Tag: Guitar

Volume Five is Done

I mixed the last song on the list for Quarantine Tunes Volume 50/90. This one makes 10 songs written over the summer, redone for the winter… or something like that.

There is really nothing to this song so I went overboard on the gimmicks and effects and now it’s a soupy, saucy mess, but I like it.

Now I need to come up with a running order for the 10 songs and I can declare the fifth volume of re-recorded songs finished and get back to work on the sixth volume.

Merry Christmas Eve, everyone. Maybe next year I’ll mix a Christmas song on Christmas Eve. For now, you’re stuck with this guy.

HoHoHo.

Retail Therapy

It took me 50 years before I had a year where there wasn’t a christmas. This is it, folks. The year without a santa claus for reals.

On Saturday it will be pretty much a normal Saturday. Jen and I are planning on a nice dinner together. Maybe we’ll play some Mario Kart and watch a movie or maybe binge watch some TV or something. We’ll just spend the day together.

I was going to write this post about how I wanted to take my frustrations out on capitalism by buying a new guitar. A Les Paul Junior to be exact. I jokingly asked the love of my life if she would be okay with me buying yet another guitar and to my shock and amazement she said yes! That’s twice she’s said yes to me! Once in the backyard at the duplex when I was on my knee, and then again today. How wonderful!

That’s when she told me she was doing the same thing. Maybe a Nintendo Switch or a PS5. We had a good laugh. I’m not going to buy a $1,600 guitar, especially when it’s only a few months after Jen bought me a much more expensive guitar for my 50th birthday. There is a chance though that I might magically (though probably not christmas magic, given the circumstances) upgrade a pedal or two in the coming days. You know… magically.

Brian May Shares His Covid-19 Experience

Brian May, the guitarist from Queen who is also an astrophysicist, posted to his Instagram yesterday that he has Covid-19. Today he shared his experience so far. There are two clips. One is short and is background (and some guitar playing) and the other has the main details (and also some UK political stuff).

Clip one:

Clip two:

In summation, he went to a birthday party, he tested every day afterwards (there’s a novel idea, eh?), and he and a whole bunch of people who went to the birthday party caught it. He has three Pfizer shots (me too! Brian May and I are Pfizer bros.!) and it was a horrible couple of days but thanks to the vaccine he’s coming out of it and he’s doing all right now.

Remember folks, this is a scientist we’re talking to. It’s not his specific field, but he is wicked smaht, m’kay?

Just sharing this to wrap up the post I made yesterday.

One More Song for Today

I haven’t finished Quarantine Tunes Volume 5 yet, but here I am mixing the first song for Volume 6. This is just getting silly now.

Written in February 2007, rearranged slightly and rerecorded in 2013, and now rererecorded in 2021. I keep coming back to this, even though it’s really a crap song. Also, this is a seriously ratty, crap performance, but it is a lot of fun to play.

Song, Second Attempt

I just wrote this post a few minutes ago and it included what I thought was a new version of a song from this past summer, but the hearthis.at player actually grabbed the original version. Weird.

Let’s try again and see if we get the right one this time….

This One is Pretty Blah

I thought this song was coming out pretty good but now that it’s done it doesn’t really do anything better than the first version. It is faster so I guess that’s something.

Two more songs to mix and then I’ll be done with this batch of songs.

Record Every Month Number 10

The RPM Challenge was in February. The new Record Every Month thing kicked off in March. I’ve had at least one song each month now for 10 months. Granted I did forget to submit a few of them to the website, but I didn’t forget this one.

I am lucky that this isn’t too terrible because it’s the only newly written thing I have this month. Whew!

We Must Protect Queen

Okay folks, shit just got real.

Brian May, PhD in Astrophysics, Commander of the Order of the British Empire, and lead guitarist of Queen… has Covid-19.

Okay? Are you happy now? Enough screwing around. You’re screwing around too much. We must protect (the) Queen. We as a global community have to knock off all of the bullshit and keep Queen safe!

Get the effing vaccine. Get the effing booster. Practice social distance. No, don’t practice it, perform it. Be a friggin’ professional at it. Lock the Fuck Down. Wear a mask when you’re around other people. Wash your god damned hands and stop volunteering to be disease carriers. Treat the plague like a plague for a change.

Also, get well soon, Doc*.

*Is Doctor the appropriate title? He has a PhD, but do all PhD’s come with the title of Doctor? I think they do for science. Oh well. Just get the damn vaccine.

And I’m Spent

To quote the great Austin D. Powers, International Man of Mystery, when he finishes a photo shoot, “and I’m spent.”

I already wrote how I spent my lunch break cranking out vocal tracks. Tonight Jen and I had dinner and watched the girl from LA Story break up with the boy from Northern Exposure* and then she went off to the World of Warcraft and I went to the world of shitty guitar playing and shittier song writing.

I spent about two hours recording and was so into it that I forgot to eat anything ahead of tonight’s intermittent fasting time, or drink anything. I’m already hungry and I’m so dehydrated I have a sore throat.

I didn’t finish everything on my plate, but I did a ton. I put leads on the Record Every Month song. It’s ready to mix now. I put leads on the final re-recording vol. 5 song. It too is ready to mix. I put leads onto one vol. 6 song, and put leads and rhythm onto two more. All three are now ready to mix.

There was one more vol. 6 song ready for leads but I was so fried that I could barely move my fingers. I’m also not mixing anything tonight. My ears are toast too.

The four vol. 6 songs are all from before I started using GarageBand. Two of them are from the first RPM Challenge I did after moving into Chez Duplex with Jen. I didn’t finish the challenge on time, but I did finish it a couple of months late. There were only two songs worth listening to that year and I worked on new versions of both of them tonight. How’s that for nerd nostalgia? Is your heart feeling all warm and fuzzy now? Awwww.

*Sex and the City

Peak Music Nerd

I wanted to record some guitars tonight but I didn’t. Given the choice between guitar and hanging out with my wife there was no choice. She wins.

I was thinking of car music tomorrow. I had two songs ready to sing and I was hoping to get them tracked before my step son comes home on Thursday. I want to be able to hang out with him and start trying to find the elusive christmas spirit without having recording thoughts nagging me from the back of my skull. So car music tomorrow, finish off the two songs that are ready to go and maybe sneak in some lead guitar tomorrow night and that should hold me for a couple of weeks.

Then I nerd leveled up like you’ve read about.

I had the bass and drums done for another re-recording. Well tonight, sitting up in bed and avoiding the sleep I very much need, I put a MIDI guitar track down to use as a guide so when I do the car music tomorrow I can put vocals on this puppy too. How lame is that. A re-recording getting vocals before the rhythm guitars are recorded? That’s unheard of. It’s down right blasphemous.

But wait, there’s more.

Once I was done with that lame guide track, I took another song from the to do list and put together the drums and the bass and a guide fake guitar for that one too. Now I have four songs to sing tomorrow. Even more, I edited the arrangement for this fourth song pretty seriously. Also, I rewrote a chunk of the lyrics. What the hell am I doing? Go to bed! You’re not going to be able to record vocals for four songs tomorrow, you’re just torturing your musical nerd self! Stop it!

So I guess the question then, as the clock approaches 11:00pm, is whether or not I get out of bed early enough to do this tomorrow.

We’ll see.