Category: Uncategorized

Two More

I’m up to eight songs completed now.  I just finished both of the songs that I had to go back and rerecord the vocals for.  Both songs have really been frustrating to me.  I thought I had the vocals done a week ago, but after a later listen I just couldn’t live with them… and give how bad most of the crap I leave in can be, that is really saying something.

This one needed the most work of the two.  It’s kind of a snooze.  I didn’t do a 12-bar blues this year, so this sort of takes the place of a slow blues tune.  I guess.

This next song was titled “So Frustrating” before it became a frustrating mess.  Sort of prophetic of me, eh?  Almost like I knew what was come.  I didn’t, but it seems that way now.  This is one of a couple of attempts this year to make 6/8 time rock.  I like this one, except for all the clipping.  Urgh.

I’m packing up for now.  It’s 5:22, I’ve been at this since about 7:00 or so.  My head is pounding, possibly from the headphones, and just as possibly from the fact that I have not had any caffeine today, and my fingers won’t play the guitar the way I want them to anymore.  I might sneak in another one later tonight, and I will definitely try to get one or two done tomorrow before work.  Only three days left.

I’m cautiously optimistic.

RPM Day 25

My head is pounding.  I have a five alarm headache to say the least.  Why?  From all the yelling, that’s why.  I wrote and recorded vocal parts for seven songs today, and completed recording the vocals for two others.  That’s it, kids, all of the RPM/FAWM vocalizin’ is done with.  Nothing but lead guitars left to record.

I even finished the big 10 minute piece of prog rock crap today.  That makes six songs complete.  Eight more to go to finish FAWM, four more to go to finish RPM.

RPM Day 24

Holy crap!  It’s the 24th already??

I finished two more songs today.  Aren’t you pleased?  I bet you all can’t wait for March 1st, right?

This song was declared finished, then yesterday was declared unfinished, and then after a remix today is again declared finished.  I was going to redo the vocals, but I decided I probably couldn’t do any better on the next attempt so I just fixed some things that I didn’t like about the previous mix.

This next one is actually one that is finished for the first and last time.  Please don’t be scared off by the very long fade in.  Sometimes the prog nerd in me takes over when I least expect it.  There is a song there somewhere, I promise.  Also, I told myself that I was going to keep this as a guitar/bass/drums/vocal project with the occasional keyboard part thrown in as an exception.  Well, this one sort of centers on an electric piano (although it sort of gets pushed around by the bass on the right side and the rhythm guitar on the left) and it has a sax solo.  Yup, I was listening to this on the way to the grocery store this morning and I sort of sighed reluctantly when I realized that I had to put some sax on this one.  My days of being a competent sax player are long, long past me.  The pitch is a little suspect, but what are you going to do?

I might try to sneak in more lead guitar tonight.  I have two more songs that are ready for it.  We’ll see what the day brings.  My fingers aren’t feeling all that great right now and I need a break.

RPM Day 23

It’s almost 8:00pm here and I haven’t done my stupid daily update that is boring all of you to tears.  Never fear.  In the words of the Yardbirds, Here’s ‘Tis.

Earlier this week I had announced that this particular song:

was complete and done and finished.  Today I changed my mind.  I remixed it.  It’s not much different, just a little more care was taken with it.  Oh, and I put some seriously retarded goofiness into it as well.  Gotta love idiots who put flangers onto drums, right?  Am I right?

This little song:

Was not finished, but now it is.  I used a fuzz box.  How have I made it this far into life without owning a real fuzz box?  Fuzz boxes and Phasers are the big overused stomp box gimmicks for this year’s project.

This particular little ditty:

Was also not finished, but now it is.  This holds the distinction of being the only song in the batch of 14 that did not have any work done on an iOS device.  This was all done on the full GarageBand on my MacBook Pro.  I think you can hear the difference.  I am a little sad that I didn’t do the whole thing on a computer now.  The iPad and the iPhone are just so damn convenient   I mean it would have been tough to have written a song in the car in a parking lot waiting for a take out order to be ready if I had to do it all on an actual computer, right?  Am I right?

So that’s three songs that are finished, finished, finished.  There is one other that used to be finished but I have decided it will get a new vocal take on Monday.  There are two other songs that have vocals that I want to re-record, at least in part, that still need lead guitar parts.  Then there are seven (7) more that don’t have any vocals yet.  RPM requires 10 songs.  FAWM requires 14.  I have 14 in progress, I could call FAWM done now but I won’t.  Finishing the vocals for a total of 10 songs on Monday is definitely doable.  Getting up to a total of 14?  That’s a little more difficult.

We shall see.

Fender Amp

This past Christmas I got a guitar input for iOS devices called an iRig. It is made for an amplifier simulation app called AmpliTude. The app is free but it’s super basic and there are in app purchases available everywhere.

I had heard of the app and new it was pretty good. What I didn’t know was that there are a bunch of different versions. You can simulate Hendrix’s set up, or Slash, although why you’d want to sound like him I’ll never guess.

One of the versions is supposed to simulate a Fender amp. I have a Fender amp but it is a heartbeat away from crumbling to little bits.

I used it back in the 90’s, including the three years Mike and Maria and I were called Prime Meridian. I installed the app and added on an overdrive pedal because I am a sucker and… Boom. I’ve got my old Prime Meridian tone back.

Maybe I’ll sneak a P.M. song into this year’s RPM as a bonus track. Do I have time?

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Posterous (ie Twitter) can Kiss My Fat Ass

The whole reason I started using wordpress.com was because I could host images on posterous and have them auto post to wordpress.  Of course it took just a few weeks before those pics I sent to posterous started showing up in my wordpress storage counts.  Then after a couple more weeks the posterous auto posting stopped working.  Yeah, that was nice, huh?  Now this week we find out that posterous’ parent company, twitter, is closing up the shop and posterous is going away.

I am afraid to see how much of my free wordpress storage space I have used.  I have to be more diligent about using Flickr to host images.