was coming though. They have one major league starter in their pitching rotation and he’s probably a #4 on a real staff. Maybe a #3. Chris Sale, Eduardo Rodriguez, and Nathan Eovaldi together is a nice start for a rotation, but with Sale out getting Tommy John surgery, and E-Rod out with Covid-19 related heart issues, that just leaves Eovaldi and a bunch of minor leaguers and that is a recipe for complete disaster. Add a few hitters having epically bad seasons so far and you have a team that has a good shot at the #1 overall draft pick next year.

Music… 50/90 is 42% complete. I just added songs #20 and 21. I’ve got seven songs with rhythm guitars down that are waiting for lyrics and vocals. That’s it. 28 songs total so far. I need to get to 34 by the end of the month (50/90 takes place over three months and 50/3=16.67). I also want to have a 10 song (at least) album in a month for August. Five of the completed songs were started and finished this month, and three of the unfinished songs were started this month too. Those three are the top of the priority list right now, and I have to keep the new stuff coming so I don’t fall behind. I feel like I am way behind on things, even though I’m really just at the halfway point.

A bird just flew into the window, about two feet away from me. I hope he’s okay. It looked like it might have been a glancing blow. More like he bounced off than crashed.

We applied for vote by mail ballots recently, and our 9/1 Primary election ballots were delivered a couple of days ago. Will there still be a functioning USPS for us to mail them back? The shit stain of a president admitted publicly that he’s hamstringing the post office to tamper with the November election, and the response from those who stand as a check and balance against him? They went on vacation. Also, there is a global pandemic that is killing a thousand Americans a day so they went on vacation. If you still think your government represents you, then that should show you the truth.

That’s kinda a bummer note to end on. Here, let me make it worse by adding a couple of new songs. That should push us all off the ledge, right?

Lots of fulltone Free Guitar

I put rhythm guitars on three songs and leads on two. I used my new Black Lives Matter overdrive pedal on all of it and it is soooo sweet. The Dan side of the D&M Drive is a good alternative to an OCD that doesn’t include any racists bullshit, but it was never quite equal. Now that issue has been resolved. The hole in my life that opened when I trashed my fulltone pedals has been filled by an OCD clone that is racists bullshit free and it is glorious. My OCD was a version 1.7, and the Black Lives Matter pedal is based on a version 1.2, but if this is how it sounds then I would have been just as happy with a 1.2 as a 1.7.

The pedal is on the big board, but it’s not velcro’d yet.

Most of what I did tonight was just the BLM on its own. I did use the Phase 90 and the Crybaby here and there, but it wasn’t until I started doing leads that I stacked the BLM after the KTR and it was just as glorious as I’d hoped. I still have to try it out at gig volume, but for now I’m willing to say that I am really, really happy.

This puts me at 19 songs finished, two ready to mix, and seven ready for lyrics/melody/vocals for a grand total of 28. I need to get to at least 34 by the end of August to stay on pace for 50 songs in 90 days.

How about the pain in my injured left thumb? I took a fist full of Tylenol about an hour before I started playing. I was in some pretty serious pain on the first song or two, but it eased up quite a bit after that. Something is wrong. I’m thinking of going to a doctor on Tuesday. I’ve got this really maddening little rash on my right arm too. I am literally falling apart before my own eyes.

350/365

Three Leads

After recording vocals on five songs this morning, I put leads on three of them tonight. I could have done more, but I decided to quit while I was ahead.

So my thumb… I hurt it weeks ago. I don’t remember how, I just woke up one day and ouch. It wasn’t bad. It was annoying, but nothing to worry about. I figured in a day or two it would be history.

Instead, it’s gotten steadily worse over time. The last couple of days it’s been really bad. Like, bad enough that I’m thinking of breaking lock down to go get an x-ray or something. Clearly there’s a bigger issue than just a boo boo.

Tonight was the first time since it started being a major problem that I tried to play the guitar. How’d it go? Okay. There was some pain, but the motions my left hand needs to do to play are not those that really kick my ass. I feel like I’m lucky, but will it get worse? Who knows.

