There were presidents day protests in Boston today. I would have joined them if I could, but I had to work. Today is a holiday that I don’t have off. Sucks. Not that I recognize the sitting president at all. The fascist states of america can have him, just keep his nazi ass out of my Massachusetts, please.
No Kings on presidents Day. Except maybe for the Los Angeles Kings, but that’s something completely different.
Yo, s’up?
I woke up at 5:30am, did my exercise, ate a quick breakfast, went outside to do some car music, put vocals onto five RPM Challenge songs even though “singing” made my throat really sore, came home and took the fastest shower in human history, logged into work while I was still trying to get dressed, and hit the ground running at 9:00am. It’s almost 11:30 now and I’ve been super busy at work the whole time.
Happy Monday, everyone. Hope you’re having fun.
Let’s look back at the day that was RPM Challenge Day 16 (yesterday). I did a lot, and I’m having trouble remember exactly what.
I started with a new song idea and went a little nuts on it. Song Idea Number 15 got the song form, the MIDI bass, the MIDI drums, two tracks of acoustic guitars, a melody with a MIDI piano as a guide track, and lyrics. The whole kit. It would have been better if I could have cranked out the vocals and the leads and had the whole thing done in one day, but that’s too much to ask.
After that I put two tracks of acoustic guitars onto one additional song, and then got busy with the lyrics and the melodies. I added three more on top of song number 15. That put me at six songs in total that were ready for vocals. Spoiler alert for day 17, five of them are done.
I feel like I should have done a lot more yesterday, but all in all it was a decent day’s worth of progress. I still feel terribly behind the pace though. Here’s hoping for a productive week.
Both cats just freaked out. They chased the mouse behind a chair and cornered it. They both tried to grab it but it zigged and zagged and dodged, dived, dipped, ducked, and dodged and got away.
The chase is on! Good luck getting any sleep tonight with all the mouse hunting racket going on.
Go get ’em, mouse hunting kitties!
I am ready to do some car music tomorrow*. I have six songs ready for vocal tracking so I should have plenty to do before work.
Or will I?
I just looked out the window… it is snowing again. If the roads are bad in the morning it will totally screw up my plans.
I hate winter.
*Car music is the act of getting into the car and driving to an empty parking lot somewhere in order to record vocals for my crappy songs in a place where no one will hear me sing. Not because anyone in my house complains about me singing, but because I have this weird phobia kind of thing about singing my shitty songs when people can hear me. It’s a hang up that I’ve learned to live with… I guess.
Okay, before you get all judgmental I am going to say that we live in the woods, it’s winter, it’s freezing cold out, and we got a metric tonne of snow last night. All of that combined leads to one unfortunate truth: Little tiny furry critters are going to find their way into our house. It is inevitable. It doesn’t mean we’re leaving food out or any shit like that, it just means our house is warm. That’s all. Get over your shit and just enjoy the stupid little story, m’kay?
I was sitting on the couch in the living room working on some music on my laptop. My wife was at her desk in her office working. The two cats were laying together on top of one of the cat trees. They were asleep, as far as I could tell.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw movement in the hallway between the living room and my wife’s office. It was a mouse. It was casually strolling around the corner into the living room. It stayed close to the wall and went behind a chair and I lost sight of it. A few seconds later it popped out again and walked calmly right up to the base of the cat tree! Neither cat noticed. They didn’t move a muscle. Way to sleep on the job, felines!
The mouse changed direction and ran into the next room. I followed it but quickly lost sight of it. I made some noise and shifted some furniture around but the little sucker was nowhere to be found. I went back to the couch and got back to work.
About half an hour later or so I saw it in the hallway again. This time it did not come into the living room with me. Instead it changed direction and ran into Jen’s office. I watched as it went right under her desk, literally inches away from her feet! We can’t have that now can we? I went into the room after it and pulled Jen away from her desk. We had the little home invading bastard cornered against the wall but with the desk in the way neither one of us could really reach it.
Eventually it made a dash for the door and left the two slow moving humans in the dust. Straight out the door, across the hallway, through the living room door and straight into Robin the Cat! It was like something out of a Tom and Jerry cartoon. The mouse skidded to a stop, squeaked, “Holy shit!” clearly at the same instant that Robin yelled, “Holy Shit!” back at it, then it turned around and ran back into the office.
We had it cornered again, this time on the other side of the room. We also had two cats taking a keen interest, but again the little shit managed to make a break for the door and leave us all behind. The four of us gave chase, but it lost us all again and eventually we gave up looking for it. Robin is still stalking around the house determined to catch the furry little asshole. Jen and I are both back to what we were doing before. Lily is doing what she does best… sleeping.
If the cats don’t catch it tonight I am probably going to have to put traps out tomorrow. Sorry, mouse.
I put guitars onto a couple of RPM Challenge songs this morning, but I am trying to focus on writing lyrics and melodies now. I’m having a tough time. I’ll stick with it though, I want to record some vocals tomorrow and I need a bunch of songs prepped before then.
After all of the shoveling today I am beat, but at least up until now (4:30pm) my stomach has been behaving pretty well… so that’s good.
Now back to the music.
Wow… that sucked.
We got a lot of snow last night. Six inches at least, but it’s really wet and heavy and packed down so it might have been more than that. I went outside at 11:00am after the snow had turned to freezing rain. Lovely.
I cleaned off and dug out the cars. Then I took out the huge snow bank at the end of the driveway which was awful. Then I dug out the fire hydrant which also includes digging through the snow bank which still was awful. Then I dug out the path to the back door. I was about six feet away from being done when the plows came back to widen the road. I was down to the last two or three shovels full when the plows came back again. Then I went back to the end of the driveway and shoveled the new (albeit much smaller) snow bank. Then I went back to the fire hydrant and dug out the new (albeit much smaller) snow bank there too.
I am toast. Screw you, winter. Screw you, snow. Screw you, mother nature. Blah!
Day 15 (yesterday) was decent, considering I spent half the day driving and the other half too tired to think in complete sentences.
I put rhythm guitars on three songs. That puts me up to 11 with a complete rhythm section of guitar/bass/drums. That’s nice. I also finished out the song form for the two little bass riffs I started on day 14. Finally I added a 14th song idea.
Today (Day 16) we are more or less snowed in. Here’s hoping for some more acoustic guitar tracks, maybe another song idea or two, and (most important by far) some lyrics and melodies. I want to do some singing before work tomorrow and I only have a couple of songs ready. I need a shit load more before the day is over.
Inside the Red Head's Head 