Tag: record every month challenge

Distract Myself

Work is crazy, the united (fascist) states of america is collapsing…

I need a music project to distract myself from everything. I think I am going to do the Record Every Month thing again. That’s the year ’round RPM Challenge spin off where you just write and record one song each month. I usually bump that up to two songs each month. That way I can pretend I’m releasing a single like it’s 1964 or something.

I just want to have an excuse to not think about reality for a few minutes at a time. Living in the (nazi) united states of america these days really blows. I just want to pretend it’s not happening, if you know what I mean. Living in Massachusetts is still okay if we just ignore the federal government.

So yeah… a year long music project. I’m in.

Plans for Tomorrow

Tomorrow is Easter Sunday. We have one plan for the day but I have a few additional things I want to get to.

  1. Wake up and do my daily exercise
  2. Eat breakfast
  3. Grab my laptop, a microphone, a USB audio interface, and a pair of headphones and jump into the car, drive someplace quiet, and record vocals for my two songs for this month’s Record Every Month Challenge
  4. Come home and take a shower and shave
  5. Put lead guitars onto the same two songs
  6. Make lunch for me and my beloved wife
  7. Mix one of those two songs
  8. Go to my father’s for Easter Dinner. Maybe watch a couple of innings of the Red Sox game
  9. Go home, spend some quality time hanging out with my beloved wife
  10. Mix the other song
  11. Sleep

I think I can manage that.

Until then, I am worried about one of the cats. Lilly. About half an hour ago she made a ton of noise. She was running around like crazy, crashing into things and skidding all over the tiled floor. She somehow got wrapped up in a plastic bag and was absolutely freaking out trying to get untangled. She ran into the bed room where I was sitting up in bed and watching something on my laptop. She then dashed out again and went into hiding. I can’t find her anywhere. I’m worried that she might have hurt herself in her struggles. I’m worried that she might have wrapped the plastic bag around her neck. She hid herself so well though that I can’t seem to find her anywhere. I’m sure she’s okay, but I would like to find her to know for sure.

Poor kitty.

Happy Dishwasher Day

We had a new dishwasher installed today. I am in the office so I have only seen pictures so far. I want to take it for a spin when I get home. I’ll dirty up some dishes if I need to.

I was in the office yesterday. I’ll be in the office tomorrow. Then I am at home on Friday, which is good because a plumber is coming on Friday. It never ends, kids. It never ends. Totally worth it though.

Change of subject: I watched 3 Body Problem on Netflix. I enjoyed it. I was warned that episode five was a mind blower and sure enough it was. I wonder if people who read the original books enjoyed it too. It read somewhere that it was considered to be an un-adaptable book and the fear was that people who read the book would hate the show. I wonder if that’s true. I wonder how moving much of the focus away from China would affect people’s opinions. I don’t know that I am curious enough to try and read the book, but maybe. I feel the same way about Foundation on AppleTV+. I enjoyed the show, but did I enjoy it enough to give the Azimov books a go? I don’t know.

Change of subject: This coming Sunday is Easter. Easter doesn’t have any real meaning for me anymore. Sorry, not sorry. We’ll have dinner with my father. The rest of my focus this weekend will hopefully be music. I have two songs for the March edition of Record Every Month to finish and there is a lot left to do on both of them. Here’s hoping I’ll get everything done. I won’t be distracted by the start of the Red Sox season though. Some moron decided to have Boston start the season on the West coast with all of the games being night games. That means the first handful of games this season won’t start until 10pm for Red Sox fans. Screw that.

Okay, here’s today’s bad photo a day challenge picture. No reason, just cause.

209/365
209/365

I’ll be in the office tomorrow too so expect number 210 of 365 to be another thoughtless picture of whatever I happen to see in the cellar while doing my daily exercise at 5:00am.

More Recording

I finished recording all of the guitar tracks I wanted to do yesterday but didn’t end up having time for. Hooray!

I played through a speaker again, but unlike yesterday I had to lower the volume to a tolerable level. I had the house to myself yesterday so I could approach ear-bleeding volume. Today my wife, the love of my life Jen, is home so I had to tone it down a lot. That’s okay. It’s still more fun playing through a speaker than playing direct into the computer.

I put rhythm guitars onto one song for the Record Every Month Challenge, and lead guitars onto three songs for my re-recording old songs project, aka The Great 2015 Re-Recording Project, or also aka Quarantine Tunes.

My leads weren’t good, but they were better than most of the stuff I’ve recorded of late.

DSC_2342
DSC_2343
Dig the blurry light on the amplifier!
DSC_2344

Record Every Month: Finally

The folks over at the RPM Challenge website have been running a second challenge for a few years now. Record Every Month. Write, record, and submit one song each month, just to sort of keep things warmed up for the next February album in a month thing. I usually play along, but I sometimes miss a month here and there.

