Tag: Music

Remember That Thing?

Hey, remember when I used to post about writing shitty songs all the time? The Red Sox have totally distracted me from all of that.

I need to write at least one song this month and tonight in my baseball induced misery I wrote the melody and the lyrics for a new song. Aren’t you proud of me? Aren’t you sad that I’m posting about shitty music again? Yeah, sorry about that.

Car music in the morning?

When I sat down to write this literary masterpiece of a blog post I put the Bruins game on the radio. They were losing to Philly, 4-3 in the third. Almost immediately after I started listening, Philly scored to pad the lead to 5-3.

Sports wise, this is just not my night.

Missed a Chance

I feel like I missed a chance tonight. I didn’t play guitar even though I had plenty of time to. I just popped an episode of The Walking Dead on Netflix and flaked. I shouldn’t have done that. I should have been productive. I still haven’t even finished my exercise for the day. I am at 17 minutes. 13 minutes to go. Why am I sitting here talking to all of you when I should be walking?

It’s gonna be a late night, but at least I get to watch the scene where Dale argues to save Randal’s life*.

*The Walking Dead, season two episode 11 Judge Jury and Executioner. Season two isn’t the best season**, but Jeffrey DeMunn kicked this episode’s ass.

**Get back in the damn house, Carl!

Two Notes

Two notes as I get ready for bed on a Saturday night.

First, game three of the Red Sox/Rays ALDS series is tomorrow at 4:00. I really thought Tampa Bay was going to sweep us, but last night the offense and the bullpen pulled out an impressive win. We need more of that tomorrow. We have a chance to close out the series without leaving Fenway. Sounds good to me.

Second, one of my neighbors is having a party with insanely loud music that is making my skin crawl. Where is Lizardfish when we need some massive volume to drown out the lame noise?

Pep Band

We found out yesterday that Harry has joined the UVM pep band that plays at hockey games.

I also found out that the athletic director responsible for my boycotting UMass Lowell athletics is no longer the athletic director.

I’m going to have to drill Harry on attendance and social distance policies and Covid safety at UVM games because of this:

I would LOVE to go and hear Harry play, even if I am secretly rooting for the other team.

Thursday Morning Hype

Game one of the Red Sox/Rays Division Series is tonight at 8:00ish. Are we psyched? Are we hyped? You know it. The Rays were the best team in the American League this year and the chances of us taking them out are slim to none. No negativity from me though, if any team can take those Floridians out it’s us. The whole team has already had Covid, so we don’t even have to worry about them waging biological warfare or anything crazy like that. I mean, we know how much Florida loves spreading the Covid, right*?

I did a little music today before work. Are you proud of me? I didn’t actually play guitar, I just redid some midi tracks on a GarageBand file for the re-recording thing. I redid all of the drums and bass tracks for one song from the summer. I now have three of those songs patiently waiting for new guitar tracks, and one new song patiently waiting as well. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe this weekend. Someday. Soon.

Okay, folks. Back to work with all of you. Stop surfing around the internet reading boring old people’s brain droolings.

11 hours to game time! Go Red Sox!

*This is sarcasm. The Red Sox’s Covid outbreak recently was awful and dangerous and nothing to laugh at. Also, the Florida state government’s insulting response to Covid is nothing to laugh about. The governor of Florida seems to think the best way to drum up support for a run for president in 2024 is to let as many of his constituents die of an easily preventable disease as possible.

Ancient Pedal

I added some pedals to the little “board” in my bedroom recording nook. Pardon the dust in the photos:

The little blue Blooze Maker has been in and out of this signal chain. I like using it to push the Ryra, but not when the Ryra is pushing anyone else. The little gold guy is a very cheap Chinese copy of an MXR Phase 90 that I bought years ago when I wanted to have the cheapest possible stay at home setup. That only lasted as long as it took me to start upgrading stuff on the band board. Then I had higher end stuff staying at home and this little guy went into a box in the cellar. I could have pulled the actual Phase 90 off the band board, which is in the cellar waiting for the band to start playing again, but I decided I didn’t want to mess with that setup right now so I put the cheap copy into the chain.

What’s that little black pedal there though… that’s one we probably haven’t ever seen.

That, my friends is the first delay pedal I ever purchased. I can’t for the life of me remember when I purchased it, but I’m pretty sure it was in the early 90’s. It was very late in 1990 when everything I had was stolen so it had to have been after that. I think it might have been almost immediately after that. I’m just not sure. I don’t know if it works or not. When I plugged it in and switched it on the little red light lit up, so it’s gotten that far. I haven’t played through it yet. We’ll have to see what happens.

Now I just need to actually play. Not sure if that is going to happen tonight. If not, then hopefully tomorrow. We’ll see.

Yes – The Quest, Partial Review

I’m listening to the new Yes record, The Quest. The first Yes record made without Chris Squire.

Track one is good. Everything else… sigh. It’s better than the last record, Heaven and Earth. That album was just boring. I couldn’t listen to it in one sitting. It was just lifeless dull nothing all the way through. (Oddly, that record is no longer on Apple Music or Spotify)

This one is better, but not by much. It opens well but steadily becomes more pointless as the cuts roll past. It’s just a wash of dull.

It’s not a total loss, which is nice, but it’s yet another collection that does nothing but gouge away at the band’s legacy. My advice is to just stop. Please, let it end mercifully. Just stop.

New Music Project?

I’ve been thinking about a new music project, but the idea is pretty lame and I am waffling back and forth on whether to do it or not.

It is unofficially called Quarantine Tunes Volume 50/90. The idea is to make some mostly minor changes to some of the better songs from the summer and work them into what passes for an album for me. In other words, slightly better sounding demoes that don’t involve any cutting and pasting.

I picked ten songs. Four of them are pretty decent, the others are okay I guess. Last night I listened through them all and took notes on what little changes I want to try. Today I started messing with the first of the ten. I used the same GarageBand file I used back in July but I replaced the drummer and the bass tracks with brand new takes. The bass part is free of all cut and paste. I will eventually redo every guitar and vocal track as well and then do a whole new mix.

The question that remains is this: How long is this idea going to hold my interest. I suspect not for long.

iPad Multitask

I just used the iPad’s multitask function for the first time. I was taking notes on songs I might want to re-record. Chrome was open on the left half of my screen, playing tracks from alonetone.com, while Trello was open on the right so I could add a comment to each song’s card.

It was so cool it literally changed my life.*

* #sarcasm