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RPM Challenge – Day 5

I’m up to seven songs in the works. I thought I made decent progress yesterday, but I didn’t do as well as I thought.

I’ve been working soley on the iPad. Just using the built in guitar, bass, and drum sounds to work out short phrases. I piece together 4-5 of these little segments and group them into one song file. Yesterday I started moving on a little. I recorded rhythm guitar parts for two of the song/segment collections. I then ported the iOS files into OSX and arranged the segments into song forms.

That’s progress, right? Well it was until I realized that one of the guitar parts had a really bad edit and needs to be redone. I was also going to record bass guitar onto the iOS files, but I didn’t. I just didn’t want to wait anymore. There was also the little problem I had when I tried recording rhythm guitars for a third song, and I couldn’t play the part. Urgh. It’s a simple little thing, but my fat friggin fingers just didn’t want to do it. I will probably split it up into two parts rather than just double the one part. It’s a cheat, but it’s also RPM… so I guess it’s okay.

The kids have a snow day today so I am going to work from home. Usually working from home means progress gets made, but I don’t see much happening today.

I made a Work in Progress playlist on Soundcloud. I am deleting and replacing files from it all the time, so it will show my latest progress. Right now, there isn’t much to listen to, but it’s there if you want to torture yourself.

Guitar

I recorded rhythm guitars for two songs today.  I wussed out and didn’t use my amp.  I used Jimi’s instead. 

 
I’m using a trello board to track the progress of the RPM project.  I added screen shots of the amp settings, just in case I need to go back and tweak things later.

Apple Music Bug

Has anyone else seen this bug in Apple Music?

I am an album guy.  I generally listen to music in album format.  I don’t just pick a few songs to listen to, I pick full albums and listen to the whole thing.  That’s how I learned to love music, and that’s how I listen to it today.

The last three times I’ve picked an album to listen to via Apple Music it has screwed up the track listing.  It gets the correct songs, but the wrong recordings.  When Trevor Rabin announced he and Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman might be touring soon I brought up Yes’ 90125 album.  The first song, Owner of a Lonely Heart, was the wrong version.  It was a live version from one of the not-so-great late 90’s live albums.  When I heard Paul Kantner had died I pulled up Jefferson Airplane’s Volunteers album.  The song The Farm, which is a throw away anyway, was not the album version.  It was a live version from a recent live record that had a near bootleg quality to it.  It wasn’t good.  Tonight on the ride home I used Siri to bring up Batten the Hatches by Jenny Owen Youngs.  The version of Fuck was I was actually a b-side instead of the album version.

How about we fix this little issue, oh Apple.  Soon.  Because it’s seriously pissing me off.  Stop screwing with my favorite albums, damn it!  I’m going to have to go back to effin’ spoitfy, and I don’t want to go back to effin’ spotify.

RPM Challenge – Day 2

I haven’t recorded any real instruments yet, but I’ve got a nice chunk of work done so far using my iPad and iPhone. Yesterday I wrote a bass riff in the shower, a little guitar/bass groove while sitting in the car before work, and a little guitar riff while on my lunch break. When I got home I wrote 3-4 phrases for another song, with all the parts but no actual arrangements yet. I then fleshed out the car-before-work idea with 3-4 more sections and all the pieces, but again no actual arrangement of those sections.

Today, to start day two, I did another set of phrases with all instruments but no arrangement. Count them up and you’ve got five songs in progress before 6:45am on day two. Not a bad start.

Now we just have to hope the ideas don’t suck. They probably do.

Here is the annual works-in-progress playlist, which currently holds nothing but cheesy GarageBand for iPad sounds.