Tag: Fawm

Six!

I liked this one from the very start. It was the second song I started working on this February, and it has stuck with me more than any of the others. It’s kinda… swampy… nice little mid tempo groove. The bass isn’t cutting through the mix enough, and there are a few moments when the vocal intonation is a little… fruity, but otherwise it’s not too bad to me. The lyrics are a kiss off to a flat Earther, and the guitars are all Gibson ES 335 pro.

Five!

Simple song. Nothing special. I had an idea at one point earlier in the month of making a double album with 10 songs focusing on electric rhythm guitars, and 10 focusing on acoustic guitar. This was written late in the month, song #17. The lyrics were improvised, obviously. It sort of fits into both loose themes for this year. The Earth isn’t flat, and Trump is a clown. The title might still be changed to “It Ain’t Just a River in Egypt.” This is one of the songs with a vocal recorded during this week’s killer of a cold. It shows.

Three!

A little Trump is a Dink song. I am not happy with this one at all. I couldn’t play the rhythm guitar part in the chorus the way I wanted to. I split it into two pieces, so everything I wanted is there. I just feel like a failure.

It Lives!

The 12-string guitar… it lives!

Untitled

Three of the 14 songs had space reserved for acoustic guitar. One of those three was designed to have all of it’s rhythm guitar parts be acoustic (and it’s in drop D too!). Those parts are all finished now.

After I recorded the last piece I sort of felt like I was in the groove, ya know? So I kicked off two new songs. One is just a 12-bar blues but it’s in 7/8 time. Take that, establishment! The other is the second song inspired by something I read on the FAWM forum. Someone threw out a challenge to write a song using the “ice cream changes”. That refers to a chord progression that was used and reused extensively in the 1950s and early 60s. Basically, rock and roll pre-Beatles. It is, for the theory nerds in the audience, I – vi – IV – V. I actually used that progression once already, on song #14, but I transposed it to a minor key, making it i – VI – iv – v. (For the non-theory folks, a capital roman numeral refers to a major chord, and a lower case refers to a minor chord.) As I referenced with The Who song I posted yesterday, I am embracing the fact that all of my songs sound the same, and just not worrying about it this year. Given that, I used the ice cream changes again, only this time I kept it in a major key.

So if you do the math, I’m up to 16 songs now. No lyrics yet, and some of them don’t even have a song form yet. Still… 16 songs! WOOHOO

Go RPM Challenge!

The Weather Might Help Me

It’s cold out there.  This morning when the kids and I left the house it was four degrees out.  Right now at home in Methuen it is 20 degrees.  Cold, but not brutally end of the world cold.  This weekend there is a chance we could break the record for the lowest temperatures ever recorded on the 13th or 14th of February.  I think the record for tomorrow is -3.

Strangely, this cold snap might work to my advantage.  I’m so ridiculously behind on my RPM recording this year.  I’m ahead of the game on writing, but way way way behind on recording.  In a rare moment of optimism, I see a deep freeze of a weekend as a good reason to stay home and get some work done.  My wife expects to be busy working this weekend.  While I would much prefer the two of us spend the weekend doing things together, it is Valentines Day on Sunday after all, if she is going to be wrapped up in code, I can use the time to get wrapped up in tunes.  Monday is a holiday.  I have the day off, but my beloved doesn’t.  I also took Tuesday and Wednesday off from work with the intention of getting as much singing recorded as I can (even though I have no words or melodies written yet).  That gives me a five day weekend.  If I buckle down, I might be able to finish the whole project by this time next week!  That’s impossible, but maybe I could somehow magically manage to increase my out put from the 13 songs in progress today (with the FAWM goal of 14) to maybe 20?  If RPM defines an album as 10 songs or 35 minutes, could I possibly turn this month into a double album?  Or maybe two entirely separate albums?  Three of the 13 songs are leaning toward being acoustic guitar centered.  Might I end up with an album of electric songs and an album of acoustic songs?

The answer, of course, is no.  I’m getting to 14 and then I’ll probably drop four of them and have a normal 10 song RPM album.  But a boy can dream, right?  I mean… right?

Then the question is, what to do about Valentines Day?  Valentines always gets the shaft in our house.  We still haven’t gotten back to normal from Christmas yet, and then the first week of February has two birthdays in the house, my step son and my beloved brilliant amazing wife, and just when you’ve gotten everything squared away for the birthdays… BAM… you’ve practically missed Valentines.  Personally, I think we should move Valentines to April.  That way we can have enough time to financially recover from Christmas and Birthday week, and have the wonderfully silly celebration of all things romance coincide with the anniversary of our first date.  That would be something I can get behind.  I think the United States, if not the entire world, should get with me and make April Valentines day a reality.  Let’s do this people!  Working together in a massive grass roots effort we can accomplish anything!  First let’s get Bernie Sanders into the White House, then we’ll move Valentines Day to April 5th!

What was I talking about?

Oh yeah… it’s going to be cold this weekend.  Stay warm, New England.

New RPM on the Bandcamp Page

I uploaded the new RPM music to bandcamp. Please don’t pay for this. If you want it you can get it at my alonetone site for nuttin. If you insist on shelling out some dough, I would ask you to donate it to rpmchallenge.com.

The Last RPM Song!

That’s it kiddos, I’m done with RPM for another year! The last song has been mixed, the cover art is done and the running order is set. All I have left to do is burn a CD, print the cover, and drop it off at headquarters.

I’ll share a playlist with the final running order soon. Probably tomorrow. For now? Sleep!

2nd to Last Day

RPM ends tomorrow. What do I have left to do?

Mix one song.
Decide if I want to drop any songs from the playlist. I need 10, I have 15. There’s lots of wiggle room. One looks dropable, another is a gimmick so it’s probably dropable too. Plenty left to make up a decent running order.
Come up with a running order. There are four songs that suck less than the rest. Those will go first. After that? No idea.
Make up an insert. I used to use a make a cd cover website. I hope that’s still up. I also need to put my name on the picture I posted yesterday.
Either mail the thing out, or drive to Portsmouth and drop it off. I might drop it off this year. It depends on how my wife is feeling (she has a cold) and how much homework she has to do.

Then figure out what music project is next.