Tag: fiftyninety

50/90 Update

I was going to do these daily, but naw. One week into the project and here’s where I stand.

12 songs in progress.
No mixes yet.
One song has all of the tracking done and is ready to mix.
One has vocals and is ready for lead guitar.
Five have rhythm guitars and lyrics and melody written and are ready for vocals (car music in the morning, maybe?).
Five have their song format and the bass and drums finished and are ready for rhythm guitars.

Not bad for the first week. I don’t know how this pace compares to the other two times I finished 50 songs. Who knows.

And now for the obligatory guitar pics.

Things Not to Do Tomorrow

I have four songs ready for vocals. I should do car music tomorrow! I am working from home and not going to my parents until around dinner time. Tomorrow’s the perfect day!

Except for that whole tropical storm that’s supposed to hit us in the morning.

Yeah, I am not going to do car music in the middle of Elsa the Tropical Storm.

<prepare yourself for Robert your Narrator to make a Dad Joke that I am positive everyone on the Eastern coast of the United States of America has already made. Sorry… can’t resist this one>

Elsa just needs to let it go.

<GET IT??????>

I need mental help. Get me on Prozac, STAT! Is Prozac even still a thing?

So I was working on a little ditty in GarageBand just now and the cat jumped up on my desk and somehow manage, with one swipe of her paw on the trackpad, shuffle around two segments of the song and also paste a couple of new notes into the bass line.

Really, cat?

2021 5090 – Day 3/90

Two vocals, one melody/lyric, and one new song idea started.

Not too bad for a work day.

I made a works in progress playlist on hearthis.at. I know it won’t play from wordpress.com, but I’m posting it anyway because why the hell not. None of this matters anyway so why should I give a flying fuck at a rolling donut?

The naming scheme is year-project-counter-device the file originated on. Look at me being all assembly line efficient and shit. Yippee.

The First 50/90 Car Music

I just came home from my first car music of the 50/90 season. I had three songs to do. I did two of them. The mic was dropping out and distorting and sounding awful again. I had to do everything over and over again because of it. I’m about 95% sure it’s the mic cable. I will test that the next time I do a car music. I am Nana Sitting tonight which means I can’t do it tomorrow. Thursday or Friday maybe? Probably more like Sunday. We’ll see.

2021 5090 – Day 2/90

There should be car music tomorrow. We will see how I feel in the morning.

How’d we do today? One new song under way for a total of six. All have rhythm guitars and three have lyrics. Not bad for day two.

I usually don’t stress over melodies. These shitty songs are lucky they get any melody at all. Tonight though I found myself trashing something. I was working over a riff that has some really weird syncopation and I was playing a pretty simple melody. Shortly after wrapping up the phrase it started feeling familiar. I eventually placed it… it was a song from this year’s RPM Challenge.

Stupid melody. Stupid, stupid melody.

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!

5090 is Underway

When the clock struck midnight on July 4th I opened up my MacBook and launched GarageBand and noodled out the first idea. At the time I was awake and feeling all right. Now, 25 minutes later, I can’t keep my eyes open. I also have a two and a half minute long bass and drum track.

Game on, folks!

The Summer Rig

Okay, I’ve got the guitar rig for the summer in place. Welcome back to my sweet little 15 watt Fender Bassbreaker.

Dusting faux tweed is hard.

Just add a shiny new Les Paul and we are on our way.

Addendum: My iPhone autocorrected “on our” to “In-N-Out”. WTF, I ask you. W. T. F?

Welcome to July

Happy July 1st, everyone. Summer in full swing. The forecast calls for a high of 80 degrees today with rain every day for the foreseeable future. Hooray.

Today is the day that my company’s Covid-19 lock down kind of comes to an end. Prior to Covid I worked in the building four days per week and at home one. Now it’s sort of the opposite. It’s not in the office once per week, it’s more like in the office an average of once per week. Flexibility is our friend. It’s actually in the office 20% of the month… so about once per week.

I was hoping to make my first day back July 13th as my last day before lock down was March 13th and it would be funny for it to be exactly 16 months. Nope. My nana sitting schedule will not allow that. I need to sneak in at least once before the 13th.

Change of subject, I went to sleep around midnight last night and woke up a bit before 5:00. I felt okay, even though I failed to get even five hours of sleep, but my SleepWatch app is telling me my heart rate dip was garbage. It says I was in restful sleep for about three quarters of the night though, so I’ve got that going for me. It’s going to be a long day.

The 50/90 challenge starts in four days. Are you ready to be bombarded with posts regarding awful, pointless, idiotic music, guitar playing, song writing, and recording? I strongly suspect this year’s challenge will end in a crash and burn, and it will likely happen quickly. As of this moment though, I am still thinking I am on board. In fact, I was thinking about swapping out my amplifier. I don’t want to go with a two amp setup like last year. I don’t want to take up that much room in the bedroom anymore. I have been using my Vox AC15 for the last few months. This weekend before things kick off I might swap it for my Fender Bassbreaker 15 again. We’ll see.

Did I mention I have an eye doctor appointment on Saturday? Does it make me sound like an old fart when I say I am seriously looking forward to it? Probably. Okay (son of) boomer.

Right, time for my Nana Sitting duties. I need to bring her the 8:00am meds.

Until next time.

Good day, eh?

Neglecting My Responsibilities

I really do have work I want to do tonight. Really.

So what did I do?

i added rhythm guitars to two songs. That puts me up to 10, which is good. I also put lead guitars on two of the songs I put vocals on this morning. I still haven’t completed anything for 50/90, but I do have two songs ready to mix. Progress.