Tag: quarantine tunes volume seven

New Quarantine Tune

I mixed a song for The Great 2015 Re-Recording Project, aka Quarantine Tunes (Volume Seven). I should really wait until tomorrow to share it anywhere because I am so freakin’ tired that I can’t tell if this sounds anywhere near decent or not.

I actually finished recording this song in June of 2022. Coming up on two years ago. Why did I wait so long to mix it? Because I fear that I actually freakin’ love this song. The chorus just slaps. Well, at least to my ears it does. The rest of the song is okay, but the chorus just makes me want to bang my head and scream. It is very rare for me to feel that way about one of my own songs. So rare that when it happens, the idea of screwing up a mix really scares the shit out of the tiny little creative portion of my tiny little brain.

I don’t want to screw up a good song, dig?

Anyway, here’s the good song that I probably screwed up. I’ll listen to it tomorrow after I’ve slept and see if I still find the mix acceptable. I doubt I will, and if I don’t then I’ll remix it.

New (Old) Song!

I’ve been talking about it all month, but finally we have a new recording all mixed and ready to share. This is a song that was written and originally recorded for the 2021 RPM Challenge and re-recorded here for Quarantine Tunes Volume Seven, aka The Great 2015 Re-Recording Project.

What do you think, should I have put some more reverb and echo on everything? This is the wettest mix I’ve ever done… maybe. It’s pretty much dripping wet.

Hopefully there will be more stuff coming in the next few days.

Anyone Else Play Guitar Today?

Hey everyone, raise your hand if you were able to sneak some guitar playing in before work this morning.

Robert timidly raises his hand.

Yup, I recorded lead parts for two songs. I now officially have no songs in progress that are currently ready for any guitar tracks. I have to do some MIDI work tonight, and maybe some car vocals in the morning, and then I’ll have some stuff ready to work on.

The Great Guitar Pick Journey of 2024 continues as well. I tried another new one today. Much of my internet research pointed to Dunlop as the brand to go with. I tried Max Grip first (1.14mm) and those were okay, but no as good as the Fender picks I’d been using for ages. They have little grippy things on them that are supposed to keep them from spinning around between your fingers as you play, and that worked but it felt awkward. I am sure I could get used to it but I moved on to option two this morning (for now at least). 

Option two is Dunlop Tortex Jazz III. This one was much better than the Max Grip in all ways but one. The little guy is just tiny. I kept going into muscle memory mode and literally missed the strings. It’s just small. It feels really good in my hand, and the overwhelming majority of suggestions I’ve received in my online questioning said to try them. I’ll stick with it for a while, but I am wondering if they make the same pick only bigger. 

I have two other options that I want to try before I start looking outside of Dunlop, but I haven’t bought either of them yet. One of them is pretty expensive for a pic. We’ll see.

Anyway, here are the obligatory pictures from this morning’s lead guitar playing extravaganza.

147/365
147/365
Dig those shiny new frets
Two amps… I ran them both direct out though. No speakers. Sadface.

No Music This Morning

I didn’t play my guitar this morning. I had to punch in to work early to get some paperwork wrapped up before the start of the business day so I spent my time on that instead of music. A fair trade, I guess.

The plan for tomorrow is car vocals. Get up early, do my exercise, have breakfast, hop into the car and drive to an empty parking lot and sing like a deaf canary. Epic. I have six songs in the current volume of The Great 2015 Re-Recording Project that are ready for vocals. Maybe I can pick off two of them. If things go really well, maybe three. I spend more time on the re-recording stuff than on the usual demo projects. I want them to be better than usual, even though I am a crappy singer and they end up sounding equally as garbagey. 

Last night before bed I spent some time adding guide tracks to some of the songs. Just a MIDI piano playing (roughly) the vocal melody and harmony parts so that I can have a little help when I record the actual vocals. All of these songs have been recorded once before, but I tuned the guitar down a half step this time around so they are all in a different key and that’s just enough to screw up my memory of how to do things. My ear is good enough that it can usually rise above such mini-challenges, but why not give it a little help, right?

I already have two songs that are ready to mix. One of them has been ready to mix for about 18 months now and I just haven’t had the energy to get it done. I’d like to pick off one of them tonight, but as the haiku in the previous post hinted, I am freakin’ exhausted already today (it’s 2:46pm and I am ready for bed). I am not going to have the energy for anything tonight beyond making dinner, going grocery shopping, and then coming home and impersonating a vegetable in front of the TV.

I call that making plans.

Car vocals tomorrow! You heard it here first! (Now don’t let the public down, Robert!)

More Playing

I played guitar again this morning! Two days in a row!

I put rhythm guitars on a Quarantine tune, and lead guitar on another song. It was my first recorded lead on the new frets and the first recorded lead in months, meaning I have no calluses, meaning ouch town, population: me.

142/265
142/365

In other guitar playing news, the new pick journey officially began today as well.

I started with a Dunlop grippy model and amazingly dropped it within seconds of starting to play. WhatWhatWhat??

More Music

Another rerecording of a song from February’s RPM Challenge. Just like last night it’s in 7/8 time and both songs are almost the same tempo (they are not, but they are ooooh so close).