Tag: Music

And I’m Spent

To quote the great Austin D. Powers, International Man of Mystery, when he finishes a photo shoot, “and I’m spent.”

I already wrote how I spent my lunch break cranking out vocal tracks. Tonight Jen and I had dinner and watched the girl from LA Story break up with the boy from Northern Exposure* and then she went off to the World of Warcraft and I went to the world of shitty guitar playing and shittier song writing.

I spent about two hours recording and was so into it that I forgot to eat anything ahead of tonight’s intermittent fasting time, or drink anything. I’m already hungry and I’m so dehydrated I have a sore throat.

I didn’t finish everything on my plate, but I did a ton. I put leads on the Record Every Month song. It’s ready to mix now. I put leads on the final re-recording vol. 5 song. It too is ready to mix. I put leads onto one vol. 6 song, and put leads and rhythm onto two more. All three are now ready to mix.

There was one more vol. 6 song ready for leads but I was so fried that I could barely move my fingers. I’m also not mixing anything tonight. My ears are toast too.

The four vol. 6 songs are all from before I started using GarageBand. Two of them are from the first RPM Challenge I did after moving into Chez Duplex with Jen. I didn’t finish the challenge on time, but I did finish it a couple of months late. There were only two songs worth listening to that year and I worked on new versions of both of them tonight. How’s that for nerd nostalgia? Is your heart feeling all warm and fuzzy now? Awwww.

*Sex and the City

Coming Home Tomorrow

My step son is coming home tomorrow. Have I mentioned that? Do you/they know it’s christmas time at all?

Jen just came into my bedroom/office/work nook and said that to her, today feels like Friday. It was a great minds think alike moment because I had been thinking the same thing all day. It’s only Wednesday but it totally feels like Friday. That’s going to make the next two days suck. I checked my work schedule tomorrow and it’s blank. I don’t have any meetings booked at all. It’s almost creepy.

My christmas wrapping is almost done. Did I mention that? I’ve still got a couple of things on the way (package delivery, a symptom of ‘Covid Christmas Too’) but as of now, everything I have to wrap is wrapped… and there are still 10 days left until christmas. That is also almost creepy.

I was going to do car music this morning, but I didn’t. I did a couple of errands instead. I snaked the drain like a faux plumber. As it turned out, I was able to sneak in everything I had left to do during lunch. You may have noticed that there wasn’t a lunch break blog post (no you didn’t. No one did. No one should). Two songs need both rhythm and lead guitar parts. Four just need lead guitar. Two more are already ready to mix. Music, ya know?

Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden has a podcast. World class fencer, airline pilot, novelist, metal god. The dude has range. It’s called Psycho Schizo Espresso. It’s Bruce and a psychologist talking about stuff. Okay, I’ll give it a spin.

Four minutes until the work day ends. Fingers crossed nothing comes my way during those four minutes, because I am cooking dinner tonight and the oven is already pre-heated. Chicken and Quinoa. They should call Chicken and Quinoa, ‘The Robert’ because it’s pretty much the only dish I am capable of making.

Three minutes to go…

Okay, clicking Publish now.

Peak Music Nerd

I wanted to record some guitars tonight but I didn’t. Given the choice between guitar and hanging out with my wife there was no choice. She wins.

I was thinking of car music tomorrow. I had two songs ready to sing and I was hoping to get them tracked before my step son comes home on Thursday. I want to be able to hang out with him and start trying to find the elusive christmas spirit without having recording thoughts nagging me from the back of my skull. So car music tomorrow, finish off the two songs that are ready to go and maybe sneak in some lead guitar tomorrow night and that should hold me for a couple of weeks.

Then I nerd leveled up like you’ve read about.

I had the bass and drums done for another re-recording. Well tonight, sitting up in bed and avoiding the sleep I very much need, I put a MIDI guitar track down to use as a guide so when I do the car music tomorrow I can put vocals on this puppy too. How lame is that. A re-recording getting vocals before the rhythm guitars are recorded? That’s unheard of. It’s down right blasphemous.

But wait, there’s more.

Once I was done with that lame guide track, I took another song from the to do list and put together the drums and the bass and a guide fake guitar for that one too. Now I have four songs to sing tomorrow. Even more, I edited the arrangement for this fourth song pretty seriously. Also, I rewrote a chunk of the lyrics. What the hell am I doing? Go to bed! You’re not going to be able to record vocals for four songs tomorrow, you’re just torturing your musical nerd self! Stop it!

So I guess the question then, as the clock approaches 11:00pm, is whether or not I get out of bed early enough to do this tomorrow.

