Tag: Guitar

The Final Pre-50/90 Song

A little mini-suite. I had my 10 songs underway for my June album in a month project and like a doofus I threw together an extra song at the last minute, and made it three songs in one. (I then added two more, because I’m dumb).

Mostly this was an excuse to add an acoustic guitar (my Takamine 12-string) and a Gibson electric (ES 335 Pro) to a project that had been 100% Stratocaster to that point.

One night recently my two step kids and I all had a really difficult time falling asleep. That lead to some anxiety among the kids who thought that the inability to sleep was a sign that there was something wrong with them. I reassured them that it happens to all of us once in a while and that they should just relax, and then I wrote a song about not being able to sleep because of nightmares. I am a lyrical hypocrite. Accept it, I have.


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Here is the iOS mix.

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June Music is now as done as done can be. It’s 11:45pm on July 3rd. 50/90 officially starts in 15 minutes. I, however, will wait until morning because I am exhausted.

G’Night everyone!

New Song Weirdness

Talk about over complicating things!

This was meant as just a little finger picking noodle. I am hopeless as a finger picker and did this more as an exercise than anything else. It’s four tracks of guitar, all with a different picking pattern. I was curious if I could accidentally come up with something along the lines of the awesome stuff Mike Rutherford and Steve Hackett used to do in Genesis. I didn’t, but at least it’s finger picked. The chorus is dumbed down. It’s only two tracks. The break part where the drums go away and the cello comes in (yes, I am a prog nerd) used a pick. I can only do so much, you know?

What are the lyrics about? Well, some days completely suck, but other days don’t. If you persist you can get to the non-suck. That’s sort of the point. I spent all of 10 minutes writing them. Gimme a break, okay?


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Here is the iOS mix too.

Theft

I started a new song tonight, because I’m an idiot. It was really just an exercise. I can’t finger pick to save my life, so I quadruple tracked a little eight bar thing with a different finger picking pattern on each track. I then worked it into a song. 3:15 of song later I had four tracks of rhythm guitar, one track of lead guitar, drums, an upright bass, and a cello. That’s right, kids, a cello.

It wasn’t until it was all done and I listened back and realized the four different finger pick patterns and the chord changes combined to form…

A Led Zeppelin song.

Oh for crying out loud!

And Still Another New Song

I keep talking about the left over song from May that I was adding to the pile of June songs. Here it is. Just a dopy little 12-bar blues that was really just an excuse to write something on my new Strat. In the end, it’s kind of a fun little groove.


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Here is the iOS mix.

And Another New Song

This song makes 10 for the month of June. I still have my one left over thing from May, and there are two more from June that still need vocals.

I kinda want to stop now though. Something about this tune is working for me. I sort of almost… like it. Part of me wants to leave this on top of my alonetone tracks list for a while.

No… I’ll mix the May song next and finish the last two June songs before 50/90 starts next week. I’ll carry on.

I’m not sure what it is about this one that I like though… something…


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I think I have posted this already, but here is the iOS mix as well.

New Song

Here’s another June song. Let’s just say that the day I recorded the lead guitar was not a particularly good day. As for the lyrics… well… it was raining that day. I don’t really know what any of the rest of it is about.


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And here is the iOS version.

GarageBand for iPhone: Vindication

Yesterday I posted a song that was recorded entirely on my iPhone and had ugly distorted vocals that I was embarrassed to share with the interwebs. I said that there was one other song from this month that was also recorded entirely on the iPhone. This is that other song.

Vindication, or what?


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Short and sweet with atheist leaning lyrics. 1000 years ago I would have burned at the stake for this tune. I love living in the future!

The drums on the iPhone mix followed the guitar and bass much more closely, especially in the verses. I used the GarageBand Drummer again and while it lost a bit in the verses I think the groove is groovy enough to justify it. I wasn’t gonna, but I did.

Stolen Melody

Yes, yes I know. The guitar melody sounds a lot like the jazz standard “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat.” I understand and I’m sorry, but it’s so rare that I come up with an instrumental melody that I just have to run with it when I get one.

The vocals… what happened. This was the first time I recorded vocals into a GarageBand file using an iPad in over two years. I think I have now figured out why it’s so thin and awful, but it’s too late to fix it now. It shouldn’t happen on any of the vocals I record from now on, but there might be one or two already in the can that have the same issue.

The lyrics are about feeling old and useless. Nothing major.

I used the GarageBand Drummer on the Mac Mix, but I don’t think it deviated that much from the iPad version.


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And here is the iPad version.

The First Mac Mix

Duck and cover kids, here come the Mac Mixes.

This that song that I couldn’t play the riff for, yet again. While working on the Mac I reserve the right to change the drum sounds and the bass sounds, and to change all the signal processing on the guitars and vocals. Also, I reserve the right to replace the drum parts with the GarageBand Drummer function, although I didn’t do that on this song.

I did change the drum sound and the bass sound, although I just ended up using the Mac version of the same bass sound I used on the iPad. They are close to the same, but the Mac version just sounded a little fatter. The only change I made to the guitar was to swap the panning. The rhythm guitar is doubled with each one panned most of the way to either left or right. One of the tracks used the neck pick up on the Strat, the other used the middle pick up. On the iPad version the neck pick up was to the left. On the Mac version it is to the right. For the vocals I changed the preset and the EQ. I also added compression to the drums, the bass, and both vocal tracks, and to the full mix. Just a little on the mix.

Here is the new mix…

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For comparison, here is the iPad mix (again)…

Another June Song

I finished another song today. This was the third song I started this month. At the time it was sort of a throw away. The first two ideas I had had me kind of optimistic. I had a Straty 12-bar with a riff that was too reminiscent of Goodbye Porkpie Hat, but it was cool. The second song had a decent Straty sounding riff. I liked it. The third song… blah.

Now that it’s finished though… I kinda like it.