I did nothing yesterday. I sort of half heatedly tried to write lyrics but nothing came to me immediately and I stopped trying. That was the extent of my musical adventures yesterday. Sorry. I’m hoping for a big rhythm guitar recording push over the long weekend.
Tag: iPad
RPM Day 14
I had another slow, but not entirely unproductive day yesterday. Song #13 is currently planned as the four part suite I talked about in yesterday’s update. As of right now, parts A, C, and D have been sketched out. A and C are on my iPad, while D is on my iPhone. Again, I love living in the future. B will need to be developed on my MacBook because I want to use a weird time signature and the iOS version of Garageband can’t do that. I haven’t put any guitars onto these projects yet. Maybe tonight or tomorrow I’ll get to that.
I also threw together another new project on my iPhone yesterday morning. The structure is similar to another song that’s in the works, but if I should chose to keep it it will be song #14… which means FAWM could be completed this year. I suppose that technically FAWM is complete now. I have in fact written music for 14 new songs. However, I don’t like to call the challenge complete until I have 14 complete songs, including lyrics and melodies. That’s going to be the hard part this year, even more than usual.
My cold keeps getting worse. I can barely talk right now, never mind sing. I had planned to sneak some singing in here and there in the short space of time between my wife leaving for work and me leaving for work, but we’ve been car pooling on non-kid days. I do have a vacation day scheduled for late in the month. Hopefully I’ll be better by then, but I don’t think recording vocals for 14 songs in one day is really doable.
I’m going to have to figure something out.
RPM Day 13
Hello and welcome to day 13 of the 2013 RPM Challenge. Yesterday was not a complete waste, but it was close. The Bruins played the Rangers and lost in the shootout after a dramatic third period come back. This past weekend’s new episode of The Walking Dead reached iTunes and became available to my season pass. I had to watch that, right?
I did put a little more thought into the idea of a new suite type thingie. When I say “suite” I am thinking of something like “A Day in the Life” where you have a John Lennon song with a bit of a Paul McCartney song shoved into the middle. This time I’m thinking of three song fragments making up four sections of the suite. The A section will be a more or less complete song. I actually wrote something for this last night. It’s slow and riffy In E minor. The B section will be faster and in an odd time signature. I’ll probably do what I always do in this cases and write something in 7/8. I’ll change the key too, probably either A minor or B minor. The C section will be a reprisal of the A section, only shorter. Finally the D section will be something completely unrelated. I’m thinking really, really slow, quiet, as trippy as a non-drug user can make it, and instrumental. It will probably just end up being a long guitar solo. I’m also thinking of maybe going modal for this part. Mixolydian maybe?
Coming up with the B and D sections are my goal for tonight, but we have a few very important personal things to take care of today, so I might have to put it off until tomorrow.
I’m still thinking positive, but at the same time I’ve never had to record a vocal while suffering from a cold. This might all be a waste of time this year. Who knows.
RPM Day 11
It is official… I am a Mac user again! I just opened up this page to write my daily RPM entry and I couldn’t remember the date. I looked down at my task bar, expecting to see the calendar icon with today’s date on it (as I would if I were on a Macintosh) but it wasn’t there. Why wasn’t it there? I’m on a Windows 7 box at work.
Yesterday was mostly spent celebrating my step son’s 10th birthday. He had a party for friends scheduled on Saturday but it was postponed by the blizzard. Yesterday was a little gathering for my and Jen’s families. We had a lot of fun. The niece and nephews are a blast. We were only missing one nephew as my sister had to stay home with him due to a fever. We celebrate his birthday next week though.
There was cake and presents and food and fun and no sign of the RPM challenge other than my guitar sitting there in the living room… throwing off waves and waves of guilt. “You should be playing me,” it was telepathically telling me. “You should be recording rhythm guitar parts right now.” No, I thought back. You are no longer the most important thing in my life like you were in my youth. Now you take a back seat to my family and friends. You are still special, oh Mister Guitar, but you are no longer #1.
That being said, after the party was over and the fun was done, I doodled out another song idea on my iPhone and then recorded the rhythm guitar for that project and two others that were sitting on my iPad. There are still two unfinished things on the iPad, but I am going to scrap them. Considering how bad most of my crap is, these must be really horrible if I am scrapping them so soon.
