RPM Design

January 19, 2021robertjames1971

Jen and I have a redecorating bug and it’s crazy. We’ve had our bedroom setup like this a couple of years and it’s time to start fiddling with it. That means my little music nook is going to move and be redecorated. I’m looking for an amp stand that can stack two combos. I think I found one. I’m also going to put my humongeous pedal board into storage, which means I need to put together a smaller one. I already have one, but it’s at Mike the Bass Players house and it isn’t coming home until Covid is over… so an overdrive to pair with the Ryra Klon Klone and a wah wah. That plus the two amps will be my RPM Challenge setup……

…….I think.

Monday Morning Music

January 18, 2021robertjames1971

Are you enjoying your Dr Martin Luther King, Jr day? I am. I mixed a song. Wanna hear it? No? I’m going to post it anyway.

Worst song title I’ve ever come up with. The sound effect was on my original demo from April 2014. Why? More important, why did I keep it? I don’t know, stop pestering me!

Phil Spector

January 17, 2021robertjames1971

Phil Spector died.

I’m not sure how to react to this one. On the one hand, he revolutionized record production in the 60’s. All of those girl groups, Sonny and Cher, so many hits, he was behind them all. On the other hand he was a scumbag and a murderer. I don’t mean that figuratively, he was actually a murderer.

I guess from a professional stand point the thing that sticks out to me the most was how he was brought in to salvage The Beatles Let it Be album and film soundtrack. He’s the guy who put all those awful string and choir arrangements onto the title song and Long and Winding Road and turned them into schmaltz of the highest degree. Then decades later The Beatles reissued the album with all of his changes stripped out which infinitely improved the album. Yup, that’s Phil Spector to me.

Rest in peace, I guess.

January Music is Kind of Happening

January 16, 2021robertjames1971

Prior to tonight the January music project (10 songs or 35 minutes, all written and recorded in January) consisted of four little 4-8 bar long bass riffs. That’s it. In other words, nuttin’.

Now there are three songs with the rhythm section complete and five little 4-8 bar bass riffs.

Progress!

Two Songs

January 16, 2021robertjames1971

I mixed two songs today. Let’s enjoy them together (or not, whatever).

My thought for the first song is, what am I going to write about after the cheeto leaves office on Wednesday?

My thought on the second song is six years ago I could sing a little higher than I can now.

And its Yet Another New Song

January 15, 2021robertjames1971

I wrote this puppy last February during RPM and somehow it is not in a three way tie for the most re-recorded song on my alonetone account (there are three versions). What a strange and wacky world we live in, right?

New Song

January 13, 2021robertjames1971

In honor of the cheeto getting impeached for the second time, I mixed a song tonight! It has nothing to do with the cheeto, or any cheetos for that matter, but it’s done so there.

Therapy

January 12, 2021robertjames1971

Tonight’s guitar playing was much better than last night. Still not very good, but better. I put leads on two songs and both lead and rhythm on another. Eight songs still to go and six are ready to mix. A fuzz box was used extensively.

Yes, everything is dusty. If you don’t like it you can lick my sack, m’kay?

A Little Better

January 12, 2021January 12, 2021robertjames1971

Through the 10 months of lock down, whenever shit got too much I would play guitar and it would help me to feel better. Last night shit got too much and I played guitar and I was so bad I felt worse. This morning I tried to rectify that. I redid everything on the song I was working on last night when it got to be a little too much. Jen asked me if I wanted to check something out on youtube with her and instead of asking her to give me a little time to finish I just shut it down.

Today was a little better. I finished everything I left hanging yesterday. I wasn’t exactly Jeff Beck or anything. I wasn’t exactly equal to Jeff Beck playing with one finger, but it was okay for me. I do feel a smidge better.