20 songs down. 40% of the project is complete.
I told you I was going to mix a song tonight.
Here it is:
I still have five minutes of “exercise” to do, and then maybe I’ll try to sleep. It’s 11:06 and all is quiet on the parental front. Fingers crossed.
It’s in 5/4 time so it’s prog, right? That’s all you need? An odd time signature? That’s the rules?
Today’s 50/90 progress was impressive (to no one on Earth but me). Four vocals, one rhythm guitar, five lead guitars, and one mix…
Today was the listening party for the RPM Challenge’s Record Every Month thing. I forgot to submit a song back in June, and I forgot again for July. Sorry. This song here was written and recorded entirely in August so that means I am still up to date on R.E.M. even though I haven’t submitted a couple of times. I have written and recorded at least one song each month since the challenge started in March.
As for 50/90, 17 songs down and 33 to go.
I spent a solid 90 minutes tracking guitars today and I feel a tiny bit better about the state of the world right now. Granted a tiny bit better than OH MY GOD WE’RE TOTALLY DOOMED AND NOTHING WILL EVER BE RIGHT AGAIN is… well… relative, dig?
I put rhythm guitars onto one song as a bit of a warm up and then went nuts doing leads. Five songs. The four that got vocals this morning and one more that was left over from last time I did leads.
My finger tips are killing me right now. I really need the band to get back together so I can get my fingers into regular shape again.
Here’s another new song. This one is better than most if not all of the others. At least I think so right now. I’ll likely change my mind later.
Both of my parents are asleep. They both fell asleep with a TV on. Dad is in the living room. I need to sleep in the living room. I can’t find the remote. I think he might be laying on it. I can’t sleep with headphones on. Insert the sigh of frustration here. At least he got up and walked around on his own, including a trip to the bathroom. No assistance from me was needed at all. That is huge. Super huge. What a relief.
Granted, he fell asleep with the news on, and this network ran the same 30 minute news program at 9:00, 9:30, and 10:00. I think I am going to hear the same things maybe five times before the talk shows come on. Gross.
15 songs down, 35 to go. I have a sneaking suspicion that I have written this one twice. There’s another 50/90 song that I am really afraid to play back to back with this one. Oh well.
I put rhythm guitar on two songs and leads on two more. Not bad considering I didn’t even have a musical thought until 9:00pm. The leads came easy tonight, which is nice. The rhythm tracks came harder than they should have given how easy the parts were, but it is okay. My shiny new Les Paul could probably benefit from new strings though. Weekend plans.
The guitar was played tonight. Slight mental health improvement. Every little bit helps.
Harry is out of the house right now. I’m exhausted like you wouldn’t believe but I really want to be awake when he gets in so I am trying to do stuff to keep my brain functioning.
July is going to end in 90 minutes. That seems like a good time to give a quick summary of the 50/90 project. Today is day 27. How am I doing?
I have 13 songs finished and listed on my account page. There are another 12 songs in progress. Three are ready for vocal tracking, and I am hoping to do some car music in the morning. Of the other nine, the only recording that has been done so far is bass and drums, which are done on the computer. Based on that you could make the argument that no actual recording has been done at all. Whatever. Six of those nine songs do have lyrics and a melody already written out. I usually don’t start working on that until the rhythm guitars are down, but with all of the trips to my parents house, I haven’t had as much guitar time as I would like and I have had to do things out of the normal order.
50/3=16.66666667. Fifty songs, three calendar months, that means 16 and 2/3 songs per month, right? I like to break it down to 16 in July (because the challenge starts on July 4th so it misses out on three days and is therefore shorter than the other two months), 17 in August, and 17 in September. I’m at 25 right now. I would say that I am ahead of the pace.
Not bad, Robert. Not bad at all. The question is, can I keep it up? We shall see, Robert. We shall see.
Car music in the morning. It’s a moral imperative.
Dusty Hill, the bass player from ZZ Top died. I cannot say that I was ever a ZZ Top fan, but I can say that I have been thinking about them a bit lately.
ZZ Top to me was the awful cartoonish characters from the ’80s. The beards, the terrible videos, the over produced synthed up crappy songs. I had no interest at all. The small number of earlier song that I knew were okay. Tush (which Lizardfish was playing when I joined), and Cheap Sunglasses were good songs. There were a couple of others that I liked too. They were really just a blues band, which might be why I was so put off in the 80s, but I think maybe they were a little too Texas and not enough Chicago for me. I never really thought of it that way before, but that might be exactly it.
Over the last few months I have been wondering to myself if I should go and give their first few records a try. The main reason being my recent obsession with cool guitar gear. That’s kind of embarrassing to say out loud, but there it is. ZZ Top’s guitar player, Billy Gibbons, is a Les Paul guy. He’s known for playing a 1959 Standard that he named Pearly Gates (apparently after the car he was driving when he went to pick it up? Is that true?). Seymour Duncan sells a set of pick ups called Pearly Gates that are supposed to be cloned from the PAFs in Gibbons’ Les Paul. Hearing other people talk about his guitar and the gear based on his guitar, and knowing that they weren’t absurd comic characters in the 70’s, and also knowing that the band existed for over 50 years without ever having a line up change (which is pretty amazing), has been making me think that their first 2-3 records might be worth a listen.
And then yesterday it was announced that Dusty Hill died. I gave Cheap Sunglasses a spin in the car on the way to work today in his memory. There was a quote from Billy Gibbons saying that Hill wanted the band to continue without him and they will honor that request. So I guess they will finally have that line up change after all. Maybe I’ll give Tres Hombres a spin today too. Maybe it’s worth it for this Chicago (albeit via London) blues fan to dip his toe into some Texas for a bit.
Rest in Peace, Dusty Hill. Someday when my band gets back together I’ll see if they want to play Cheap Sunglasses.
Inside the Red Head's Head 