Just like yesterday, I only had enough time for baby steps today. I wrote another song’s worth of lyrics and melody but I didn’t have time to record a proper take.
There are only five songs left needing work but I am doubtful I will get it all finished by June 1st.
One song is ready to mix.
One song still needs lead guitar.
Two songs have lyrics and melody but still need vocals and lead guitar.
One song still needs lyrics, melody, vocals, and lead guitar.
Considering that I will be on vacation next week and not in any sort of a recording mood, those five unfinished songs are starting to look like a mountain.
I’m not quite sure what I want to do in June. 50/90 starts in July but I don’t want to take the month off. I want to keep in the musical frame of mind, but I don’t want to run out of gas either. Maybe I’ll stick to songs that are already written. Maybe I’ll work on new songs but set the goal at five instead of 10. Maybe I’ll keep the goal at 10, but only work on one at a time instead of work on all 10 in bits and pieces.
I didn’t have time to record a vocal this morning. I did manage to write a lyric and a melody though. I used my Apple Ear Pods. I listened through the headphones while recording a guide track with the built in mic.
It wasn’t much of a nerd moment, but it sufficed for the day.
No really. The lyrics are about cats. I am being 100% honest.
I need a lyricist, badly.
I wanted to keep this one simple but I ended up with all sorts of soupy sauce everywhere and I compressed the hell out of it. I also ended up duplicating tracks and splitting takes across multiple tracks to have effects on parts but not on others. I made a bit of a mess.
My first real band was called Tempest Fero. We shoulda rethought that name. Anyway, this was one of the first four or five songs we wrote. There should be keyboard, but I don’t have the skill or the patience to try and pull it off.
Recordingly speaking, there are things to note about this turkey. First, it is the first time I ever used the tempo track in Garageband. There is a bonafide tempo change in this one that I didn’t cheat my way through by recording two separate files and then editing them together.
Second, all three of my electric guitars make an appearance. The rhythm guitar is my Les Paul Custom. The first half of the guitar solo during the slow section is my Stratocaster. The second half is the Les Paul Custom again. The two solo breaks toward the end should have been keyboards, but instead they are my ES 335 Pro. The guitarmonies at the very end are actually all three guitars. They weren’t part of the Tempest Fero arrangement, but I thought it would be fun to have all three gitters in harmony.
As for the old days in T.F., this song was monkeyed with often. I believe this is the arrangement (sans keys) we stuck with the most, but there were others. I remember at one point the slow section opened the song. I only found one old (ancient) tape of the song and I could not for the life of me figure out the lyrics in the last verse. What I have here is close, but probably not 100% right.
As for the lyrics, well… we never had a chance. It was 1987 or 88. I was really into Deep Purple. Our drummer was into White Snake and Iron Maiden. We all loved Led Zeppelin. At some point we were going to write a hooker song. None of us would have known a hooker if we had one sitting on our lap, but there was no way around it. We were going to write a hooker song.
I clearly recall three, maybe four, of us sitting in a fast food joint working on the lyrics. We created the character and threw the lyrics together while snaking on McD’s, or Burger King. I’m also pretty sure we got there on a high school band bus. It was a stop along the way on some competition or trip or something. I also seem to remember thinking it was pretty funny. Really, it was just kinda sad.
I haven’t been pushing the recording very much so far this month. I have one full week left to get stuff done before I take a week off from work. When I take that week off, I’m not going to want to do anything but relax.
There are a total of 20 songs. All of the basic tracks (drums, bass, rhythm guitar) are finished. What’s left?
Three songs still need lyrics, vocals, melody, and lead guitar. They are all from March.
Three more songs have vocals but still need lead guitars. Two from March and one from April.
Two more songs are fully recorded, but still need to be mixed. Both are from April.
The remaining 12 songs are all completely finished. Five from March and seven from April.
And that, dear friends, is where it stands. I suspect it will probably trickle into June. I still haven’t decided if June will get it’s own music month project. July won’t, as 50/90 starts on July 4th and I am planning on failing that one once again.
I recorded the rhythm guitar on this song on Sunday. I recorded the vocals and the lead guitars tonight.
Why is that important? Because I bought the Fender Strat on Saturday. All of the guitars you hear on this song are Fender. There isn’t even a single note played on a Gibson. That has never happened to me before. Also, I used the whammy bar near the end. I have never recorded myself using one of those ridiculous things before. There are firsts all around on this one!
What isn’t unique is that the lyrics are utterly meaningless. You can’t tell me what they mean because I was there and I know they mean nothing. The rhyming dictionary site I use more or less wrote this one for me.
I have one song recorded that includes Fender guitars exclusively. A first. I also just recorded the use of a whammy bar for the first time. What a strange world we live in.
Here’s another song from the March 10. Back in December while the kids were on Christmas vacation I had a brief idea of writing and recording 4-5 songs as a Christmas Vacation project. It got as far as four Garageband files on my iPad consisting of bass and drums. When the dumb idea of continuing RPM into March came along I rolled those four ideas into RPMarch. Now we’re in May and here we have the first of those four to be mixed. This is actually #3. Not that it matters.
The lyrics are another @floridaman story. If I do 50/90, I might take the lyrics ideas for all 50 songs from that twitter account. It’s a gold mine.
While I was at it tonight, I also remixed the most recent April song. I brought up the lead guitar (duh) and reduced the sauce on the vocals. I don’t know if it made any difference, but here it is. It still doesn’t have the Highlander line. I guess I’ll have to remix this at least once more.
