RPM Challenge Day 6/28

Day six was better than the previous two days, but still not good enough. I feel like I am light years behind schedule at this point. I am going to need a super productive weekend to fix the current situation.

Yesterday I took the song that I started overnight the night before (see my stupid little recap of day five) and added to it and fleshed out the song form and finished the MIDI bass and MIDI drums. I also added two more songs and got through the bass and drums on those as well.

So at the close of business on day six I have six songs with bass and drums tracked that are ready for rhythm guitars. On average, one new song per day. That’s not bad. It could be a whole ton of tons better, but it’s not bad. I expect there won’t be a whole lot of progress tonight, but tomorrow is Saturday and hopefully the weekend will see the pace pick up quite a bit.

RPM Challenge Day 5/28

The honest answer is nothing. Again. The second day in a row.

The squint a little answer is one new song idea. Or at least most of one new song. I woke up at 2:00am with stomach issues and needed to sit up for a little while. While I was riding things out I noodled out a couple of bass lines on my iPhone. Now at that particular moment the calendar date said it was day six. However, it was the middle of the night and I guess you can make an argument that day six actually starts when I get up for the day and that most definitely did not happen for a few more hours.

So is that bad little bass line technically from day six or subjectively from day five? I don’t know. Am I just making shit up to make me feel better about skipping two days in a row? Yeah, probably. Let’s just say that it’s been a tough couple of days for me and move on with our lives.

Here’s hoping for better news in tomorrow’s RPM Challenge recap post. Fingers crossed.

RPM Challenge Day 4/28

Nothing.

I had a really bad day and went to bed early, thinking I would get a good night’s sleep, but then I woke up super early and spoiled the whole plan. Shit.

I did get to wish my step son a Happy Birthday. I think I wished my nephew a Happy Birthday too. I sent him a text, discovered he has a new phone number, got his new phone number, sent another text, he didn’t respond. We called my sister’s phone to wish him a happy but he wasn’t home so we called his phone because my sister said his voicemail was setup but his voicemail wasn’t set up. I speak now directly to my nephew… I really hope you got that text. If not, Happy Birthday!!

That’s my whole day in a nutshell. Birthdays, back pain, stomach pain, first day back to work. Yippee. Today is an in the office day so it’s going to suck on so many levels.

Happy Merry and shit, everyone! WOOHOO!

RPM Challenge Day 3/28

Day three was similar to days one and two. One new song. This time it has bass and drums finished and a guide track for a sax part. It’s looking like it will be instrumental. I had this idea of having the album open with a short instrumental and this could be it. Unless it sucks, of course, or I can’t play the sax anymore, of course. The usual caveats.

RPM Challenge Day 2/28

Day two was mostly spent recovering from travel on day one (day three will be similar, I fear). I did add a second song idea and I worked out a full song form for both day 2’s song and day 1’s. So I now have two songs with full form done, including bass and drums. One of them may have a sax part already too, but it’s just a keyboard as a place holder for now.

RPM Challenge Day 1/28

It is February again so it is time for daily RPM Challenge updates.

Not much yesterday (Day one, Sunday), just one song idea noodled out in GarageBand for iPhone while sitting in a hotel room near Orlando, Florida waiting to check out and fly home. Hopefully I’ll get to a little more than that today.

Oxblood

Question: What is the most expensive Gibson Les Paul on Earth?

Answer: Jeff Beck’s super modified 1954 Les Paul Standard, commonly known as the Oxblood Les Paul.

Question: How much did the Oxblood sell for?

Answer: It is commonly believed that Beck bought the guitar for about $300 in 1972, but two days ago it sold at auction for $1,315,708.

Beck’s wife put up his gear collection for auction and the results were pretty staggering. While the hope was the guitars would be bought by people who would actually play them, I think it’s safe to say that most of the big tickets are going to museums and private collections where they will likely be on display and never actually touched again. That’s sad, but at these prices what can you do?

There were a couple of guitars that I would have bid on if money were no object. The Oxblood and the Yardburst being the two big ones, but there were supposed to be some signature models and prototypes of signature models (of the Oxblood, at least) that I would have liked to get my greedy mitts on.

Still… I think I would rather we still had Jeff Beck playing all of this stuff rather than having to live in a world without him. That would be way better than this world.

New/Old Song

A new song from The Great 2015 Re-Recording Project, also known as Quarantine Tunes Volume Eight.

Volume eight is all songs written during the 2020 50/90 Challenge. I think. Volume five was all songs from the 2021 50/90, I think… those songs were better than the 2020 songs and it shows with this one. If this was one of the 50 songs that was good enough to consider re-recording then… we’re definitely scraping the bottom of the artistic barrel.

Oh well. It’s done.

New/Old song mixed and uploaded to alonetone.com.

Guitar Shake to Shuffle

I just finished putting rhythm guitar tracks onto two song demos. Look at me being musically productive!

Also, I used Hipstamatic’s Shake-To-Shuffle on my new iPhone for the first time. Wow!