RPM Day 19

Is it really February 19th? How the hell did that happen? It was Christmas just a couple of days ago, wasn’t it? I guess the older you get the faster the calendar moves, and those calendar pages seem to be flipping pretty quickly for me these days.

Anyway…

I mentioned yesterday that I wrapped up the last section of the last (14th) song and sketched out an arrangement. I also recorded the last of the rhythm guitar parts. I completed the first vocal yesterday morning while my wife was briefly out of the house and threw on some lead guitars and declared it my first sort of (I guess) finished song. I think I want to do the vocal again, and the leads are kinda lazy. Who knows.

This morning I managed to not oversleep, and not procrastinate through my morning routine. I ended up being ready to go to work 40 minutes early and that was enough time to write and record another vocal part. If I get a chance tonight I’ll add some leads and that will be two songs finished. My wife might have to work late tonight. If that happens (I really hope it doesn’t) I might try to sneak another vocal. I find that the only way I can ever come up with lyrics is to have the mic on in front of me and the clock ticking. That might explain why my lyrics suck so badly, but I don’t care. I consider anything I write to be temporary until some mythical future day comes when I am in a band with an actual real live lyricist who will replace the crappy place holders I write today.

I’ve got 12 more lyrics to write and vocals to record and I’ve only got nine days to do it. >gulp<

Still thinking positive (or trying to at least).

Studio Pic

The rhythm guitars are done. All 14 songs have been arranged, and the four part suite topped 10 minutes! Prog lives! The great vocals push now begins in earnest. Duck and cover!

That’s One

One song down, 13 to go.

It’s kinda lazy, kinda not so good, kinda done… I think. Parts of it might get re-recorded this week.

RPM Day 18

Happy Presidents Day, USA. There are 10 days left in the project. Time to buckle down.

Yesterday I took five of the remaining six projects and arranged them into song forms. This morning I had the house to myself for a few minutes and managed to add vocals to one of yesterday’s songs. It’s up on soundcloud.com, but I’m not going to post it again yet.

My goal for today is to add the leads to the song with the vocals and write one more section for the suite thingie I’ve been procrastinating on. If I can write some more lyrics I will do that too, but I usually draw a blank until the last possible moment.

Think Positive!

Breakfast

The breakfast joint is supplementing their furnace with a huge fire in their giguntic fire place.

Photogenic Kitty

Patches is one photogenic kitty, right?

Dinner Date

We went on a dinner date tonight. It wasn’t planned. It just happened. I love my wife so much.

13 Songs

The RPM/FAWN project has just advanced from nine songs in progress plus five sets of unarranged ideas, to 13 songs in progress with only one unarranged idea remaining.

RPM Day 17

My useless streak is over. My stupid streak is in full swing.

I believe that I have all the rhythm guitar parts recorded. I’ve been going pretty minimal this year. Only one song has more than one rhythm part, and I’ve used my Les Paul for everything. No acoustics or 335 at all. I think I’m going to stick to the one guitar plan throughout, but who knows.

I still need to write one more section of the mini-suite thing (which still could be dropped in favor of using the A and C sections as a stand alone song) and to arrange the last five songs. Those are tonight’s goals. After that its vocals time, which is where my RPM projects normally die. We shall see.

On the stupidity front, I did the recording last night in the dining room. I cleaned off the table and gave it a quick wash. Then I folded up my iPad’s smart case to use as a stand while I did my thing. When I was finished I closed the cover and put it away. Later that night I went to check my email and there was a spot of some kind of incredibly sticky Indian food sauce that I missed when I washed the table. It got onto the inside of the cover, and when the cover was closed it got on the screen. Crap! I have to get something to clean the screen with, and I’m just going to replace the stupid case. I’m pissed at myself.

Oh we’ll.

Lazy Deer

We were getting ready to go to the mall so my wife could go gadget shopping. I happened to look out the window and saw a deer in the woods! It’s been so long since I’ve been able to snap a picture! This time was a first for me though. The deer I saw was at the top of a hill near the edge of the woods behind our house and he was laying down. Just sitting there, being all lazy. I called Jen and grabbed my camera. I opened the window in the bedroom to get a good shot and after staring for a few minutes we found another deer, then another! The third was in front of a tree and looking right at us. We eventually saw more. We weren’t sure if we saw five or six.

I do so very much love when the deer come to visit us.