We’ll see.

Sleep Failure

Did I have a crummy night’s sleep last night or what?

I went to bed at midnight. Woke up at 1:00. Woke up again at 2:00. Woke up at 3:50 and could not get back to sleep. I bet I dozed off a little at a time without realizing it, but I know I saw the clock hit 4:40 before I really went under again.

My back was really sore and I couldn’t get comfortable. My arms kept going numb from laying on my side. I mean, my arms were just showing off. Look, jerk, we can go to sleep. Why can’t the rest of you? Ugh.

My CPAP mask kept feeling like it was losing it’s seal. I don’t think it actually was, but during the rare times when I was asleep I was drooling like a fooling and the mask was sliding around all over the place and it was driving me nuts.

At about 6:30 I gave up and got up. I took the trash to the street and I did my whole morning routine and I did car music. Just two songs. The one song I have for Record Every Month, and the last song I had for Quarantine volume 5.

I’m leaving work a couple of hours early today, but I have meetings pretty much for the whole rest of the day. It’s going to be a busy Tuesday. I expect by the time the day ends I am going to be wishing I had a good night’s sleep, right?

New Song Alert

Not really a new song. More like a new recording of a song from the summer, but it does have a new melody. I liked this song enough to included in the batch of 50/90 songs being redone, but I can’t tell if I like it because it’s good or just because it’s fun to just blow all over the ending. I’m thinking I like it for the jam factor. Whatever.

The lyrics in the verses and the chorus are haiku because I am incapable of original thinking.

I’m planning on car music tomorrow. Fingers crossed. I have so much more of this crap to share with you, gentle readers. Huzzah and shit!

Nothing This Morning

No car music this morning. The extra hour of sleep I got by staying in bed was necessary and very welcome. I’m hoping to have the four songs I have left to do tracked by Thursday. I don’t know if there are enough hours in the days, but there are only 12 days left until Christmas and I want to be able to stop foolishly focusing my limited brain power on such foolish things and get on with the season.

On a happy note, the first kid to come home for Christmas will be arriving on Thursday. Assuming everything goes to plan, of course. That makes me very happy.

Right then, on with Monday.

No New Songs Tonight

I wrote lyrics and a melody for December’s song and made sure I had all of the lyrics I needed for the re-recordings so I’m set for Monday morning car music.

I brought up a song that’s ready to mix, but changed my mind. I’m feeling a little brain fried tonight. I’ll try again tomorrow night. We will see.

Headache and Finger Pain

Right now on this fine Sunday afternoon I have myself a bit of a headache and my finger tips are hurting. What could it mean?

Well the headache is a common side effect of singing. I can sing, but as far as voice technique is concerned I can’t sing, and the result of attempts at singing are often headaches and scratchy throats and lots of coughing. Note, it is not Covid. Thank you.

The finger tip pain is a common side effect of not being in good guitar playing shape and over doing it. If you don’t play enough you don’t build up tough calluses and playing just starts to hurt. The upside is that playing through some hand pain is how you actually build up those calluses so, you take the good with the bad.

All of this means that today has been a huge musical day for me. I mentioned earlier that I put vocals on three songs. That was this morning. This afternoon I have gone a little bonkers on guitar. I came up with an idea for a song for December and I put all of the rhythm guitars onto that. Then I put rhythm guitars onto a re-recording thing that I started messing with yesterday. The original dates back to February of 2009 (I think) and I think I could play faster and more aggressively back then because this stupid little ditty seriously kicked my ass today. Ouch. After that I put leads on all three songs that got vocals this morning and now my hands and my head and my ears are all nice and sweetly toasted. Ouch, babie. Ouch.

I might try to mix one or two later tonight, but I doubt it. My ears are telling me they are done. I do need to come up with a bass part for the December song as well as lyrics and a melody so that I can add it to the list of car music tunes for tomorrow… assuming I can get my shit together to do car music tomorrow. I now have four songs lined up. One for December, one for quarantine volume five and two for quarantine volume six.

Could I be a bigger nerd?

Guitar pics, because today is #Gibsunday and stuff.

Sunday Singing in the Car

I had five songs ready to sing and this morning, sitting in the car in an empty parking lot, I finished three of them. I was hoping to get at least one more of them in but my voice was feeling shot and I got a call from work, so I figured it was time to wrap it up. Christmas is going to start getting in the way of this stuff so I need to get as much done as I can as quickly as I can. That means there will probably be more car music tomorrow. We’ll see.

A little different obligatory drive home pic. The stop lights aligned in such a way as to stop me right in front of our awesome library.