I used my full pedal board tonight so I’ve been getting goofy with all of the toys. I used a fuzz pedal tonight, and the uni-vibe pedal and a flanger and lots of wah wah. Goofy, but fun. Just feeling good about my hand not sabotaging me. Like, whew, am I right?

Car Music

I put vocals on five songs today. That is good. What is not good is that I started having gear issues. The signal started cutting out on the last few takes on the last song. Was it the microphone? Was it the microphone cable? Was it the USB interface? Was it the USB cable? Was it the USB 2 to USB C adapter? Was it the computer?

I’m guessing it’s either the USB cable or the adapter, because those are the usual suspects. I was able to get everything down, but it could be a problem in the future. We will have to see how the next car music goes, whenever that may be.

First Page

So the 50/90 website has a page that lists all participants. It gives you a few values that you can use to sort the list. One is the amount of progress you’ve made. In other words, the number of songs you’ve posted. the list shows 50 (I think?) names before you have to move on to a second page. My goal is to get my dumb ass onto that first page and keep it there until I’m done.

I just posted my 16th song. I am now the last name on the first page. Kick ass. Too bad I don’t have any more songs close to finishing. I’ll probably get booted back to page two before I even publish this post.

Anyway, I finished four songs since Saturday night. Here are the ones that sucked the least.

My Ears are Ringing

I just put lead guitars onto four songs and rhythm guitars onto two. My ears are ringing a little, everything sounds like mush, and by the time I finished my fingers weren’t doing what I told them anymore. I think I’m done for today.

I did a little experiment. I had my first taste of a wet/dry rig. Go look up That Pedal Show on youtube and you’ll find a slew of videos talking about wet/dry. The basics are, you play through two amps and put all of your modulation and timing effects into just one amp. That way you can seriously overuse the effect, but the dry signal coming out of the second amp makes it so the sound doesn’t turn to complete mud. The end result is supposed to be an epically huge, spacious, 3D kind of overall effect.

What I did today was super simple. Of my two amps, only one has a built in tremolo effect. The Vox AC15 has one, but the Fender Bassbreaker 15 does not. So, I put some tremolo on (even though I really never use that effect at all) and gave myself a mini-wet dry. The wet (effected) amp being the Vox, and the dry (no effect) amp being the Fender.

It was really simple. Nothing Earth shattering… but it did sound pretty cool. I put it on a rhythm part for one song, but only for two measures or so, and a little tiny bit on a couple of lead parts. I normally pan the two amps completely separate for rhythm parts (one fully to the left and the other fully to the right) but for leads I usually keep them panned together (both straight down the middle, usually). I think the effect is greatly lessened when the two signals aren’t spread out. We’ll see if I lose it in the mix.

I also tried to use my cheap little pitch shift pedal on one solo. It’s a Donner Harmonic Square. I’m pretty sure it’s just a clone of an Electro Harmonix Pitch Fork. The downside is the printing on the pedal is so incredibly small that I can’t read it, even with my glasses on. I have to take a picture and zoom all the way in. It’s crazy, see?

I wanted to mix the dry signal with a pitch a seventh above, because Trevor Rabin, ya know? Unfortunately, the +/-7 setting actually is a +/-5. There doesn’t seem to be a seventh setting at all, even though the labeling on the pedal says there is. I went with an octave down, because for years and years I always had a DoD Octaplus pedal that was just an octave divider (it let the original signal through, but mixed in another pitch, one octave down). Sadly, that trusty old warrior of a pedal is dead now, but I can get the same effect with this cheap little thing (it actually tracks a little better than the Octaplus did… not to speak ill of the dead or anything). I was a little annoyed though… I wanted me some Owner of a Lonely Heart sounding stuff. Oh well.

So, here’s a picture of all my stuff. Hopefully I’ll get another mix done tonight. Not for a while though, my ears really feel like mush. I think I had my headphones up a tad too loud today.

Finished a (bad) Song

I don’t think I like this song very much, but it’s the first song since March that doesn’t use a Klon style overdrive pedal at least a little bit. Well, it does in all the solos, but not in the rhythm. I used a Tube Screamer for the rhythm because the ghost of Stevie Ray Vaughn visited me in a dream and told me to (no he didn’t, I totally just made that up).