Prior to the Covid-19 screwing everything up I had posted a couple of things about trying to find a new brand of guitar strings. There were a few that I was looking at but I wasn’t sure if any would be better than the strings I’ve been using since the 80’s.
I think we have a winner….
I promise that the decision has nothing to do with the fact that they send me thank you notes when I buy from them. I promise.
It’s October 13th. Happy (I mean that sarcastically) Seventh Covid-Quarantine Monthiversary.
This fucking sucks.
Last night one of the guys in the band floated the idea of having a mask-wearing, spread out all over the room band practice. Another guy immediately said yes. The third guy commented but didn’t say yes or no. Then I was the asshole. I’m really tired of being the asshole. Like… really tired of it.
I was going to mix one of the songs last night. I replaced all the bass and drum parts and made sure everything lined up correctly. There was one spot toward the end of the song where the vocals sounded weird. I had two tracks singing the same thing. I’m not sure why I did that, but I did it for the first three songs I recorded. In this particular instance there was a drop out that cut a whole word out of one of the takes. How did I miss that?
I listened to just the vocal tracks, one at a time, and there were little drop outs all over the place. What the hell? I was mostly able to comp together one full track out of the two that I had, but there was one line where both tracks had a drop out. Fortunately it was in a chorus so I was able to fly in that line from another part of the song.
It really pissed me off though. How did I miss that when I was in the car? I knew I was having signal loss issues that day but I thought I was catching them as they happened. I’m so mad at myself. I did the same thing with the two other songs I recorded that day and they both had a drop out or two, but they weren’t nearly as bad. I comped together a full take pretty easily. I then did the same for the four songs I recorded yesterday, when I wasn’t doubling tracks, and everything was fine. I don’t have to redo anything, but it still pissed me off like crazy.
I also had my first bad news on the exercise front, though it wasn’t unexpected. When I started this I said I was going to do the intermittent fasting and 30 minutes of exercise each day and see what happens. I explicitly said I was not going to screw with what I ate, just when I ate it. I have been weighing myself every Tuesday morning and I was losing weight. Today was the first weigh in where I was up. Only a pound and a half, but I was not happy. Not even a little bit. I told myself that weight loss wasn’t my primary goal, but now that I’m up a pound and a half I think I have to face the reality that maybe it actually is my primary goal. Crap. I thought I was more evolved than that (that’s a joke, I didn’t really think that).
The good news is, last time I cut the grass I would do about 10 minutes of mowing and then have to sit for half an hour to recover. After a month’s worth of multiple little “work outs” each day, when I cut the grass this weekend it was more like 20-30 minutes of mowing with little 5-10 minute breaks to recover. That was my original goal for all of this shit. I consider that a small success in an otherwise garbage universe.
Kiss my ass, Covid-19.
Worked on the Great Re-Recording Project of 2015 today.
I wrote these friggin’ songs, why can’t I play them? What the hell is wrong with me? I mean, clearly if they came outa my head they aren’t hard to play. Why the constant screw ups?
I’m up to four songs ready for vocals though, so that’s not so bad.
They just did a full episode on Fender Deluxe Reverbs. My Deluxe Reverb has been at my bass players house since COVID started. I miss it so much right now I can’t put it into words.
I joked with Jen that I’ll just have to buy another one. She said, “maybe.” my brain heard, “go ahead and buy one tonight.” WOOHOO!*
*Just kidding…. or am I?
I took last night and tonight off from recording. After 50/90 I needed a breather. Mentally though… let’s just say that doing these stupid musical things is a source of therapy for me. It helps me keep my head straight when the Covid-19 nightmares threaten to take over.
Tomorrow after work I pick up on the October projects. First and foremost, get back to The Great Re-Recording Project of 2015 and record new versions of 10 old songs. It was going to be eight songs, but I tacked on one song from February’s RPM Challenge, and one song from the just finished 50/90. The goal is to make these new versions of old songs sound better than just home demos.
Once that is finished, spend the rest of the month writing and demoing as close to 10 new songs as possible. I doubt I’ll have time for 10, but I want to get as many as I can. I’ve reached this goal in each of the last eight months. I want to keep the streak going.
Rock on, brothers and sisters.
When I was in college I took a circuit design course and had to solder together a circuit board. That was in 2003, I think. Maybe 2002. A long time ago. I haven’t done anything remotely similar to that since.
For a while now I’ve had this secret desire to buy a build your own amplifier kit and build the whole thing myself. I want to build a clone of a tweed Fender Deluxe. It’s supposed to be a simple build and it is a legendary amp.
I’d like to do this, but the idea of actually wiring it together is terrifying to me. The solution, of course, is to find a smaller scale project and do that first. Like, practice, you dig? There’s also the small matter of not having any of the tools required.
