We came back to the hotel a little early tonight. Both kids wanted to stay up late. I had all my pictures from the day sorted and uploaded. What to do? How about mix a song for 50/90?
The lyrics are about Patches the cat. Honestly.
Recorded in the USA, mixed in Canada. kewl
I know how popular these music project updates are, and I know you’re dying to know what I did yesterday. Here you go! A music project update!!
50/90, or fiftyninety as the twitter hash tags say, has seen 10 songs completely completed. There are six more on top of that. One is ready to mix. Three need vocals. Two need guitars and vocals. If you look at 50/90 in terms of monthly projects, you would need to have two months with 17 songs each, and one with 16. It’s only been two weeks and I’m already at the 16 mark.
Why did I push so hard out of the gate? Well, because it’s a whole ton of fun for musical nerds like me. Also, on top of that, is the little fact that there is going to be a week plus in July where I am going away. That starts as soon as I get off work tonight. I’ll have my iPad with me, so I can still make progress by creating bass riffs and drum grooves and what not, and I should probably have my old MacBook Pro too which means we might even see that one song that’s ready to mix get itself finished during the trip as well. Not likely though.
More likely is that I won’t do anything at all until we come home. Hopefully a little time off will recharge my creative batteries (hehe, as if I had creative batteries) and I’ll come home guns blazin’ and crank out ideas as fast as I did during the first weekend. Probably not, we’ll see. For all I know, I might lose interest entirely.
Like I said (like, two sentences ago), we’ll see.
There was a post on the 50/90 forum where one user questioned the artistic integrity of everyone else, saying that none of the songs he heard were pushing any artistic boundaries.
My response was, how do you know? Why do you think the pushing of boundaries is going to be audible for anyone? Take me for example. I’m actually letting people listen to my god awful singing voice. I’m writing lyrics! Every once in a while I actually try to express an opinion or, even worse, a feeling! Hell, I am a Gibson guy playing a Strat! Is there any bigger artistic wall to climb than that?
Not that I consider the garbage I write and record to be anything even resembling art. I’m not that self deluded. You get the idea though. I record all of this crap because it’s fun, but that doesn’t mean sharing it is easy. I mean, there is a reason I wait for the house to be empty before I record myself singing, you know?
Tonight’s entry in the 50/90 post pile is a schmaltzy little sucker with lyrics inspired by the Red Sox cutting A.J. Pierzynsky.
Yup, I sure can come up with those groovy ideas, eh?
The first idea I had for 50/90 turned out really heavy. So heavy that I haven’t really felt like coming up with a vocal and finishing it off. In reaction to Mr Heavy Song, the second idea I came up with was this goofy little funk fest.
Even a redhead like me wants to get funky now and then. All of the guitars here are the ES 335.
Back in February of 2012 I bought a thing called a Jam that let me plug my guitar, or microphone into my iPad. I’ve been using the hell out of it since April and in the last week it’s started acting kinda screwy. I found myself at the Apple store in Salem, NH yesterday so I bought a replacement.
It’s called a Sonic Port and it’s made by Line 6.
The package mentioned that it can be used with a Line 6 Pod app. Oh the memories! Prior to figuring out GarageBand I used a Line 6 Pod for all of my recordings. All of those failed RPMs that I did on my ADAT used the Pod. Even that 2012 RPM I did on the iPad used it (only because I hadn’t taken the time to check into the amplifier simulations built into GarageBand). Most importantly, the Pod app interfaces with GarageBand the way the Amplitube apps do.
I hooked in and checked it out tonight. The 50/90 song currently known as Song #14 was written and recorded on it.
I’m a little cheesed to see that it lacks an overdrive pedal. What’s the deal with that? Anyway, earlier this morning I noodled together Song #13 using the midi guitar sound built into GarageBand. When I recorded the real guitars tonight I figured I’d stay on the guitar app theme so I used the Amplitube Fender app. Just for schnitzengiggles.
I mixed two tonight. One was a mostly instrumental pile of dung that was meant to be Pink Floydish, but was instead down right utterly awful. The other is here for your listening pleasure (assuming having your ears tortured by bad music is pleasure).
The idea was to have one guitar riff for the whole song but use a combination of the melody and the dynamics to differentiate between the verse and the chorus. It sorta worked.
I didn’t get any music done this morning before work, but I did manage to sneak in a couple of vocals this evening. No new riffs or guitar parts of bass lines, just two new vocals.
That’s all.
More to come tomorrow.
Five songs… that’s 10%! I’m 1/10th of the way though 50/90!
This was a last minute kind of thing on Sunday. I had to go out and run an errand, and I had spent quite a bit of time on two ideas that weren’t really doing much for me (but after listening to one of them today it’s better than I thought at the time). I tried to sneak in one more idea before I went out. That idea became this song.
I tagged this on the fiftyninety page as hyperactive. I think this is as close as I will ever come to sounding like The Police. I know the three members of The Police were just insulted mightily, but I mean no offense to them.
I actually kinda like this one.
Not sure I like this one. At least I liked it more before I mixed it. I don’t know…
Three solos, the first is the Les Paul, the last is the Strat, the middle starts out on the Strat then switches to the Les Paul. Today was ES 335 day, but the Les Paul was there so I used it instead. So much for alternating days, eh?
I’d tell you what the lyrics were about if I knew, but I don’t so I won’t.
Inside the Red Head's Head 