Tag: alonetone

RPM Challenge – Day 21

I sort of lost count. I did either two or three lead guitar parts this morning. I think it was two. This evening I mixed one of those songs. The first four bars have been in my head for ages, but I’ve never found them a home until now. The lyrics were sort of inspired by the @floridaman twitter account. I went there looking for ridiculous stories and instead found two reports of utterly senseless violence.

http://alonetone.com/robertjames1971/tracks/overreaction.mp3%20

I hope to get some more guitar soloing in before we go to IKEA in the morning. We can discuss that later.

RPM Challenge – Day 19

Not much today. I mixed one song last night and recorded one vocal this morning. I am off work the next two days, but will not have the house to myself tomorrow. I will try to do some more whispered guide vocals if I can write some damn lyrics. I think I will be using the random wikipedia article trick quite a bit this year.

Here is the song I mixed last night. I am not happy with the mix at all. The vocals are too low. Of course with my singing, too low is infinitely better than too loud. Am I right, or am I right?

http://alonetone.com/robertjames1971/tracks/confidence.mp3%20

RPM Challenge – Day 18

I mixed two songs last night. I don’t like either of them, or anything else I’ve worked on this month. It’s good, because I don’t think I am going to have enough time in the house alone to finish all of the vocals.

This is the first song I worked on, and the first song I finished:
http://alonetone.com/robertjames1971/tracks/small-3.mp3%20

This is the 12th song I worked on, and the second song I finished. As you can guess, I am jumping around all over the place right now.
http://alonetone.com/robertjames1971/tracks/not-in-this-lifetime.mp3%20

I have one more song that is ready to mix. I was just too tired to finish it off last night. Yesterday I wrote lyrics and a really rough melody for three more songs. This morning I recorded two of them. My vocal performance was terrible at best, but it’s done and I don’t think I am going to have time to fix anything that irks me when I start listening back to it. I didn’t take the time to put rough mixes up onto Soundcloud.

So that’s five vocals recorded, and a sixth that is written and ready to record. I need to get four more done to qualify for RPM, and eight more to qualify for FAWM. FAWM is starting to look like a lost cause. I took Thursday and Friday off from work, but I don’t think I am going to have time on those days to handle vocals. I’m starting to honestly consider driving to an empty parking lot somewhere and recording in the car. It’s looking more and more like that’s the only way I will be able to finish everything. Cold weather be damned, you know?

New (Old) Song

I finished another song today. This one was written in 1991. I can’t say for sure, but it might have been the first song I ever wrote from top to bottom all by my lonesome. At least I can’t remember anything older. There were actually two others that were written at about the same time that might have been my first solo effort. It doesn’t matter.

I think it was 1994 or 1995 that Mike, Dan, and I went into Northeast Broadcasting School’s 24 track studio after hours and recorded four songs. This was one of them. The other three have all been redone in GarageBand too. At first I wanted to record this one, and then make a playlist with all four. Then I thought I’d record the other three too. Then I thought I’d add a few new songs onto the end, just for fun. Then I thought I’d keep the three finished recordings and still add the new songs.

As of this moment, I’m going back to the original plan. Just the four old songs, using the already finished recordings. Yippee.

There is one cool thing about this demo, from my goofy point of view at least. Ever since I started playing the home recording game back in 2007, every song I’ve done (with one exception) has either used a headphone amp, or some kind of software amplifier simulator for all of the electric guitars. Not this one. This one is my actual, real life, physically there Marshall amp. Somehow that little fact made this one seem 100 times more fun.

Here it is:
http://alonetone.com/robertjames1971/tracks/drift-away.mp3%20

One Song Finished

Here’s the first of the seven songs on the agenda for this month.

http://alonetone.com/robertjames1971/tracks/like-a-brat.mp3%20

I hate the new garageband with a passion that is never ending and all powerful.

So the share to iTunes no longer exports as mp3. The compressed format is m4a. Thanks a pant load. Are you kidding me? I had to export this to an uncompressed file and then convert it to mp3 in iTunes.

Music Projects

I want to do NaSoAlMo next month, but I’ve got the bug to do some recording right now. I can’t though, I can’t use up any ideas too early, can I?

Urgh.

Anyway, this song got some attention on alonetone this week. I wonder if I should re-record it.

NaSoAlMo

Every January I get psyched up for the RPM Challenge in February, and for the last two years I’ve actually finished. Every October I get psyched up for National Solo Album Month in November and I lose interest after a day or two.

Why? It’s essentially the same project. Why can’t I keep my focus through both? I don’t know.

This piece of crap is the only thing I’ve ever started during a NaSoAlMo that has ever been finished. Of course it wasn’t finished on time.

/%20

I have this vague idea of doing something with all of the rhythm guitar parts being played on my 12-string, but the action is so high on that guitar that playing is painful. I don’t think I would get very far.

I want to do it. Maybe I will. I don’t know. Maybe. We’ll see.

Alonetone Playlists are Fun

Did I mention that I found a way to get around wordpress.com’s no flash policy in regards to posting playlists from alonetone.com? Did I mention how happy I am about that?

Here’s some more Break Even for your listening pleasure:

Early Morning Visit

Look who came out for a visit this morning.

HipstaPrint

The rest of this post is yet another music home demo recording nerd post.

I have three songs in the works right now.  Thanks to the acoustic guitar that suddenly needs a new nut (uh oh) and the leaky, mostly out of tune sax, one of them is ready to be mixed.  A second is missing just a lead guitar.  The third still needs all guitars and vocals.  That one might not get finished until next week.

So I seem to be on a pretty quick pace right now.  I have posted four songs since March 1st, which followed the 14 from February.  My free soundcould account is going to run out of room again.  That means this year’s RPM will get deleted and all of those previous posts that include embeded soundcloud files will lose their audio.  Oh well.  I think I might make a new page for playlists of recent music.  I will use bandcamp to host the playlists, and keep soundcloud for works in progress kinda things.

I’ve also decided that the four songs I have finished this month, and two of the three I’m playing around with now do not belong with the left over songs project.  I started a new playlist for the re-recorded songs.  That is meaningless to everyone on Earth except me, but what are ya gonna do, right?

I will take my lunch break at 1:00.  My MacBook and my Les Paul are ready and waiting to finish tracking another song.  I might be posting two new ones tonight.  We’ll see.