Today is one of those days where I feel myself getting close to pulling the trigger on a wiring project. Build Your Own Clone is a company that sells kits for all sorts of guitar gear. Their stuff is supposed to be excellent. I was surfing around their website today looking for something simple to use as a first project. Some kind of fuzz pedal maybe? How about a treble booster, those are supposed to be dead simple.
Then I saw they have a Marshall Bluesbreaker pedal clone. I don’t know if it’s an easy build or not (the reviews say it is, but are those people first timers? Who knows) but I’ve been thinking about picking up a Bluesbreaker style pedal anyway. Wampler makes one. Keeley used to make one. Analogman makes the mother of all Bluesbreaker style pedals, the King of Tone and I’ve been on the waiting list for one for over two years. Maybe I could build one to hold me over until I bubble up to the top of the list.
Also, amazon has all sorts of inexpensive soldering kits that include everything I remember using in that circuit design class so many ages ago.
I do not want to spend money on any of this stuff… but I’m thinking about it. Thinking about it pretty hard. Who knows, build a pedal or two, then build a tweed Deluxe… then what? I bet I could find a 4×10 tweed Fender Bassman clone somewhere. Maybe even the amplifier the Bluesbreaker pedal is supposed to simulate, the Marshall 1962 aka The Bluesbreaker (so named because Eric Clapton used one on the Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton album in 1966).
Fantasizing about guitar gear… that’s a new high of nerdness for me, I think.
Allow me to officially declare the 2020 50/90 challenge complete. I finish with 51 songs written and recorded in 88 (I think?) days. Note that the challenge doesn’t include recording songs, it just asks you to write them. Whatever.
I know the playlist I’m including here isn’t going to work but what the hell. You can get the official, legal (hehe) copy here.
I was also trying to make sure I kept my personal little album in a month during quarantine challenge alive for the three months 50/90 covered and I did. 11 songs were written and recorded entirely in July, 12 entirely in August, and 14 entirely in September. The remaining 14 were started in one month and finished in another,
So what next? I’ve actually already started working on the first song for Quarantine Tunes Vol. 2. I’ll try to write more in October too, but I’m not really pushing for 10 new songs the way I did every month since February. I don’t want to stop playing and recording, but I think my song writing brain might need some time off. National Solo Album Month is coming in November, of course.
When I left off last night I had three songs left to work on. They all needed lead guitar parts. Today I decided to nerd it up like a mad man. I used all three of my Gibson guitars, one on each of the three songs. The Les Paul and the ES-335 both have fresh strings but the SG hasn’t been changed since… January? I haven’t played it since at least May… I think. Maybe it was June, but I’m pretty sure it was May. The strings were dead, but I pulled it off.
Here’s to my second ever complete 50/90 challenge. I need a nap.
I think that’s the first time it’s ever happened. At least since 2012. WordPress.com was just down! I couldn’t post and I couldn’t access my page. It was terrible! I started sweating and shaking and seeing little blue men with no feet who were pointing and laughing at me and Tracey Morgan yelled out, “Blue Man, where your feet at!” It was awful!
Anyway, I wanted to make a 50/90 update. I only have three songs left. I did so much work today I actually lost track of it all. Tomorrow I will add lead guitars to the final three songs and then I’ll mix ’em down and then I’ll be done and need to figure out what I want to do in October.
This song is the clear winner for the whole project, even if the guitar is a smidge out of tune:
This week’s That Pedal show covered Octave-Fuzz pedals. Those are fuzz pedals that split the signal in two and double the frequency of one. That way you hear the note you played along with a second note one octave higher. It’s cool, but it was never my thing.
I always preferred the opposite. Split the signal an cut the frequency of one in half. That gives you the note you played plus a note one octave down. You knew that though because math, right?
Back in high school I had a pedal that did the octave down thing without adding in the fuzz. It was a DOD Octapluss. I was never a pedal guy, at least not until five or six years ago. I used to be set with an amp overdrive channel and a wah wah pedal. That’s all I needed. More often than not though I’d have the Octopluss too.
When I joined Lizardfish I wanted to use it but it had died on me somewhere along the way. I was sad, but somehow I’ve survived. I picked up a pitch shift pedal a while ago for times when we cover a song that has guitarmonies. I barely ever use it, but today I switched it on. It can do the same pitch shift my Octopluss did. It’s not the same though. It’s digital and it actually works too well. It’s not ratty and random like the old pedal. It actually makes me sad.
The new pedal is a super cheap knock off of a popular Electro Harmonix pedal (at least I think it is). Someday I’ll probably upgrade to the real thing. Why? The printing on the pedal is too small to read. Even with my glasses on. I just can’t see it. I have to take a picture with my phone and zoom in in order to know how to set it up. Crazy.
Inside the Red Head's Head 