Tag: 50/90

2021 50/90 Day 1/90

Game on!

Today was a big opening day for this year’s 50/90 idiocy. At midnight I kicked off the first song idea. Hooray! I don’t know if I’ve ever stayed up until midnight for one of these before but now I have.

As bed time on day one approaches a quick look at the Trello board shows me five songs underway. All have drums and bass and the full song form. Two have rhythm guitars. Crazy! That’s a lot to get done on the first day. It totally helps when day one is a Sunday and you are trapped at your parents’ house and can’t leave and can’t do pretty much anything else.

Day two tomorrow will hopefully give us the rhythm guitar parts for the other three songs and maybe a new song idea or two. And maybe if time allows… a lyric or two? That’s just crazy talk.

50 songs in 90 days.

Game on!

All Signed Up

I signed up for this year’s 50/90 today. We’ll see how long it takes before I burn out on it. Initial plans are to swap out the Vox amp for one of the Fenders and to keep using the same 3-4 pedals I’ve been using over the last few months. I will start the first day (Sunday the 4th) at my parents’ house. I won’t have much to do outside of Nana Sitting duties so maybe I can get a good jump on things. I have a Trello board setup, but we only get five freebies now so I will probably delete it when I’m done. Whatever. I used to have a Tumblr account that I used for daily check ins on recording projects. I might do that again too. Anything to manufacture some phony BS motivation.

I am up to date on Loki now. Episode four was totally worth the wait. I will be up to date on The Bad Batch in about six minutes when the episode I am watching right now ends. Disney+, I am keeping up with your mad pace.

What else is going on? Right now? Not much. It’s Friday and this weekend is a three day weekend. Glorious. Quitting time is in about nine hours. I can make it that far. Just hold on, fat boy. You can make it that far.

July is Coming

After working on a couple of seriously atrocious song ideas tonight it’s got me wondering about the near future. The 4th of July is right around the corner, and for a musical net nerd like me, the 4th of July means 50/90.

Should I do 50/90? I’ll definitely do Record Every Month, so there’s three songs. Should I try to bang out the other 47 as well?

I’m not sure. I’ll be pulling shifts at my parents house again probably starting next week, so there’s a lot of time where I won’t be recording. I’ve used that time to put initial ideas down, and to mix, but I can’t do guitars or voices.

I guess we will have to just wait and see where my head is a couple of weeks from now.

Done

Allow me to officially declare the 2020 50/90 challenge complete. I finish with 51 songs written and recorded in 88 (I think?) days. Note that the challenge doesn’t include recording songs, it just asks you to write them. Whatever.

I know the playlist I’m including here isn’t going to work but what the hell. You can get the official, legal (hehe) copy here.

I was also trying to make sure I kept my personal little album in a month during quarantine challenge alive for the three months 50/90 covered and I did. 11 songs were written and recorded entirely in July, 12 entirely in August, and 14 entirely in September. The remaining 14 were started in one month and finished in another,

So what next? I’ve actually already started working on the first song for Quarantine Tunes Vol. 2. I’ll try to write more in October too, but I’m not really pushing for 10 new songs the way I did every month since February. I don’t want to stop playing and recording, but I think my song writing brain might need some time off. National Solo Album Month is coming in November, of course.

When I left off last night I had three songs left to work on. They all needed lead guitar parts. Today I decided to nerd it up like a mad man. I used all three of my Gibson guitars, one on each of the three songs. The Les Paul and the ES-335 both have fresh strings but the SG hasn’t been changed since… January? I haven’t played it since at least May… I think. Maybe it was June, but I’m pretty sure it was May. The strings were dead, but I pulled it off.

Here’s to my second ever complete 50/90 challenge. I need a nap.

What Was That?

I think that’s the first time it’s ever happened. At least since 2012. WordPress.com was just down! I couldn’t post and I couldn’t access my page. It was terrible! I started sweating and shaking and seeing little blue men with no feet who were pointing and laughing at me and Tracey Morgan yelled out, “Blue Man, where your feet at!” It was awful!

Anyway, I wanted to make a 50/90 update. I only have three songs left. I did so much work today I actually lost track of it all. Tomorrow I will add lead guitars to the final three songs and then I’ll mix ’em down and then I’ll be done and need to figure out what I want to do in October.

This song is the clear winner for the whole project, even if the guitar is a smidge out of tune:

43 Down

43 songs finished. Seven to go. Only three days left. Can he do it? Well, the seven songs I still need to finish are all close to done already so… yeah, there’s a good chance.

LaLaLaSinging

I told my wife as I was walking out the door for car music that I’d be back after five songs or a full bladder, whichever came first. Funny enough, they both hit at exactly the same time. As I was finishing the fifth song I reached the point where the bladder was at emergency status and raced home. Pretty crazy, huh?

The current status of the 50 songs in 90 days challenge is, I’m done with vocals! I have nine songs that need lead guitar and a mix and that’s it!

Still a good chunk of work to go, but the singing hurdle has been jumped! And there was much rejoicing!

A Streak is in Jeopardy

An epic streak might come to an end today. For 16 days now I have been able to exercise for at least 30 minutes. I don’t know if I’ve ever pulled anything off in that scope. All I’m doing is walking in place at a quick pace. I work up a sweat, my heart rate rises, my legs burn. It’s not much at all, but for someone as painfully out of shape as I am, it’s something and something is better than nothing.

It was tough yesterday. My legs were killing me. I had to do it in five minute chunks because I couldn’t keep going any longer than that. Wuss. I haven’t done anything today, but already my legs feel like lead. I’m a little nervous I won’t be able to keep the streak alive.

Come on, fat boy. Git’er done.

Also, I looked at all of my past blog posts from September 24ths (yesterday) in history. Last year on 9/24 I finally saw Steve Hackett in concert. Awesome. On 9/24/14 I finished 50/90. Wait… what? The last time I finished 50/90 I did it with six days to spare? Why didn’t I pull that off this year? I’m behind schedule! Yikes!

Anyway. Hopefully I can get my 30 minutes of walking in. Ouch.

Quick 50/90 Update

Yesterday I put lead guitars onto two songs, but I didn’t have a chance to mix them. I also wrote lyrics for the last song that needed lyrics. That brought me up to 50 repetitive, pointless, songs worth of meaningless lyrics. Yay!

I also did something wasteful. I added another song. I have the rhythm section and the lyrics done so it’s ready for some car vocals. Where do we stand now? 40 songs complete, 11 more to go. Two of them are done and just need to be mixed down. Four more need lead guitars, and five more need vocals and lead guitars. I was planning to do some car music today but I failed to get out of bed. I’ve been falling asleep later and later and it’s harder to get up early enough to get anything done before work. I’ll try again tomorrow.

Today is September 24. There are six days left this month. I can do this. It’s not going to sound good, but I can do this.