Just when you thought it was safe to come to this page without being inundated with soul crushingly boring discussions about mind numbingly bad music…
I recorded some guitar today. I snuck it in before I left for work. Nothing special, no doubling, no multiple amps. I didn’t even use any pedals, just straight into the amp. I can almost hear r/guitarpedals screaming in horror from here.
In March of 2014, after finishing my February RPM album, I started an album-in-a-month thing. I didn’t finish. In April I started another one, even though March was still out there. I didn’t finish that one either. In May I finished both March and April. In June I started another one and finished it (yay). In July, August, and September I did the 50 songs in 90 days challenge, and in the process completed an album-in-a-month each month. In October I took a break and did half an album-in-a-month. In November I did NaSoAlMo… an album-in-a-month. In December I started one but somehow lost more than half of my GarageBand files and ended up with a little less than half an album-in-a-month.
So… when I woke up this morning, a telecommute day, I looked over at the corner of my room where all of my gear is still set up and thought to myself…
Could I be that dumb again?
I don’t know. Maybe. First I have a new episode of Star Trek Picard to watch. Priorities, kids… priorities.
Okay, I went to youtube looking for more Mission of Burma and found these two. The anniversary is in a couple of weeks so it’s fitting.
The two farewell shows at the Bradford Hotel, March 12, 1983.
The afternoon show:
The evening show:
This just came up in my this-day-in-history thing and I’m re-posting it because it’s awesome, even if it doesn’t sound all that perfect.
This song ended up as a B-side. I would have made it an A-side and track one on the album because it is awesome. I think I said that already.
Mission of Burma doing Here it Comes, about 10 years ago…..
…and with that, it’s all done.
After all the talking about saxophones I only ended up using three of the seven songs I played it on. Five of the seven acoustic songs made it to the album, but I used the band mix on two of them.
I needed 10 songs and I ended up using 13. I still feel iffy about a couple of them. Maybe I should have stuck to just 10. The running time is supposed to be 35 minutes and I ended up with a little more than 43. I never gave that much thought this year though as I knew I was going to have way more than 10 songs to work with.
Do I like this album? As of right now, I kinda do. Ask me again in a couple of days and I’ll probably vomit on you (figuratively). Does it feel like an “Album”? No. It feels like a disjointed mess, but I knew it would. As soon as I came up with the idea of making the album one part electric and one part acoustic I knew it would feel sloppy.
Speaking of sloppiness, I lowered my standards for the minimum level of performance required for one of these projects. There is a lot of less than wonderful guitar playing and some down right shitty singing. The sax playing was going to be bad even at its best. You can’t take seven years off from an instrument and then suddenly play like John Coltrane… not that I ever played like John Coltrane, of course. I’m literally being figurative here, not literal.
Anyway, here it is in all it’s messy glory:
I usually wait a week or two before uploading my finished RPM album to bandcamp, but I was up early today and figured what the hell.
Over the last few years I have been creating a separate playlist on alonetone to hold all of the songs that I cut. Those songs usually don’t go to bandcamp. Last year I didn’t cut anything and had enough for two full records, so everything went.
This year I had five acoustic songs that went on the final album and each one had an alternate mix that I think was good enough to use, and at one point I thought about putting them both on the final album. Instead I decided to use them as the first half of the second playlist and to include that second playlist on bandcamp.
I uploaded those first so that the “real” album would show up as the most recent.
Here it is:
The first five songs are alternate mixes of songs on the actual RPM album. The next five are songs that I dropped, three electric and two acoustic. I put the preferred mix of the acoustic song first. The last two songs are the non-preferred mix of the dropped acoustic songs.
Here’s one of the songs I finished today. I started this a day or two before we left for Florida but I never got a chance to add the guitars. I was able to carve out enough time to do it today.
It’s goofy… I own three Gibson guitars. This song used them all. The rhythm guitar is my 1979 ES 335 Pro, the melody/solo coming mostly out of your left speaker is my 2018 SG Standard, and the melody/solo coming mostly out of your right speaker is my 1978 Les Paul Custom.
Silly, but fun.
I took a picture of each guitar too but one of them didn’t make it to Flickr and I don’t know why. It’s on my phone, but my phone is in the other room so you’ll just have to wait.
I am finished with my 2020 RPM Challenge album with 63 minutes to spare. Kick ass, dudes!
I ended up with 18 songs, seven of which had two mixes. I was going to go with half electric and half acoustic or something, and maybe have the alternate mixes as their own thing. In the end I just listed to each song and put each one onto one of three lists: Good, kinda good, crap. The good list had 13 songs, kinda good had three, and crap had two. I then listened to both mixes of any acoustic songs on the good list and decided which mix I liked better. I was a little surprised that some of the cajon mixes were the better of the two. Last I took the 13 songs on the good list and kinda sorta ordered them from my favorite to my least favorite, and that became the final album.
hearthis.at is being bitchy and won’t let me upload any new songs tonight. The RPM Challenge website is completely down too. The internets are being a jerk. Alonetone, however, is five by five. Here’s a link to the final record:
I forgot to take a card reader to Florida with me so I had to leave all of my pictures on the card until I got home. I’ve sorted through the 1300 or so and weeded it down to maybe 500. I used to use Google’s Picasa application for that because it made it easy to sort through all of the duplicates, but that app won’t run anymore. I used Apple’s Photos and it kinda sucked. Once they were sorted out I started editing them, using filters and the wizard in Photos. Nothing special. I’m about 1/3 through the keepers now. I’d like to finish that today and get them all uploaded into Flickr so I can post some of them here.
It’s not likely to happen though as I still have three songs to finish today. Two need quick lead guitar overdubs, and the other needs all of the guitars, rhythm and lead, and then all three need to be mixed. I have the cover art, but once all the mixes are done I need to decide which songs get dropped and then which of the two mixes of each acoustic song gets dropped.
So much to do and so little sleep to do it on.
Actually, I did get a good night’s sleep last night. I’m just overtired from the last few days combined. I’ll get it all done tonight. Well, I’ll get the music done at least. I can sleep when I’m dead. Or, you know… tomorrow.
I just posted this to the RPM Challenge website:
Everything that I can do while on vacation in Florida has been done. Nine electric songs mixed, seven acoustic songs mixed, six of those seven acoustic songs’ alternate versions mixed.
I have a few songs worth of guitars still to do once I get home on Saturday. Every guitar part I have done this year has been played through a pair of amplifiers (one Fender Bassbreaker 15 and one Fender Bassbreaker 18/30 at 18 watts) and the 18/30 is a seriously loud little bastard. I have been playing it with the volume set as low as I can get it and still produce a sound. The 15 watt guy needs to get cranked a bit in order to keep up.
Last Saturday I tried to pick off the last three songs worth of guitars but my family had reached their limit and told me to shut up (in the most polite, supportive way possible). I got pissy and shut it all down. On Saturday I am going to finish those damned songs using just the 15 watt amp so that I don’t deafen my family. I have leads to add to one of the acoustic songs, and leads to add to one of the electric songs. The last thing is an instrumental idea that needs rhythm and two leads. I want to finish all three, mix them, and then sequence the album, including figuring out which songs need to be dropped. I think two or three electric songs need to go. I don’t know if any of the acoustic songs are bad enough to eliminate, but one might be. We’ll see.
Everything I can do in my hotel room is done. Saturday is the final day of the month so it will be musical crunch time.
For now though… sleeeeeeeep
Inside the Red Head's Head 