The RPM Challenge’s Record Every Month challenge to record one song each month for the entire year started in March. For the first couple of months I remembered to submit a song so that it would be included in the listening party. Most months… well… I just forgot to submit… like a dope.
I didn’t forget this time! Here’s one crappy song, written and recorded this month! Oh, so crappy!
Just another one of those days where the brain doesn’t want to function and something that feels like what the rumors say is the blues tries to take over. I have three things that are helping me claw my way back to life.
First, Jen. As always. As far as my mental state goes, I really don’t know what I would do without her.
Second, nowhere near as important as item number one, the Bruins are kicking the shit out of the Sharks right now. It’s 4-1 about halfway through the third period. Thanks, Bruins. I appreciate it.
Third, probably more important than number two, but still nowhere near as important as number one, I spent the last hour+ playing guitar. I put leads on the three songs that got vocals this morning, and then put rhythm guitars onto two more from the current batch of songs to re-record for the 2015 re-recording yadda yadda blah. My playing wasn’t great, but it was okay.
Now I have to get some exercise in. Ugh.
Obligatory guitar pics:
Finally, right? I made it out for some car music today. I had three songs ready to go. One was a new one for Record Every Month and the other two were re-recordings for the great 2015 rerecording project which will likely never ever end. The re-recording things are meant to be a little… I don’t know… they are hopefully to be of a slightly higher quality than everything else. Performance wise if not sound wise. Something like that. The rules of the stupid game require me to be pickier about which takes I keep and put in the final mix. It’s also supposed to be more… live… live-ish? Not live, but also no copy and paste. Every sound you hear should be more or less unique. If a song has a chorus that plays twice then even though the two takes are similar enough that you don’t notice a difference, they are in fact different. For the record every month thing, or in fact for just about all of the demoes I make, copy and paste is fine. Record the chorus once, then paste it everywhere else there is a chorus. I do that for bass and vocals but not for guitars. It’s no fun to not play the guitars all the way through.
So what does it mean? It means I started with the record every month song so I could use it as a warm up before I got to the more involved shit. I opened up the computer plugged in the mic, setup the first verse and nailed it in one take. Well, that was weird. I suck as a singer so getting anything in one take is weird. I then setup each other section of the song and nailed them in at most two takes. What the fuck is going on? I suck, I can’t be getting things right this easily, especially when I haven’t done anything like this in a month.
When I was done, I picked the easier of the two re-recordings and that’s when everything went back to normal. Oh my word, did I suck. I sucked out loud. I sucked as much as anyone who has every sucked at singing has ever sucked at signing before. I. Sucked.
An hour and a half later I was working on the last section of the last song and my MacBook Pro popped up a warning that my battery was about to die. I guess I sucked exactly as much as my battery would allow.
I just suck.
No car music today. I was up early enough that I might have pulled it off, but I would have been cutting it close to the start of the work day and I just punted. I can’t do it tomorrow because tomorrow is take three of our visit to Vermont. Sunday it is. Or, as the old commercials for monster truck shows used to say:
SUNDAY
SUNDAY
SUNDAY!
…or something like that.
The Braves failed to eliminate the Dodgers last night. Here’s hoping the American League has a similar story after tonight’s game. Houston is up 3-2 over the majestic Red Sox. Games six and seven are in Houston. Given the last two games, I am thinking my home town team needs a bit of a miracle. Two of them. One tonight in game six, one tomorrow in game seven. Yikes. There’s not a lot of optimism around here. Not even the cautious kind.
We need to be in Burlington tomorrow a couple of hours before lunch. That means we have to get up super early. That means I don’t think I’ll be listening or watching the game for very long tonight. That being said, I require the Red Sox to jump out to a 30 run lead in the first inning. That’s probably enough to hope they can hold it. Maybe 40 runs would be better, but let’s shoot for 30, m’kay? I’ll settle for a 1-0 win, of course, but I want to be able to feel comfortable going to sleep early. Can you do that for me, Red Sox? Here’s hoping.
Happy Friday. Hype up for game six, if you can.
Hey, remember when I used to post about writing shitty songs all the time? The Red Sox have totally distracted me from all of that.
I need to write at least one song this month and tonight in my baseball induced misery I wrote the melody and the lyrics for a new song. Aren’t you proud of me? Aren’t you sad that I’m posting about shitty music again? Yeah, sorry about that.
Car music in the morning?
When I sat down to write this literary masterpiece of a blog post I put the Bruins game on the radio. They were losing to Philly, 4-3 in the third. Almost immediately after I started listening, Philly scored to pad the lead to 5-3.
Sports wise, this is just not my night.
Game one of the Red Sox/Rays Division Series is tonight at 8:00ish. Are we psyched? Are we hyped? You know it. The Rays were the best team in the American League this year and the chances of us taking them out are slim to none. No negativity from me though, if any team can take those Floridians out it’s us. The whole team has already had Covid, so we don’t even have to worry about them waging biological warfare or anything crazy like that. I mean, we know how much Florida loves spreading the Covid, right*?
I did a little music today before work. Are you proud of me? I didn’t actually play guitar, I just redid some midi tracks on a GarageBand file for the re-recording thing. I redid all of the drums and bass tracks for one song from the summer. I now have three of those songs patiently waiting for new guitar tracks, and one new song patiently waiting as well. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe this weekend. Someday. Soon.
Okay, folks. Back to work with all of you. Stop surfing around the internet reading boring old people’s brain droolings.
11 hours to game time! Go Red Sox!
*This is sarcasm. The Red Sox’s Covid outbreak recently was awful and dangerous and nothing to laugh at. Also, the Florida state government’s insulting response to Covid is nothing to laugh about. The governor of Florida seems to think the best way to drum up support for a run for president in 2024 is to let as many of his constituents die of an easily preventable disease as possible.
I’ve been thinking about a new music project, but the idea is pretty lame and I am waffling back and forth on whether to do it or not.
It is unofficially called Quarantine Tunes Volume 50/90. The idea is to make some mostly minor changes to some of the better songs from the summer and work them into what passes for an album for me. In other words, slightly better sounding demoes that don’t involve any cutting and pasting.
I picked ten songs. Four of them are pretty decent, the others are okay I guess. Last night I listened through them all and took notes on what little changes I want to try. Today I started messing with the first of the ten. I used the same GarageBand file I used back in July but I replaced the drummer and the bass tracks with brand new takes. The bass part is free of all cut and paste. I will eventually redo every guitar and vocal track as well and then do a whole new mix.
The question that remains is this: How long is this idea going to hold my interest. I suspect not for long.
I posted yesterday that the 50/90 shit was done. That was sort of true. I hit the 50 song goal and, as mentioned earlier, deleted my account. I’m done with that site. I wasn’t really done with the project though. I still had two songs to mix. I mixed them tonight. Now I’m finished, finished. If you catch my drift.
I made at least an attempt at 50/90 every year since 2013. I finished in 2014 with 50 songs. I didn’t finish again until Covid let me finish it in 2020 when I had 51 songs. Now this year I have finished for a third time with 52 songs. Setting the bar incrementally higher, or some nonsense.
Now it’s back to the Record Every Month thing from the RPM Challenge site. I haven’t been submitting songs over the last few months, but I have still been participating. I have at least one song written and recorded in it’s entirety for every month since March. I need to put together a playlist on Alonetone that acts as an official list, and then use a second playlist for all the extra stuff I did each month. Yeah, that’s a plan.
So we’re back at it on October 1st. See you then!
50/90… done.
