This morning I snuck in a few pics to cover today’s photo a day challenge picture. I had just finished adding the final tracks to a song and I picked up the camera while listening to the playback. Here is today’s entry, 180/365:
I almost went with this one instead…
These would have been okay too…
Two days in a row now I have skipped my daily exercise. Uh oh, bad habits forming over here!
Why? So I could record guitar tracks for RPM Challenge songs. That seems like a good reason. It will probably happen again tomorrow but instead of guitar it will be recording vocals in the car… assuming I can write the vocal parts for the last two songs before I fall asleep tonight. That’s a pretty big if.
Should I manage to get up early enough tomorrow I might be able to sneak some guitar playing in before work too. What about saxophone? I’m not sure if any of the remaining songs have plans for sax or not. I think one or two might. I also think I might just make a game time decision and change those planned sax parts to guitar parts. We’ll see. I put sax on four songs so far. That’s 20% of the entire project. That seems like an acceptable amount… though 25 or 30% seems more acceptable. We’ll have to see.
Once all of the songs are mixed (and hopefully that means all 20 songs and not some smaller number because I just declared mixing done while there were still songs outstanding) I have to pick an album running order. I might actually do three playlists. One with the 10 electric songs, another with the 10 acoustic songs, and then one with just the best 10 overall. That would be the one that I declare the Official 2025 RPM Challenge Album Submission, whatever that means. I thought about using AI to generate an image for the album cover but AI is fucking evil so I will just “borrow” something off of wikipedia. The working title of the final album is still Groundhogs Wear Top Hats but I might change that to Groundhogs and Top Hats to make the image search a little less ridiculous. We’ll see.
For now though, here are this morning’s stupid pics. I switched from the 85mm f1.8 lens to the 40mm f2.0 lens to give myself a little bit of a new option for the same old pics. The first one is today’s photo a day picture (179/365).
Since today is an office day for me and I am in a state of near panic over the current status of my RPM Challenge project, I decided to screw up my daily routine. Instead of getting up early and getting my daily exercise in, I got up early and recorded some guitar parts. I didn’t get up as early as I had planned, so I didn’t get through as much tracking as I had planned, but I did add rhythm (acoustic 12-string) guitars to one song and lead (electric 6-string) guitars to two. Actually, one song got both.
Acoustic guitar…
Electric guitar (which also serves as today’s photo a day challenge picture, 178/365)…
There is a very good chance I am going to make the same change tomorrow as it too is an in the office day. I am out of control and it’s all RPM’s fault!
Sometimes I am such a nerd.
Foreground in focus and background blurry…
Background in focus and foreground blurry…
It’s fun knowing how to do stuff like this with your camera. Seriously. Knowledge is both power and a source of goofy entertainment.
I did play some guitar before work today. I noodled out a new song idea on the 12 string. Acoustic madness in 3/4 time, if you will.
I was sneaky this morning and I did something that if I were smart and responsible I probably would not have done. I did not oversleep at all, which is kind of miraculous. That means I was able to get my morning exercise in nice and early. It’s an in-the-office work day today and usually on those days I start packing up and getting ready to go as soon as the exercise is over.
Because I finished early I decided to sneak in a little guitar playing. I put two tracks of acoustic guitar onto one RPM Challenge song. It was the one that I started working on last night. Now it’s on the list of songs that are ready for tomorrow’s expected singing in the car session. Nice. If I had more time I would have tried to sneak in a second song, but that would have been pressing my luck. I smartly didn’t even try.
I did take today’s photo a day picture. Day 172/365, to be exact. It’s a guitar pic, of course.
This wasn’t the pic I had planned though. The pic I had planned ended up being awful, as you can see here:
Oh well. Here’s hoping I can write some lyrics and some melodies so that I can have a lot of stuff ready for singing in the car on my vacation day tomorrow. Fingers crossed I can make the time for it tonight.
Today’s Photo a Day pic is a guitar, again. I recorded rhythm tracks for two songs before work this morning. I wanted more, but I struggled quite a bit and it slowed me down.
Day 171/365…
Here’s an extra pic, just for fun.
I put guitars onto a couple of RPM Challenge songs this morning, but I am trying to focus on writing lyrics and melodies now. I’m having a tough time. I’ll stick with it though, I want to record some vocals tomorrow and I need a bunch of songs prepped before then.
After all of the shoveling today I am beat, but at least up until now (4:30pm) my stomach has been behaving pretty well… so that’s good.
Now back to the music.
I snuck in an hour or two of guitar tracking for the RPM Challenge today. Two songs got electric rhythm guitars and one got acoustic rhythm guitars. Yup, I’m still hoping to do 10 electric songs and 10 acoustic songs though at this point, with the month more than half over, I would say there’s a fat chance of that happening.
I played three different guitars today. Is that a record for one sitting?
Two Gibson Les Pauls, one standard and one custom, and a Takamine F-400 S. The 12-string murdered my finger tips. I thought about trying to get through another song, but it hurt and I had to stop. Tomorrow though… a big push tomorrow.
I missed the big day. I had too many other things going on to notice it. Boston Red Sox pitchers and catchers reported for Spring Training two days ago. Later that night they signed the biggest free agent on the market, Alex Bregman. We have a few new pitchers this year, including one who looks like an ace in the making, and now we have a power hitting infielder with a couple of World Series rings to bolster the lineup.
Know something? The Red Sox might not suck this year. Are they World Series contenders? Maybe, but probably not. Might they make a run at the American League East title? They might. Given that my beloved Bruins are more or less shitting the bed this year after years of excellence (in the regular season, at least), and the Red Sox have been a gigantic suck-fest for the last few years… a reversal of fortune is timely. I wish my dad were still around to see one more good season. He suffered through so many awful Red Sox teams in his life that it would have been nice to go out with a winning team. Okay, now I am equal parts excited for the new season and sad for the past. Shit.
Anyway, I snuck in a photo before I left the house to go to work this morning so that I could make sure I had something for the photo a day challenge. Here it is… it sucks even more than the Bruins.
Today is Thursday and much like yesterday and the day before it is turning out to be a screwy day. Fun.
I overslept this morning. I had a bunch of things I wanted to do before the work day started and then I overslept and screwed up all of my plans. I did get the big things in, my day’s worth of goofy exercise, breakfast, routine stuff like that, and I managed to sneak in a little bit of guitar playing. I put rhythm guitars onto one RPM Challenge song. Not much but better than nothing.
We got a little snow last night. Probably less than an inch. The snow turned into rain and now we have a driveway covered in a nightmare of slush. At some point later today the temperature is going to drop and that nightmare of slush is going to turn into a nightmare of ice and I don’t know if I am going to have time to clear any of it before it freezes. I am super happy about that. Really. There’s not an ounce of sarcasm here. I am thrilled to the teeth by this potential outcome*.
It’s not even noon yet and the work day has been just as crazy as yesterday. Not bad, but a weird combination of hectic and frustrating. It’s looking like tomorrow will be similar, but after that things should settle again. Here’s hoping at least.
In closing, here’s a few guitar pictures from this morning because I am insane.
*Contrary to the above statement, I was in fact being sarcastic. Extremely sarcastic. My words were dripping with venomous sarcasm. Just call me a sarcasm machine.
Inside the Red Head's Head 