I’m not a very good guitar player. If you had any doubts, then there’s me coming right out and admitting it.
All of these songs that I am re-recording… Whenever in the past I wrote them and recorded the original demo, I blew through them like they were simple. Now that I’m doing them again, they are suddenly insanely, brutally, unimaginably difficult. I screw up constantly. Like, oh my god, could you please do something right?
I was trying to play arpeggios on one song and I fat fingered them over and over. I finally got through it and moved on to the next song and… more arpeggios. Bite me, past self. Take after take after take of me fat fingering and I finally threw a temper tantrum and ripped off the ends of my finger nails. It actually helped a little.
Seven out of 10 re-recordings are ready for vocals. Eight out of eight (but hopefully 10, eventually) November songs are ready for lyrics. Maybe some car singing in the morning? We’ll see.
Today is Veteran’s day. I am honoring those who served our country by staying home, not contracting/spreading Covid-19, and trying not to bother my wife as she’s stuck working.
I’m using the time to record some guitar. I’ve got two projects underway. The first is NaSoAlMo. I had three songs ready for guitar parts and I cranked them all out. None of them are very good but now that they are done I’m up to eight songs. The rules for the challenge are to have 29 minutes of music. I haven’t timed it out but I think I’ve got enough.
The other music project is round three of re-recordings. I had a couple of songs ready for guitar that will work with the same pedal setup I’m using for the November stuff so I started working on those. The first one is a pretty easy song, but there was one chord that just felt wrong. I had the bass part and a keyboard part already down and they sounded okay, but when I put the guitar on it everything was wrong. I had the whole song down except for two measures with this weird chord I couldn’t figure out. I hadn’t played this song since 2014 and I don’t have any notes and I was stuck.
The previous phrase ended on an F#maj7. The mystery chord? After half an hour of messing with it and getting it wrong? F#min. It sounds pretty cool now.
That’s when the real pain started. I have this song, see… it’s another one that dates back to 2014. At the time I was in the mood to push myself and in this particular song’s case, I ended up with a riff or two that are among the hardest I’ve ever come up with. Yikes. On the 2014 recording, I did one of the sections one measure at a time and then copied and pasted it everywhere. It has a lot of fast picking and skipping strings and jumping around the neck. I was expecting I’d have to do some copying and pasting again, even though my rule for the re-recordings is not to do that.
Well, after 100,000 takes I actually managed to get through the whole eight bars without screwing up. Not only that, but I’ve done it twice! WOOHOO! Unfortunately, by the time I got that far I was toast. My right hand was too tired to play. I still have a chunk of the song to finish but I had to take a break. I ate some lunch, I watched an episode of The Flash. All I have left on that song is to do that one super hard part about six more times. It’s going to take all day, I think.
So how have you been spending your election day? In lock down, I hope.
I rewatched The new Mandalorian episode and a few recent Archers and a South Park. I popped into work for an 11:00 meeting. I played quite a bit of electric guitar. I used my new bluesbreaker clone paired up with the Klon Centaur klone I bought back in May. With both pedals set to really low gain, they add up to a pretty freaking wonderful mid-gain tone. With the Klone gain off and the Blooze Maker set very high it’s… not as wonderful, but still pretty cool. I put guitars on two new November songs and three old re-recording songs. My fingers are screwy now so I’m taking a break in case I need to blow off stress steam later.
I’ve done a little doom scrolling on twitter. Not much. I’ve managed to stay away. I don’t know if I’ll be able to stay away for long. The draw of rumor and speculation is strong. Very strong.
November is National Solo Album Month, or NaSoAlMo for the cool kids in the know. Every year I talk endlessly about this little writing/recording challenge and almost every year I lose interest after a few days. Will this year be different? Probably, given that I’ve effectively done a NaSoAlMo qualifying project in each of the last nine months. But who’s counting.
I finished Quarantine Tunes Volume 2 yesterday, though I still haven’t decided on a final running order for the playlist. I had planned to spend November working on new stuff but what did I do? I started working on a few more songs that are pegged for Quarantine Tunes Volume 3. I also kicked off two new songs, so it’s going to be one of those months, I think.
Volume 1 had eight songs. They were all going to have eight songs. Then volume 2 had nine. Oh well. If I stick to the current schedule, volume 3 will have 10 because you basically can’t count on me for anything.
Granted all of this could go down the toilet based on whatever happens on Tuesday. If we lose and continue to embrace evil as a nation, I might be too busy finding a new country for musical masturbation. Hopefully things will go the way of justice and light on Tuesday and I won’t have to worry about that. Fingers crossed.
I had a hard time sleeping last night. I was out like a light as soon as my head hit the pillow, but then I was awake for good around 3:30am. Lucky for me we had that extra hour, eh?
There is an upside though. I have started song #1 for November’s National Solo Album Month. I can see how you’re all jumping around with glee.
I guess I’m playing along this year after all.
I have an uncontrollable urge to drive to Guitar Center and buy stuff. I think my step son would be up for it too.
November is almost upon us. You know what that means, right?
NAtional SOlo ALbum MOnth, or as the cool kids call it, NaSoAlMo.
I signed up today, but I am not feeling it at all. I don’t know if I’ll bother following through. It’s not like February, where RPM is like a moral imperative. The world will tilt off it’s axis without RPM. NaSoAlMo… it’s just kinda… there.
Given how little time I have to spend on music, I should probably spend it all on the band. However, if I should stumble on a decent song idea the band could always play it after the recording project is done, right? Right?
I had 10 songs in progress. Now that I have no more opportunities to record vocals between now and the end of the month I had to drop one of the songs. I felt kinda bad about it. Losing one of the songs ruins a gimmick I was working with. Each song on the NaSoAlMo project will be 10 beats per minute faster than the song before it. So if song #7 is dropped the gimmick doesn’t work, get it?
Since today is Thanksgiving and we did not cook, I decided to take a few minutes and put together an instrumental to take the place of the vocal-less song. It is pretty lame, but it works. This was written, recorded, and mixed all today.
Inside the Red Head's Head 