Tag: Music

2026 RPM Challenge Day 2/28

My arm feels so much better today. 90% better. Maybe even 95% better. I think I’m going to be okay to play the guitar again. Assuming we don’t get more snow in the immediate future and I screw myself up again. We’ll see.

I added three songs worth of bass riffs and drum parts yesterday. It’s all just MIDI at this point and there are no arrangements or song forms or anything. Just riffs. Nothing to write home about yet. I’m up to four total. All four are in different time signatures (4/4, 7/8, 9/8, 3/4) and I’ve only repeated a key signature once (A minor, B minor, and two in E minor… I’m totally a guitar player).

I have a sneaking suspicion that some of the songs will be on the really long side this year, but I almost always have that suspicion and they generally barely hit three minutes. We’ll have to see how things play out. I also want to follow a similar plan as last year’s RPM Challenge where I played more acoustic guitar than usual, and I played a little saxophone. I’d like to do those two things again, but given my time constraints this year (and the fact that there are more people living in the house this year) I might just stick to electric guitar and headphone amps.

As far as lyrics go… I haven’t written anything yet but it’s safe to say that a running theme might be something like fuck fascists. You know… the usual.

So that’s where we stand after two days. Hopefully I’ll be able to carve out some time to make a little progress today on day three.

2026 RPM Challenge Day 1/28

So I have this arm injury thing right now. I think it’s going to be okay. I am way better today than yesterday, and yesterday was better than the day before. I just haven’t been able to play guitar at all because I haven’t been able to move my arm. I think that by the time the RPM Challenge will require me to record guitar tracks I will be well enough to get by, but the idea of this whole thing crashing and burning before I even start is a real thing.

On top of the injury, I am traveling for the entire last week of February. That means that all of my tracking needs to be done before I leave home on February 22nd. I can make time for mixing while I’m on the road, but not for recording. This year’s project is under a serious time crunch. I don’t think a double album is in the cards this time around. I think I might just get to 10 songs or 35 minutes (the minimum requirements for success) and stop. We’ll have to see.

Day one was yesterday and I noodled out some MIDI bass and drums for one song idea. I have a weird sort of theme in mind as far as song forms and arrangements go. Nothing stylistically or lyrically or anything like that. Just an idea of how I want verses and choruses to be related. This first song idea fits that theme. Other than that, nothing to report on day one.

Let’s hope my left arm starts playing along soon. I don’t want to break my streak of success. I’ve pulled this off every year since 2012 and I really don’t want to stop now.

Bobby Whitlock

Another Domino falls? Derek and the Dominoes keyboard player, harmony vocalist, and more often than not co-writer Bobby Whitlock passed away at the age of 77.

Duane Allman, Carl Radle, Tom Dowd, Jim Gordon, and now Bobby Whitlock. Everyone who had anything to do with Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs except Eric Clapton is gone.

This makes me sad. Rest in peace, Bobby Whitlock. One of the most soulful voices I’ve ever had the good fortune to hear.

Ozzy

Ozzy Osbourne passed away this morning. Go and give your favorite Black Sabbath records a spin. I’ve already gone through Paranoid and Master of Reality. It occurred to me that the first time I ever heard Children of the Grave was while watching the live broadcast of Live Aid. The anniversary of that was just the other day. Small world.

I was going to post a clip of that song, but Sweet Leaf is just better.

2025 50/90 Challenge Day 1/90

Today is July 4th. While that means something to the nation formerly known as the US it now just means that it is the first day of the 50 Songs in 90 Days Challenge. Welcome!

I would link to the 50/90 website but apparently it no longer exists. I guess 50/90 as an organized thing is over? Sure looks that way. I’ll still try it on my own though. There are 90 days between July 4th and October 1st. During that stretch of time I plan to write 50 songs… because I am an insane.

It’s after 11:00pm now. We just came home from watching fireworks up in Derry, NH. Do I have a 50/90 recap? Why yes, yes I do.

There are two songs in the pipeline. One has the full song form and the MIDI bass and drums done. The other is just three loose fitting eight-bar phrases.

That’s it. Two songs under way. Come back again tomorrow and see if I made any additional progress. One day down, 89 to go!

Tired Afternoon

I stayed up too late last night and now I am tired. That’s how it works for all of us, but it seems to be a bigger issue for folks who are old like me. I am going to have a birthday in a couple of weeks and I’m going to be 54. Wait… really? How is that possible? I know in the grand scheme of things that 54 isn’t that bad, I mean it’s not 80 or anything, but damn… I was 27 a few days ago. Wasn’t I?

What was I writing about?

Oh yeah, I am tired. It seems somehow worse than that though as I didn’t have time to follow any news yesterday and today I got caught up on the collapse of civilization. So RFK wants to create a autism database or some shit? Hmmm… didn’t the nazis do that with mental illnesses? Yeah, something like that. No surprise that we’re resurrecting that particular evil, but there you go. That on top of prison time without due process and willfully collapsing the economy in order to scam a couple of bucks off the rubes. Yeah. Are we great again? Maybe I’ll open up a new Signal chat and ask about it.

Ugh. Here’s a cat:

If the cat didn’t temporarily straighten out your soul, maybe a song will help:

Friday at Last

Work has been good this week. No disasters, no scary moments. I did get a call from a customer (service programmers, like me, are not supposed to get calls directly from customers) but I was able to help the guy and it actually felt pretty good. Nope, this past week was a good week at work.

It was the rest of civilization that blew chunks. My wife and I agreed when we discussed it last night that this week has been the longest six months of our lives.

I need to do something creative this weekend. I NEED TO. Photography. Let’s go out and snap some pictures! Let’s play with the new long lens I bought a few months ago. Let’s play with the 120 film camera I bought a few months ago. Let’s go to the ocean and watch the sunrise and shoot all sorts of good stuff. Of course we should check the weather first… snow and rain today and tomorrow and rain on Sunday. Well you can just bite me, mother nature.

Music it is then! Guitar! I will play guitar this weekend if it kills me! I don’t know if we’re going to have a band practice or not. I’ll post something to our messenger thread later today (when it’s not pre-8:00am so that the other three guys don’t think I am weird and obsessed or anything) and see what’s up. If not then I need to find something else to do.

I do not want this weekend to be spent doom scrolling news sites and reading stories about the collapse of american democracy that will build up inside of me until I have a stroke. No. That would be bad, even if it is more or less inevitable. I must play guitar! I! Must! Play! Guitar!