Back when I recorded this little puppy I said it would be the first of a handful of pre-GarageBand RPM songs that I was going to do. I picked out 3-4 other songs to work on and then never did anything with them.
Until now.
I have three songs ready for guitars and vocals. I’m going to try and get them finished this week, but I want to use my amp for all of the electric guitar parts. That means I’ll be recording before work on Monday and Thursday. We shall see how they go.
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
This little bloggie page got a hit today from some one looking for blogs on recording music. I guess this one counts, right? I do write about crappy demos a lot. Well regardless of whether it’s accurate or note, it woke me up to my desire to record some guitar parts. I did two rhythm tracks on one of the songs I started just before New Years in my iPad.
My playing is garbage at best.
So what.
RPM starts in a few weeks. I’ve got to get myself into some semblance of playing shape.
I have been loading music to my bandcamp.com site (please please please do not buy any music from me). I have taken my two projects from this past March-October and declared them complete… even though they aren’t actually as complete as I had hoped.
I took all of the leftover songs from past projects and collected them into this album:
I took my re-recording old songs project and shut it down… well… I actually split it into two projects. One band Mike and I had played in for a while recorded four songs at Northeast Broadcasting School. I have already re-recorded three of them. I decided that the next thing I work on will be the fourth of those songs, and then I’ll put them together as an EP sort of thing. That means that the other 10 songs can be called a complete project:
There are still more unfinished songs, but they will be added to yet a fourth pointless project. Fun, fun, fun.
Six songs down, one to go. That one will wait until later. This is sort of a goofy loop thing with an eight bar phrase repeating ad nauseum and a new instrument being added or removed with each repeat.
This one put me over the minimum time requirement for NaSoAlMo. It also apparently put me over the maximum for a free soundcloud.com account. Time to start deleting crap.
Oh, and did I mention that Garageband failed to give me the master reverb and echo controls for any of the tracks on this song? Good thing I wasn’t planning on using them, right? Oh wait. I was totally planning on using the hell out of them all over the place. Friggin’ Garageband.
All of the tracking for my National Solo Album Month project is done, no thanks to GarageBand. Hey, thanks for not recording the six minute long take when I had it in record and was actually recording. It marked the region has having a recorded track but there was nothing in it. I had a nice fun moment when three separate guitar tracks magically disappeared as well. Again, screw you Garageband.
Two songs left to mix, and then I need to cut it all together into one (maybe two) audio files with sound effects acting as the transitions between songs. I should also probably put my name and the album name onto the cover photo as well. We are heading out of the house for a while in a few minutes, and i want to spend as much time hanging with the family today as possible, so the remaining work will probably be done after the kids go to bed.
No problem!
I hate the new garageband so fucking much I can’t even express it. I want to light my god damned laptop on fire right now I am so friggin’ pissed off at garageband.
This is the fourth song. Listen to the minor seventh chord I snuck in during the mega-ending.
Oh wait. You can’t hear it. Why? BECAUSE GARAGEBAND WON’T EFFING EXPORT IT, THAT’s WHY!
When I play back, the last three bars of the song are there. When I export it to iTunes, the last three bars are gone. It’s not even a case of it just deleting a region because it plays the first god damn bar of the four bar region and then just ends. I can’t even believe what a piece of shit Apple has reduced this program to. It’s just awful. Every single thing I try to do is screwed up in some way. I HATE GARAGEBAND!!!!!!
Hello and welcome to the blog debut of the third song from my NaSoAlMo fiasco.
I had originally thought of using my 12-string guitar for all of the rhythm guitar parts. That idea fell by the wayside, but this is one of the songs that stuck with the plan. I also wanted one song to have a sort of free form section that resolved into a straight up rock groove. This song does that, it just doesn’t do it well.
Here’s the first of the seven songs on the agenda for this month.
http://alonetone.com/robertjames1971/tracks/like-a-brat.mp3%20I 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.
Today is November 11. The day we honor those who fought for our country. For me, it’s also been a NaSoAlMo day. I have all the “songs” I am going to need. Right now the count is at seven songs and 33 minutes. That’ll do. All of the songs have the full arrangement spec’d out, all of the rhythm guitars, bass, and drums finished, and a random keyboard here and there. All that remains is lyrics, melodies, vocals, and lead guitar.
The mess that is the new version of GarageBand has taken 90% of the fun out of this for me. There are little things that are just infuriating. When in measure display mode, you used to be able to click on a beat within a bar and the play head would snap to that spot. Now, it snaps to the spot until you let go of the mouse button, then it moves a fraction of a beat to one side or another. Sometimes it would take four or five clicks to get it into place.
Other changes are gigantic. Where are all the effects? What do you mean I can’t add anything other than compression and EQ? And while we’re on the topic of compression and EQ, where the hell are all of those incredible presets that the old GarageBand had? This alone has pretty much destroyed any chance I had of ever being happy with a recording again.
Anyway. Seven songs. Lots of padding, I’m afraid. None of the songs are under three minutes. Very proggie of me, if I don’t say so myself. I have an idea of how to tie everything together into one big suite. I bought some sound effect tracks from iTunes last night. I think I am going to try and make the full 33 minutes sound like a listener flipping around a radio dial. Silly. Stupid, even. It’s just my sort of stupid silliness though.
19 days to go. Really, I don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of finishing this one on time. I don’t care though.
Inside the Red Head's Head 