There is a discussion underway. One I’ve been hoping would happen for literally years.
The four members of my band have not been in the same room together to play music (or for any other reason) since a few weeks before Covid-19 came to the US.
We are trying to set something up for next week.
Keep your fingers crossed, kids. There might be a band practice in the near future. Oh please, let it happen!
Another less than spectacular day but still seeing some progress. Two new song ideas started. One is just a few noodles, the other is a full song form with a swing groove. Scary.
I’m up to eight ideas in progress now. Still no real instruments recorded, just MIDI tracks. Hoping for more substantial noise making tomorrow. Fingers crossed.
Years ago I was posting music on this page using HTML5 audio tags and links to my alonetone account. For some reason I stopped doing that. I think its because the audio file links were auto-downloading instead of just opening up in a new browser tab.
Everything on the wordpress.com side has changed too, but I wonder if I can still use the tags. I found some ancient posts (from 2014, I think) that are still functional. Can I use those tags again?
ADDENDUM: Nope. Doesn’t work in this editor. I tried a whole bunch of different variations on the tag attributes but nothing worked. No big deal. I’ll keep using hearthis.at when I want to post audio here. Okay, sorry to waste your time.
Not much today. Two new song ideas. Just a handful of eight bar noodles that I can stitch together to make a couple of song forms.
There might be some guitar tracking tomorrow. I hope so, at least.
Okay folks, the guitar gear is setup and ready to record some new music.
I put the new Analog Man King of Tone overdrive pedal onto my stay-at-home pedal board and plugged the whole thing in. I have three amps setup. The Fender Deluxe Reverb will be used when I can make oodles of noise and want to record with a microphone. The other two amps are the Fender Bassbreaker 15 and the cute little Vox MV50. They are both connected to the ABY switch so that I can run them both at the same time, and they are also both plugged directly into the USB audio interface so that I can run direct at times when I cannot make any noise.
Now I just have to actually play. Any minute now, right?
As expected, working in the office meant I was in the car commuting when I normally would be trying to make a little music so there wasn’t a lot of progress made on the current musical challenge.
I did come up with three little eight bar noodles that may be worked into a song somehow. Better that than nothing, right?
One day of the 50 songs in 90 days challenge is down. Well, it will be in about 2.5 hours, but I am definitely done for the day so I’m calling it now.
How did I do on this rainy and dreary 4th of July?
Not bad, if I do say so myself. Three songs underway. No guitars or voices or actual real life musical instruments yet, but all three songs already have all of the changes, the song form, a guide guitar (MIDI only) track, a vocal melody, and complete lyrics.
Like I said, not too bad.
Day two probably won’t have much of anything as it’s a work-from-the-office day, but at least day one went well.
It’s the 4th of July. I think I mentioned that in a post already. That means it’s Independence Day but it also means it’s the first day of the 50/90 music challenge. Write 50 songs in 90 days between July 4th and October 1st. I’ve completed this back breaker a few times in the past (2016, 2020, and 2021, I think). Will I pull it off again this year?
Not likely.
I did, however, kick off song #1 for this year’s challenge. It’s just a rhythm exercise, really. I have never written anything in 13/8 time so I started out with a drum loop in 13/8 and just waited to see what happened. An hour later I am sitting here with the first song of the challenge completely written. It’s short and sweet and not very good and it’s only MIDI tracks in GarageBand at this point, no real live musical instruments are involved yet, but it exists.
Now let’s celebrate with a couple of pictures of Lily being lazy, and then I’ll go to the Apple Store to run an errand for the love of my life.
Happy 4th of July, everyone!
Does anyone have any plans for the 4th of July? It’s a holiday in the United States tomorrow. Jen and I are both off of work. Independence Day. How are we going to celebrate?
I have no idea.
Jen and I both had a bit of a stomach bug yesterday. She still has it, though I think I’m in the clear now. If she’s still under the weather then I expect us to just sit in the living room flaking in glorious fashion. If she’s feeling better, will we do anything? The weather is supposed to be garbage so I don’t think we’ll be doing much of anything out doors. I’d like to have a mini-cookout or something but I’m not holding my breath.
We have been talking about driving to IKEA and getting some furniture to replace what Harry took to Vermont with him. We’re thinking of turning Harry’s room into a den/bedroom that we can use when he’s not here. When he is here, it’s his room. When he’s not it’s an alternate living room space. We’re thinking of a day bed. Maybe a little desk too? Maybe a comfy chair? We’re thinking of getting another comfy chair for the living room next to the fire place. We have that area marked as a reading nook. IKEA would be ideal for all of this. I just don’t know if our health will be up to it.
Other than that, I plan on doing the next 5k training run. 30 minutes of walk-for-a-minute/run-for-a-minute. I will also hopefully start working on this year’s fake 50/90 challenge. The challenge to write 50 songs in 90 days is real. The fake part is that I am done with the fiftyninety website. No more logging in there for me. Tomorrow is the first day for this challenge. If I were smart I’d write 50 songs tomorrow and then take 90 days to tinker with them. Yes, that was sarcasm.
The 4th of July, 2023 might just turn into a day. More like a plain old Sunday than a huge holiday. We’ll have to see how everyone’s stomach feels. Fingers crossed we can do something fun together. I choose to be optimistic and expect everything to work out fine.
I just finished my June album in a month challenge thingie. 10 songs down. I am not sharing any of the songs I finished yesterday or today on this page though because they suck.
They suck.
They Suuuuuuuuuuck.
Oh well. I think we’ll punt on the rest of the May stuff and take a couple of days off before starting the next challenge, to write 50 songs in 90 days without logging onto the actual fifty ninety site at all. Faux 50/90 or bust, kids.
