Yesterday I skipped a car music opportunity because it was seven degrees out. Today when the question of to car music or not to car music arose I checked the temperature again. It was eight degrees out. Okay, that’s warm enough. Off we go!
I had six songs queued up to record vocals. I did two. I worked on one, and then ran the heater in the car for a few minutes and worked on the second. My voice was still feeling okay after two songs. The battery on the laptop was still good. I hadn’t been outside for very long so the clock was in good shape. Why did I stop after two? Because sometimes sitting out in the cold has a negative effect on the old bladder. I had to pee. If not for that I might still be out there yelling.
I’m hoping to go out again tomorrow and pick off another couple, and then wrap it up next week. Monday if possible, but I am off work again on Wednesday so maybe wait until then.
Now the obligatory drive-home-through-the-center-of-town pic!
As a bonus, there’s also this picture that was snapped accidentally while trying to open up the camera app.
I did it. I got up early and showered and got dressed and was all ready to grab my lappytop and jump into the car and do some effin’ car music!
“Hey Siri, how’s the weather?” he asked.
“The current temperature is seven degrees. The high today will be 19 degrees and the low will be seven degrees,” Siri replied.
Well screw that! It’s bloody cold out there! I wonder how the forecast for tomorrow morning is looking. I just looked… it’s pretty much the same as today. Crap.
On a not quite related note, the RPM Challenge website used to have a blog section and a forum and it was all replaced by a Discord channel. Discord makes me feel old. You know the stereotype about the old people who are unable or unwilling to embrace new technology? It’s not that I don’t get it, it’s just that I don’t want to. I used to use those ICR boards back in the stone age, and I used the AOL chatrooms before that. Discord feels exactly like them. So it’s not a matter of failing to embrace a new technology, it’s more a matter of not having any interest in re-embracing an ancient one. I guess. I’m trying though.
On a totally unrelated note, Rest in Peace Meat Loaf. My sister had Bat Out of Hell when it was actually current, if you can imagine a world that far in the past. I would occasionally take it for a spin when she wasn’t around.
I didn’t get up until after 7:00 this morning. No car music again. I have six songs that need vocals. I want them all done before February 1st. When I say done I mean vocals, leads, and mix. I don’t want to be thinking about any of these songs when RPM starts. I don’t have any specific plans for RPM yet. I don’t know if I want to do anything special for a theme or anything, or if I just want to write a bunch of new songs.
I didn’t watch Book of Boba Fett yesterday. We’re going to try and do a watch party with Harry tonight. I hope so. Jen and I started the new season of Cobra Kai. They are like 30 minute pieces of candy. We blew through the first three before we even realized it.
The show to watch right now, if you have access to it, is Yellowjackets. My spoiler free review of the first six episodes, which are the only ones I’ve seen so far: WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?????
Just jotting down a gimmick idea for RPM in February….
Write a melody. Sing it on a guide track. Reverse the guide track. On a second track, sing along with the reverse track. Reverse the second track. You now have a backwards vocal track singing the correct melody.
Just a dumb idea I had in the car this morning. Gimmicky, yes, but fun.
Listening to the audio from the Rush Grace Under Pressure Tour video today has had me in the mood to listen to bootlegs of complete shows from that tour.
Here’s a good one:
1984 was memorable for my Rush fandom. I first started listening in 1981, but they slipped the Signals album and tour past me without me being aware. I was 11 years old, so that’s not too surprising. By the time we got to ‘84 I was a complete fanatic and I had run out of records to buy. The Grace Under Pressure album was the first one I had to wait for, and the first one I had my first listens to at the same time as the rest of the cult.
It was also the first time I had knowledge of a tour. They played the Worcester Centrum. I didn’t go, of course, but after the show one local radio station played every song on the set list and I heard a tape of that. As lame as it was, it was still pretty exciting.
So when bootlegs became a thing I could dip my ears into (thank you, internets) I was always kinda drawn to shows from 1984.
Back in 2015 I worked out a song for the RPM Challenge that tricked GarageBand into using different time signatures. It chugs along at 120 beats per minute switching between 7/8, 6/4, and 4/4 like nobody’s business. It was a cool song to play and I had a lot of fun working on it, but it took me a long time to get the rhythm guitars recorded in a way that was good enough to keep.
There was a section in the middle of the song though… 24 bars… written on a keyboard with the tempo set to something much lower than 120 bpm. It was, to my lame ears, a cool break in the middle of the song. Unfortunately I couldn’t play it at 120 bpm on the guitar. It was just too fast for my fat fingers to grasp. I ended up recording it in pieces. Three bars then one bar, repeat six times, then move to a second track and repeat the whole thing. It was pretty brutal to get through.
That was in 2015. One month later I started messing with the idea of a re-recording project. I didn’t get far. Then in 2016 when RPM ended I went back to the re-recording thing and added this particular song to the list. Apparently I forgot about all of the stress it had caused me when I first recorded it.
Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago and the re-recording project finally gets around to this song. I had forgotten everything. I started with the bass and drums and had to remember how to trick GarageBand into using different time signatures (hint: it boils down to math). Then I had to remember how to trick GarageBand into letting me use the Session Drummer with the different time signatures (hint: lots of bouncing segments between two tracks, one of which is not the session drummer). Then last night I took my first crack at adding guitars.
Intro? No problem. Verses? Easy. Chorus? Cake. All the little 1-2 bar bridge sections? No problem. The section in the middle (actually, while working on the MIDI tracks I cut a few sections out of the song. One of them was the last eight bars of the middle section so the 24 bar section is now only 16 bars, dig)? Hello? Anyone?
Could I play it?
Not even close.
While I was struggling last night Harry came home from work so I stopped trying. Today I had a little time to get back to it. I scrapped everything I did yesterday and started fresh, mostly just to build up my confidence. When I got to the middle section I did something unusual. I just sat here at my desk, looking at GarageBand, and practiced. Not for long. Just enough to get it under my fingers, even though it was wrong 90% of the time. Then I split the 16 bars into four, four bar segments and started on the first segment. Remember I double everything, so each four bar segment needs to be done twice. It took me a long time to get the first one. The second track went a little quicker. Same with segment two. For segment three, it took a lot longer to get the first track, but the second track was nailed in one take! WOOHOO! Of course that just jinxed me for the rest and I needed like 10-15 tries for each piece.
The end result though… I have the full 16 bars, twice. Kick ass! The punches were nice and clean too, so I can’t even tell that it was recorded in pieces. It just sounds like I am actually able to play the guitar like a big boy and I just did it. Nice.
Wow… I wrote a lot about this stupid little song.
Guitar pictures to celebrate my being able to pretend I don’t suck quite as bad as I clearly do!
I also retired a pick today, and the battery on my clip on tuner is about to die. That’s all the news that is fit to print.
