Tag: demos

RPM Challenge – Day 3

I put rhythm guitars onto the three existing songs today. The first two got the 12-string, and the third got the ES-335 with lots and lots of wah-wah.

The playlist won’t embed for some reason, and the one I posted the other day won’t update (I’ve since deleted it) so you get a link today. Bad Music Found Here.

The second song doesn’t have any drums. I’m trying to decide if I want it to stay that way. I think I do. I’m not sure though. I tried using the GarageBand Drummer function again but I wasn’t pleased with the results. I think it’s better without the drums. I can’t decide.

Completely changing the subject, there were a bunch of deer in the woods this morning. They were all over to the side of the house. I saw one staring intently toward the street. Something out there spooked her because she bolted off in the opposite direction. All of the others followed. I counted six as they were running by. It was pretty cool.

New Playlist

Here’s that four song playlist I said I’d be putting up on bandcamp. I have no idea why it’s only pulling in the first song. I’m too frustrated and pissed off to figure it out now.

Oh wait, I think I figured it out. Duh. Robbie es Moron.

Three New Songs

I sat in the car, waiting for the kids to get out of karate class, and I mixed three songs.  I am such a dork.

First, Out of Control.  Written in 1997 by me, Mike, and Maria.  Unlike the other songs I’ve taken from the Prime Meridian set lists, this one was actually written for and by Prime Meridian.  We had a number of different singers over our three years together.  One of them used to call this song, Out of Control Like a Tootsie Roll.  It took huge willpower not to sing that line today.

Second, The Monica Song.  More than any other song I’ve posted online, the lyrics to this one make me cringe.  A lot.  This song is me, a not quite 21 year old, musing over a picture from a Sports Illustrated Swim Suit Calendar.  If memory serves it was April ’92.  I lacked the confidence to ever explicitly write a song about a woman, so I wrote this crap as a sort of exercise. It is a little painful to listen to now.  However, I still really dig the way the guitar part grooves.  I believe this is the one song I’ve tinkered with the most of any as far as arrangement is concerned.  When I first wrote it, it was a heavy rocker.  While working at Northeast Broadcasting School a couple of years later I flipped it on its head and made it an acoustic song with just one guitar, one voice, and one saxophone.  This arrangement is meant to be a bit of a hybrid of the two others.  I don’t know if I like it or not.

Thirdly, The Sky.  Speaking of embarrassing, back in ’94 or ’95 Mike and I were playing in a band with a drummer named Dan.  The band never got a name, but we were occasionally very good.  I think that period might have been the best I’ve ever been as a guitar player.  Anyway, we made a 24 track demo at Northeast Broadcasting School.  Three of the four songs we did have been re-recorded by me this month, including this one.  Although at the time it had very different lyrics.  On two of the songs on that demo, Jim the Keyboard Hero contributed freakin’ fantastic keys.  This song was one of them.  Unfortunately, I totally suck on keyboards so I had to seriously dumb down Jim’s awesomeness in order to at least have some organ on the track.  It’s kind of painful to think how much better Jim’s part was.  Still, I always had fun playing this song, even though it’s pretty cheesy.

Two Days, Nine Hours, and 54 Minutes

Two days, nine hours, and 54 minutes to go until the start of the 2013 RPM Challenge.  I have done nothing to prepare.  Here is an off the top of my head to-do list to prepare for my sixth attempt at completing the challenge:

Practice my guitar.  I have no calluses on my finger tips.  Pain is inevitable.

Decide on the platform I want to focus on.  Last year I ended up doing the whole thing on my iPad.  I think I want to go back and forth between the iPad and the Mac this time.  I expect the bulk of the writing and rhythm section tracking to be done on the iPad, but I also think I want to expand a little in an attempt to make the drum tracks sound a little more adventurous.  On the Mac I can move stray notes around so that they sound in time without messing with the quantize settings.  I want drum fills that are faster than just 16th notes.

Put the MacMini in the cellar back together.  I had moved a lot of computer equipment around a few months ago and the MacMini was taken apart.  I plan on using that to record vocals at least.  I still want to run my mic through my Mackie board so that I can EQ my crappy voice.  I’m not able to do that if I plug directly into the iPad.  I went through the board into the iPad last time and it worked, but I would like the added flexibility of working on a full GarageBand for vocals.  In Theory at least.

Clean the workspace in the cellar.  It’s a mess down there.  Really.

Test the lightning cable adapter on my New iPad.  Wouldn’t it suck if the adapter didn’t work and I couldn’t plug external sources into the New iPad?  Yes, it would suck.

If I plug into the JamUp app, can I record into GarageBand?  I’m 99.999% sure I cannot, but it is still worth looking into.

Sign up for FAWM.  Really.  I signed up for RPM last week, but the FAWM website is not going to open until tomorrow.  It’s going through a complete redesign.  While I’m on the topic, the website is fawm.org.  NOT fawm.com.  You don’t want to go to fawm.com.  Trust me.

Find some inspiration.  I was thinking about using the founders of the towns of Methuen, MA and Salem, NH as characters somehow.  I doubt I will though.  I’ll probably just write another 10 songs about my cat.

I’m sure I’ll think of 100 things to add to this list between now and the start of February, but for now this is enough.  And by enough I mean enough to make me start musically panicking.