I was upstairs at the parents house trying to take apart a twin bed and I found an old roll of pictures. Included were a couple of shots from a band practice in, probably, 1999.
My Les Paul Custom as it was when I bought it, before the pick ups and machine heads were changed. Also, my old solid state Fender amp from before it took a bath in gasoline (literally):
Also, more significantly, Mike’s black Rickenbacker!
I mixed two songs tonight. They both kinda suck so I won’t post them. The first of the two was completed mix number 25. I have reached the halfway point of 50/90. Hooray, right? The pipeline is up to 41 songs now so I won’t have that much more to add in September. I’ll just have to finish off whatever is left. Good.
I mixed three songs tonight. Hot Damn! My brain feels like mush now, so I am going to bed.
My mother was asleep when I checked on her a minute ago, but she was still up. Explain? Okay. She’s sitting up on the edge of her bed, slumped over to one side asleep. I woke her up and told her she should lie down. She said she will and then went back to sleep without moving. Her back is going to be searing agony tomorrow. It’s like talking to a brick wall sometimes, except you can usually get pissed off when people act like that. I can’t get pissed off now. I don’t think she can actually process that she’s doing anything that will have a negative consequence.
It’s pretty friggin’ frustrating.
I’m on a bit of a mixing roll right now. Only partly because my mother is having a rough night. She had all of her discretionary meds. If she doesn’t fall asleep soon I don’t know what we’re going to do. It’s quiet in her bedroom right now, and she hasn’t come a-wandering out in a little while. After I post this I will go check on her.
The song is nothing special, but I kinda like it. The rhythm guitars sounded like crap so I had to EQ them. I always feel like a failure when I have to EQ guitars. I should be a talented enough recording engineer to actually capture my own friggin’ instrument correctly. I’m only being partly sarcastic when I say that, but rest assured I am being sarcastic.
On the up side, my father was flipping back and forth between the Red Sox game (that’s good) and a little league fucking world series game (oh, that is so not good). The little league game is over. Thank the baseball gods for that.
I have been playing games with gear of late. There are two overdrive pedals on the rhythm guitar tracks. Both have their gain control on zero and their volume control maxed. The amp is a low wattage tube amp, and pushing in a crap load of input signal is enough to push the tubes into overdrive. There are a couple of songs coming that added a third overdrive pedal set the same way and it’s a really sweet distorted sound. It’s almost like I know what I’m doing.
Crazy morning, I tells ya.
Five songs worth of vocals, two songs worth of lead guitars, and three songs worth of rhythm guitars… and it ain’t even noon yet!
Obligatory I-worked-on-guitars pic:
Obligatory I-did-vocals-in-the-movie-theater-parking-lot pic:
Obligatory I-drove-home-through-the-center-of-town pic:
Non-obligatory I-managed-to-switch-modes-and-screen-shot-when-I-dropped-my-phone-in-Methuen-Center pic:
The second round of guitar playing didn’t last quite as long as the first, and I’ve reached the point where my hands just won’t do it anymore. I think I’m done for the day.
The progress tally is five songs got all of the rhythm guitar tracks, four got their lead guitar tracks, and one got both. I am leaving things with five songs ready for vocals (car vocals in the morning, maybe?) and four ready to mix. There are seven songs still waiting for rhythm guitar, and one that doesn’t have a song form yet. All of that on top of the 21 that are already mixed and uploaded and counted on the 50/90 site. That puts my current total at 38 out of 50 with a couple of days less than half the project still to go.
Yikes!
I’m going to go make dinner and then play some World of Warcraft with my Bride.
And on an unrelated note, I just read that Don Everly died. Rest in peace, Everly Brother.
I did all the rhythm tracks on three songs and all the leads on four and my hands are done for a while. Time to take a lunch/episode of Titans break and then get back to it.
It’s been almost four months since my love bought me a new Les Paul for my 50th birthday. Today is the first day since then that it got new strings.
Oh and one of the bridge saddles fell off. Super easy fix but when the time comes to upgrade the shit out of this sucker (it has PAF clones in it’s pick ups’ future), I expect I’ll add a bridge to the list. I’ve never looked into upgrading a bridge before. Is there a boutique bridge industry?
Not tonight, my friends, but soon.
Soon.
Inside the Red Head's Head 