I currently have nine songs arranged with rhythm guitars recorded, and three sets of phrases that are not yet arranged. That’s 12 potential songs. Two more and I am set to complete FAWM. I just need to write lyrics and melodies and get all of the various into the can, as they say.
There are 17 days left. It should be easy, right?
Did I mention I woke up with another cold this morning?
Time to panic!
RPM Day 10
February ninth was spent up to my elbows in blizzard clean up. I did manage to squeeze one more idea project thingie on my iPad before passing out with snow removal exhaustion. That’s about it. Today will mostly be spent on a certain 10 year old’s family birthday party so I doubt i’ll get much done today. I will just have to crank that much harder to catch up next week.
Still thinking extremely positive.
RPM Day Nine
Last night we were all sitting in the living room. My step son was watching Disney Channel. My step daughter was reading on her iPad. My beautiful wife whom I love with all my heart was playing World of Warcraft. I hadn’t done any musical anything all day so I took out my MacBook Pro and my little USB piano keyboard and threw something together. iOS be damned, right?
The new song contains two of my mini goals for this month. One, the song is in 7/8 time. The prog fan in me feels good about that. Two, there is a drum fill that includes 32nd notes. The iOS version of GarageBand can quantized tracks to 32nd notes but you can’t edit individual notes. That means I have to play it close enough to in time to have the not-quite perfect notes pull to the correct time slot. I often get close to getting fills right, but there are always one or two notes that pull the wrong way. In the Mac version of GarageBand I can shift those notes to the correct time slot without using the quantize function.
I added the new song to the soundcloud playlist I posted yesterday. That makes nine songs in the works and today is still only February 9th.
Thinking and feeling very positive indeed.
RPM Day Eight
The Calendar says it is February 8, 2013 but only by two minutes. It’s just after midnight and I just finished arranging four more song projects (what I am calling my groups of loosely connected ideas) into actual songs (verse chorus verse and what not). I’m up to eight songs and 26 minutes and 41 seconds. Still a ways to go. I started another song project thingie today and added rhythm guitar parts to two of the existing projects. I now have two projects that are not yet ready to be arranged into songs, and that’s it.
The writing goal for RPM is 10 songs or 35 minutes. The writing goal for FAWM is 14 songs. I hope to get somewhere in the vicinity of 14 songs and 40 minutes if I can. Last year I had 15 songs (there was an extra day so FAWM called for 14.5 songs) and I think I used 13 of them in the RPM album. I would like to have enough written to allow for the crappier stuff to be left off the final RPM album again.
Here is a soundcloud playlist with the eight arranged songs, not counting the two verses worth of vocals I added to one of them this morning.
I continue to think positive!
RPM Challenge Day 7
Nothing much new to report. Last night I mentioned finishing one of the unfinished song project thingies and coming up with a possible guitar/vocal only song. That was about it for yesterday.
Beyond that, I did something very unusual for me. This morning before work I wrote and recorded lyrics and melodies for two verses of one of the songs I posted yesterday. Normally I take a day off from work and crank out all of the horrible lyrics and horribler vocals in one day. Telecommuting gives me an hour and a half or so worth of home-alone-before-work time on Thursdays. I only worked for about 20 minutes, but it’s a start.
Still thinking positive.
Oh, and the Bruins beat the Canadiens last night 2-1. Seguin tied it a few seconds into the third period just as I was posting last night, and then shortly after the B’s took the lead for good. I do so love beating the Canadiens.
RPM Day Six
Not much for new material yesterday. I added a little bit to one of the two not quite done ideas. I did manage to take four of the little song projects and try ordering the pieces into actual song structures. Of course I don’t actually like any of them, as usual. I think some of these takes that I thought were acceptable are no longer acceptable. We’ll have to see.
RPM Day Five
Twice yesterday I found myself sitting alone waiting for something and made use of the time by working on new song ideas on my iPhone. One is probably as complete as can be for right now. The other is going to need some more work. On top of that, I snuck in another just-before-bed idea on my iPad, although its not terribly good.
I think that puts me at eight works in progress in only four days. The slow down is going to come, but for now I’m feeling pretty good.
Thinking positive.
Inside the Red Head's Head 