No Music This Morning

I didn’t play my guitar this morning. I had to punch in to work early to get some paperwork wrapped up before the start of the business day so I spent my time on that instead of music. A fair trade, I guess.

The plan for tomorrow is car vocals. Get up early, do my exercise, have breakfast, hop into the car and drive to an empty parking lot and sing like a deaf canary. Epic. I have six songs in the current volume of The Great 2015 Re-Recording Project that are ready for vocals. Maybe I can pick off two of them. If things go really well, maybe three. I spend more time on the re-recording stuff than on the usual demo projects. I want them to be better than usual, even though I am a crappy singer and they end up sounding equally as garbagey. 

Last night before bed I spent some time adding guide tracks to some of the songs. Just a MIDI piano playing (roughly) the vocal melody and harmony parts so that I can have a little help when I record the actual vocals. All of these songs have been recorded once before, but I tuned the guitar down a half step this time around so they are all in a different key and that’s just enough to screw up my memory of how to do things. My ear is good enough that it can usually rise above such mini-challenges, but why not give it a little help, right?

I already have two songs that are ready to mix. One of them has been ready to mix for about 18 months now and I just haven’t had the energy to get it done. I’d like to pick off one of them tonight, but as the haiku in the previous post hinted, I am freakin’ exhausted already today (it’s 2:46pm and I am ready for bed). I am not going to have the energy for anything tonight beyond making dinner, going grocery shopping, and then coming home and impersonating a vegetable in front of the TV.

I call that making plans.

Car vocals tomorrow! You heard it here first! (Now don’t let the public down, Robert!)

(Non) Daily Haiku for You #133

Today’s daily haiku for you is brought to you by exhaustion. It was only 9:45am and I was already complaining about what a long day it had been. Oh, crud.

Stayed up late last night.
Woke up early this morning.
Time management fail.

Cats Need to Listen to Me

Bloganuary writing prompt
If you could make your pet understand one thing, what would it be?
View all responses

There are a few potential responses to this one, but if I had to narrow down to just one thing I want my cats to understand it would be this:

Just because you can see the bottom of the food bowl, it doesn’t mean that you are about to starve to death. There’s enough food in there to keep you alive for a while, and I will top off the bowl soon enough. Calm down.

Now having said that, Robin Sparkles has an interesting response to the food bowl getting low. She gets extra super friendly. Where she normally barely acknowledges my existence, when the bowl is even slightly less than full she comes to me practically begging for attention. She rubs up against my feet when I am walking by, she head butts me when I am sitting down, she meows at me, the whole works. All the things that cats do to remind you that they are there and to trick you into thinking that they love you. All of it. It’s not enough to make me purposefully let their food get low… but it’s a close call sometimes.

A couple of honorable mentions include the following:

Yes, cats. I am aware of the state of your litter box. I am always aware of the state of your litter box. Relax.

No, cats. You are not allowed in the cellar. Not since Lilly tried to claw her way through the central air duct or when she tried to climb over the top of the ceiling to get behind the wall board where she would get stuck and I would never, ever be able to find her or rescue her. Get out of the damn cellar, both of you.

This last one is going to come up tomorrow, and then again on Thursday. Yes, cats. We have to put you into the cat carrier in order to take you to the vet. It is not punishment or torture and I am not some kind of nazi death camp guard. Stop making me feel like one. It will all be over soon enough. Just be patient and accept my apology. Good kitty.

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One Year

Today is Robin Sparkles the Cat’s first adoptiversary. One year ago today we met her for the first time at the MSPCA in Methuen, Massachusetts and we took her home with us. Her daughter, Lily Pad the Cat, was also adopted that day but she needed some medical work before we could take her home. We’re marking her adoptiversary as the day she came home for the first time. That is early next week. 

Robin’s name was Disco when she was at the shelter. Lily’s name was Boogie.

January 21, 2024
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January 21, 2023

Officially On a Streak

When I finished playing guitar yesterday morning I had run out of tracks that needed to be recorded. Last night I started another re-recording song so that I could have something to work on today. Now here we are again with nothing ready to work on because for the third day in a row I played guitar!

I now have six quarantine tunes ready for vocals. That’s what I call a backlog. It’s going to take me a while to get through all of that. I have one more song on my list for this round of re-recordings. I had two but I decided to drop one of them. If I can prep that one with bass and drum MIDI tracks today then I’ll have something to do tomorrow morning. Then we start doing car music on Tuesday? We’ll see how it shakes out.

Obligatory guitar pics, via Hipstamatic shake-to-shuffle….

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Robert

Bloganuary writing prompt
Write about your first name: its meaning, significance, etymology, etc.
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I’m American and I speak English. We generally don’t name our children based on the literal meaning of the word. It is more often based on how the name sounds when combined with the family name, and family history. My name is Robert because my father’s name is Robert and my parents wanted to name me after him. That’s it. My brother was named after our grandfather. My sister isn’t named after anyone directly, at least not that I know of, she got her name because my parents liked it. That’s it.

Having said all of that, I figured in the spirit of the daily prompt game I would Google the origin of the word Robert. What does it actually mean?

Robert is an old German name that means “bright fame.” It’s taken from the old German name Hrodebert. The name is made up of two elements: “Hrod” which means fame and “Beraht” which means bright. The name was introduced to the people of England by the Normans in the middle ages.

https://www.verywellfamily.com/robert-name-meaning-origin-popularity-5181543#:~:text=People%20Named%20Robert-,What%20Does%20Robert%20Mean%3F,Normans%20in%20the%20middle%20ages.

Bright Fame, eh? Okay. I guess. There’s no fame here, and there’s certainly no bright fame. It’s interesting to know, I guess. It may be what my name means, but it certainly doesn’t relate to me at all. Maybe if I had known the meaning when I was little I would have changed my life’s path a little. Of course I am not serious at all. I wouldn’t have changed a thing. I didn’t know it when I was young, but Jennifer (which The Google tells me means “fair one” which I will absolutely buy) was in my future and I wouldn’t change anything out of risk of not making that myspace.com appointment back in 2006, you know?