I’ve been planning on doing it this month but here we are on the 22nd and I had nothing to show for it. Until tonight that is. Last year I broadened the scope of the thing to record a single every month. Two songs. An A-side and a B-side. Tonight I worked out a song form with MIDI drums and bass for two songs. The ball is officially rolling, folks.

While I was working on these two stink burgers, this happened:

Cuteness overload!!!

Schedule Shuffle

I woke up this morning with every intention of working in the office. Now it’s 9:07am though and I am sitting at my desk at home.

I woke up a touch later than I wanted to, and that was the first issue. By the time I finished my morning exercise (jogging [pronounced yogging] in place for 45 minutes) I just couldn’t bring myself to drive into the office. Instead of packing up my stuff I just ate breakfast and finished the episode of The X-Files that I was watching (the one where the baseball player in the ’40’s is an alien in disguise… not the best episode).

I am still planning on making tomorrow (Saturday) a major musical day. Jen is going to be at a conference all day so I am on my own. The to-do list includes getting a haircut (which I desperately need) and an oil change for one of the cars. Other than that, it’s music. The Record Every Month Challenge and Quarantine Tunes Volume Seven… and maybe a start on Volume Eight too.

I promise you, owe internets, that there will be guitar playing, song writing, and recording done on Saturday. Unless I change my mind and just sleep and watch TV all day, of course.

Anyway, here’s today’s photo a day challenge masterpiece.

204/365
204/365

Saturday. I Promise

I am going to work in the office today and tomorrow. There won’t be any time for morning music. There isn’t even time to post this world-shattering blog entry.

Saturday… I will play guitar on Saturday. I’ll setup some GarageBand files tonight and tomorrow. Maybe a couple of re-recording things and an entry or two for the Record Every Month challenge that I haven’t even given a single thought to yet even though it’s March 21st.

I promise.

The Streak is Over and What About Tomorrow?

My guitar playing streak is over. I lost count of how many days in a row I played for at least a few minutes. It was almost three weeks, I think. I failed to get any playing in yesterday. Oh well.

This morning before leaving for the doctors appointment I was able to get some work done though. Jen is in the office today so I had some quiet time in the house alone and I used it to record some vocals. I put them onto the 10th and final June song and two more May songs. I think I have six May songs still waiting for lyrics and vocals. I have decided to extend the deadline for the May songs to July 3rd. I am not extending the deadline for the June songs. Those need to be wrapped up by Friday. I only have one guitar part to add and then mix the final five and that’s it. No problem, he said with false confidence that probably wasn’t really that false.

I thought I was going to get back onto the photography bus today. Film, to be specific. As I was getting my shit together to go to the doctors appointment I looked out the window and saw sun gleaming into the back yard. Right. I grabbed Dad’s camera. I didn’t know where I was going to go after the appointment, but I was going somewhere. Then when I actually got outside and got in the car, the sky was clouded over and ugly and sad. Oh well. The day is coming. It’s summer now. Film photography. Digital photography. All over the place in Eastern Massachusetts and Southern New Hampshire and maybe even more places than that. I want Boston. I want light houses. I want to go shootin’. Ideally I want to go shootin’ with other folks, but if I have to do it alone at the crack of dawn then that’s what I am going to do. You heard it here first, folks.

What should I do tomorrow? Tomorrow is my work from the office day. I will start the day in Foxborough, which is about a million and a half miles away from my house. I will need to be on the road by 7:30am.

Should I try to get my couch to 5k training in? Tomorrow is the day that it should happen, as I am trying to do this every other day, but I was planning on pushing it off until the day after. If I get up at 5:00am and get right the hell out the door and start, then I should be done by 5:30. That would give me more than enough time to do everything I want to do, including recover from the exercise and watch episode two of Marvel’s Secret Invasion.

I am undecided. If I am out of bed by, let’s say, 5:05am then I will do it. Tomorrow’s plan is to switch from walk for three minutes and run for one minute, repeating eight times to walk for two minutes and run for one minute, repeated eight times. I fully expect my legs to fall off. It’s going to be freakin’ brutal, but it should also take less time than yesterday did. We’ll see.

Okay. That’s enough for now. Back to work, Robert.

This Might Have Been the Song for June But…

This is the other song that I was thinking might get the nod for this month’s Record Every Month Challenge submission, but I am not happy with the mix. The song is groovy and fun. I kept it as ridiculously simple as possible but then made the mix a little too busy. I think I’ll go with the song from the last post instead. I do like this though.

This Might Be the One for June

Of the 10 songs I am working on this month, only one can be my submission for the Record Every Month Challenge thing. This song might be it. There’s one other that is in the running, but I kinda like this puppy even though there isn’t much to it.