One Room to Rule Them All

Our dining room and kitchen are both moving into the living room. It’s weird.

Swanky

My company has a swank auditorium. Jealous?

Caught Up

It’s a work in the office day today so my morning is all messed up.

I did manage to get caught up on Star Wars: The Bad Batch though. Sigh of relief, kiddos.

I also have a photo-a-day pic, but only because I know I’m not likely to make any progress on the RPM Challenge today.

Working in the office tends to mangle my plans for the full day, not just the morning. Worse? Starting next week I’ll be in the office twice a week instead of once. Insert the sigh of frustration here.

My Guitar is Home

I just got home from picking up my Gibson ES-335 from the guitar shop. I played it a little while I was there and my happy is happy.

I’ll post pictures later. I don’t have time to take any right now. Happy New Frets/Bridge/Nut/Volume Pot day!

Driving Out to Car Music

I don’t think I’ve ever used Flickr to host a video here. Does it work? I had this idea of a post about me driving somewhere for some early morning car music today but then I didn’t post it until I got home after finishing the car music. Oh well.

I put vocals on four songs today. That means there are only five songs left to write and record the vocal parts for. 15 songs have their vocal tracks finished. Excellent!

No pics of the clock downtown today. I didn’t take the long way home, I took the fastest route possible. There are tons of things going on today and I didn’t want to delay my return home for even a minute or two.

Things unrelated to music projects that were in the planning, semi-hypothetical stage 24 hours ago have ramped up to the imminent and stressful stage. Bring it on! Roll with the changes, as the song goes.

Happy Panic Day

Today is February 20th. For me, personally, in RPM Challenge terms, the 20th is officially the day that I start to panic. Enjoy!

The 20th is the day where the end suddenly feels very close. We get an extra day this year, thank you leap year, so it’s not quite as bad as usual, but I definitely feel a sudden need to get off my ass and get shit done. I have nine days left after today. I need to get busy.

I put rhythm guitars onto one song and lead guitars onto another this morning before work. My playing was terrible. Absolutely awful. I am so rusty it’s silly, and what playing I have done in the last couple of weeks has not been enough to shake off any of that rust. I feel like I am getting worse… probably because I am.

Where do we stand with the album in a month project as a whole? There are 20 songs in the pipeline. I have not mixed anything yet, so no songs are 100% finished. Six have been completely recorded and are ready to mix. Five have their vocals done and are ready for lead guitars. Two have lyrics and melodies written and are ready for vocals. Five have rhythm guitars done and are ready for lyrics and melodies. Finally, two have their song forms worked out and are ready for rhythm guitars. In addition, the song that I put the rhythm guitar tracks on this morning needs to have the bass guitar (MIDI) rewritten because the bass and the guitar don’t really work well together. I need to change something so they lock in. That sort of goes against the RPM Challenge ethos (is that the right word?) as I don’t like going back and redoing anything. It takes time that I don’t have. In this case though, it sounds worse than dog shit so I have to change the bass.

There you have it. The state of the RPM Challenge project at this point in time. The minimum goal is 10 songs or 35 minutes of music. I am shooting for 20 songs, and then I’ll pick the 10 best and use them as the album I “submit” to the RPM website. Just as a heads up for the future, I really don’t think there are any good songs this year. The best of the best is very much meh. This is not going to be a good album. It’s feeling like my worst ever. Blah, indeed.

Logically I think I am an a good place to finish everything off by midnight on March 1st. Logic does not really apply here though, so my feeling is that I am currently buried under an avalanche of things still to finish. Oh good.

Anyway, here are a few pics that I took as I was listening to a playback of a terrible sounding guitar solo this morning. Ugh.

I’ve used my Les Paul Custom for every note of guitar that I have recorded this month. There’s a good chance that everything I put down after I get home from the guitar shop tomorrow will be played on my ES-335. We’ll see. I might sneak my Les Paul Standard into a few things too, if I can.

Back to Work

My long weekend is over. I am back to work. Today is Tuesday but it totally feels like Monday. Bring on the confusion!

I have a coworker here at my work from home desk. She’s a little bit of a distraction, but she sleeps pretty much all day long so I won’t be distracted for long.

Special Sauce?

I’m cooking dinner. It’s another Dinnerly.com meal.

The instructions just had me make what appears to be McDonald’s Big Mac Special Sauce.

Are we going to be sued?

New Ottoman Day

Do you like it? I like it. I had to screw the legs on, but otherwise it came assembled. Thankfully.

The cats were fascinated by the construction process.

On an unrelated cat note, I caught both cats sitting in the little house on the new cat tree. Both of them!

It’s hard to see, but Lilly is definitely in there

My Finger Tips Hurt Again

Two days in a row. I’ve played guitar two days in a row. It feels good, except for my very sore, callus-free fingers. Ouch, babie.

I worked on four songs. I put rhythm tracks onto two songs and leads onto two others. All of that plus the four vocals this morning makes it a pretty good day, RPM Challenge wise. I have a lot more that I need to get to today though. With tomorrow being a vacation day for me, I want to do more vocals in the car in the morning. I don’t have any songs that are ready for that yet, so I want to try and write lyrics for 3-4 songs before bed.

In closing, the obligatory pics. This time with Hipstamatic and shake-to-shuffle.