I’ve already mentioned putting vocals on four songs this morning, and I’ve already posted two songs that I mixed today, but now I am posting about putting lead guitar parts onto four songs. My fingers are killing me. I still don’t have calluses on my left hand and good heavens am I feeling the repercussions of that right now. I still have four more songs that are ready for leads but I have to take a break for a while. Maybe for the rest of the day. Jen and I might be going down to Cambridge for some tech gear after dinner tonight, so this might be it for guitar on this fine Saturday. I still have to write melodies and lyrics for the last four songs as well.
I think I like this one. In fact this might be my favorite of the bunch. That’s not saying much. My heart hasn’t been in it this year and I’ve been just going through the motions and as a result everything sucks even more than usual. So I guess this is in the running for song that sucks the least? I don’t know. It doesn’t have a “track #1” vibe to me though. It might end up as track #2. Maybe? We’ll see. There’s still a long long way to go before I have to worry about stuff like running order.
Holy crap, is it cold out there. I just got home from car vocals at the movie theater parking lot and I am frozen to the core. It was six degrees out when I left. It rocketed up to 10 degrees by the time I was done. Heatwave! I would record a song, then listen back to the entire thing as an excuse to turn the car on and run the heater for 3-5 minutes or so. Once I forgot to turn the car off and recorded a whole song worth of vocals with the heater’s fan on full blast. So… professionalism, yeah?
I put vocals on four songs. That was all I had lyrics for. It brings me up to 11 songs with vocals and that means I will have an RPM submission this year. Thanks, I appreciate all the applause.
I currently have two songs ready to mix, eight songs ready for lead guitars, three songs ready for lyrics, and one song that’s still just MIDI bass and drums. It’s going to be a long day.
First though, breakfast and an episode of Star Trek Deep Space Nine… while my laptop finishes adjusting to room temperature.
As posted on that stupid tumblr that I don’t know why I still use…
Four days to go, counting today. I’m leaving for some car music in a few minutes. I just need to fill up my water bottle first.
I have four songs ready for vocals. I can get through them all this morning. I have four more songs that still need lyrics. I am considering the possibility of dropping three of them now. They all suck more than my sucky songs usually suck. Do I really want to expel energy necessary to finish them when I know I am not going to use them?
Vocals in the car this morning, then lots of lead guitars later in the day, and maybe a mix or two (or three) after that. Then do it all again tomorrow.
Sounds like a plan is forming. We’ll see how it goes.
We got a couple of inches of snow yesterday followed by some rain and a drop in temperature which turned the snow to ice. I went out after work and shoveled and it was like shoveling bricks. It was not fun. I was happy that the driveway and both cars and the path to the garbage barrels and the area around the fire hydrant were all cleared.
Then later, around bed time, it started snowing again. Not much, but it quickly turned to rain again and immediately froze. When I got up this morning everything I had shoveled yesterday had been magically transformed into an ice skating rink. Yippee. I was also ran out of ice melt last night. Oh goodie.
I did not let it stop me though. I hacked the layer of ice off of one of the cars and proceeded to drive to a not-so-empty parking lot for some car music! I say not so empty because there were two humongous trucks trying to plow the layer of ice off of the lot. You can probably hear them on the vocal tracks. Yippee, again.
I got through four songs and oh my goodness do they suck. That brings me up to seven songs with vocals, with eight more to go. Only two of those eight have lyrics though, so I need to do a lot of work tonight. There must be another car music in the morning. Fortunately tomorrow is Saturday so I can spare a little more time, and if needed I can go out more than once. I can do the same on Sunday. Assuming I can get all of the lyrics written (and one song still needs rhythm guitars as well) then I will have all of the vocals down with a couple of days to spare. Then it’s just lead guitar and mixing, which will likely take a lot of time to get through. I’m already sort of sorting things into two buckets: Songs that might be useable for the final album, and songs that most likely will not be useable. There are two on the later list. Drop candidates, as it were, and one on the bubble. The rest of them are bad, but not so bad as to throw away… maybe. We’ll see how I feel when they are mixed.
My studio view today is thusly:
Also, a pic of half of my audience for the day:
And now for a few shots of the scenic drive to the not-so-empty parking lot:
177/365
So the musical plan for later tonight is record some leads, record one song’s rhythm guitars, mix a song or two, and write a shit ton of lyrics and melodies.
Twice this week I was going to go out and do car music before work only to be screwed over by snow. On Tuesday I probably could have done it but today there was no chance. Damn it.
I did the same thing I did on Tuesday though. If I couldn’t go out and sing, I’d stay home and record some guitars. Last night I added a couple of noodles that are now song #15. I wanted to work on lyrics last night but 24 bars of bass guitar riffs was as far as I got. After finishing my faux running (yogging) and watching episode two of Star Trek Picard this morning I worked those little bass riffs into a song form and recorded the rhythm guitars. Then I put leads onto the only two songs that are currently ready for leads. Nothing special as far as playing is concerned, but both songs are now ready to mix. Just before I punched into work I added lyrics to song #9 as well. I now have five songs ready to sing and will get to as many as I can before work tomorrow. Assuming mother nature doesn’t kick me in the balls for a third time.
Obligatory pictures:
I took the Wren and Cuff Super Russian off the board and replaced it with the Way Huge Russian Pickle. Two different copies of the old Sovtek version of the Big Muff Pi fuzz pedal
176/365
The plan for tonight is to try and write lyrics. I currently have six songs that are ready for lyrics and one more that isn’t quite ready yet. I’m at 15 songs now when I only need 10. Two of the 15 are especially crappy and might go unfinished. We’ll have to see what happens over the next five days.
I will complete this project if it takes everything I have. I am not blowing my RPM Challenge success streak.
Look at that, I mixed a song! The 2023 RPM Challenge will not be a shutout and that is good. The song isn’t good, but the fact that it exists is… and isn’t that the entire spirit behind the RPM Challenge?
I probably should have done the car music this morning. We only got about an inch of snow and the road was never entirely covered. Still, better safe than sorry.
I sort of almost made up for it. Sort of. Yesterday I added two more song ideas. One is meh, and the other is garbage. This morning before work, when I should have been recording myself singing like a mentally defective bird, I worked the meh idea into a song form and added rhythm guitars. Then I put leads on one of the songs that got vocals yesterday. That means I am up to 13 songs with rhythm guitars and exactly one song is finished tracking and ready to mix. Hopefully I will mix it tonight (and maybe add leads to two more songs, and maybe flesh out the crappy idea and add rhythm guitars to that?).
It wasn’t the progress I expected to make today, but it’s progress. There won’t be car music tomorrow because I have to drive to the office in Foxborough. Thursday… Friday… Saturday… whatever it takes. I have one week left.
I got up early today so I could get my faux jogging (yogging) in and still have time for car music. Then I looked outside and it was snowing, and the snow was sticking, and I’m not going out for a drive in the snow.
Inside the Red Head's Head 