Tag: Recording

Not What I Had in Mind

Yesterday I mixed a song and afterwards my ears were so useless that everything sounded like mush. I promised myself I’d take a day off from mixing and give my head a rest.

Today I rested… almost. I promise I didn’t spend a second working on Quarantine Tunes Volume 2. I did, however, record the MIDI tracks to one song for Quarantine Tunes Volume 3.

Dumb ass.

I’ll mix another song tomorrow. Which should I do? The 12-bar blues from the 2007 RPM Challenge, or the song I wrote last month that I liked so much I was re-recording it about 7 days after I finished the first recording?

Who cares?

Fall To-Do List

Hockey is over and it won’t be back for a while. Baseball is over and it won’t be back for a while. Movies are over and they won’t be back for a while.

What’s to look forward to?

The Mandalorian comes out tomorrow. Season two. That’s something to look forward to. I have spoken. This is the way.

Star Trek Discovery is back. We’re a couple of episodes into season three but I haven’t watched yet.

The first Marvel series on Disney+ is coming out in December.

I have a new guitar pedal coming. It shipped this morning. National Solo Album Month kicks off on Sunday. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

Christmas? Thanksgiving? Covid-19 vaccines? That’s all up in the air still.

Election day? I’ve already voted, but I am cautiously optimistic that the fascists will be eradicated.

An Avalanche of New Music

Now that the October Music is complete, I can get back to The Great 2015 ReRecording Project with this little ditty from all the way back in February.

Allow me to add this little note from the alonetone page:

Lyrically it’s fitting to upload this today as we are one week away from the 2020 presidential election where we will do our best to rid the Federal Government of the fascists and their collaborators. This song is about a particular nazi prick. I won’t name names but it’s Bill Barr.

Suck it, nazis.

October Music – Finished

October’s album in a month project is complete. That means nine months in a row I’ve managed at least 10 songs. That is nuts. That is crazy.

This one isn’t really meant to be songs. It’s more like little rhythm exercises, or little harmony exercises. It feels more like a music theory class than actual songs. The first three are okay listens, I think, but the rest are pretty dull, and the last song is a complete turd. You’re welcome.

Here’s the official alonetone playlist link because we all know the hearthis.at thing embedded in the post isn’t actually going to play more than the first song.

Now I have a few days to mix the last five re-recorded songs. Quarantine Tunes Volume 2 will be completed, then next month we do National Solo Album Month again. Something different… an album in a month challenge.

Dig it.

October Music

When I mentioned that the songs for October’s album in a month weren’t so much songs as technical exercises, this is what I meant:

Polyrhythms. One guitar, the bass, and the drums are in one time signature. The other guitar is in a different time signature. Dig?

All of the tracking for October is finished, and now the first mix down is finished too. Happy Halloween.

Car Music

I finished the vocals for October. Done and done. Just short little one line thingies. I added lots of harmony to some of them to make it more interesting.

I was joined in the movie theater parking lot by not one but two student drivers. One with an actual auto school and the other just learning on their own.

I just need to add some additional guitars to a few of the October songs and then all the tracking will be done. I also started mixing a re-recording yesterday but still have some work to do.

The last week of October will be very musical. Everything needs to be done before The Mandolorian season two debuts next weekend.

This is the way.

Getting There

As of 20 minutes ago, all of the rhythm guitar parts are done for what is passing for an October album in a month this month. I’ve got four songs with vocals (barely) and six to go. Two of the songs already have lead guitars too. Sort of. I guess.

Another Song

Maybe I should hire a singer. I think I hurt myself singing this one.

What’s Freddy Mercury doing these days? Ian Gillan? Ronnie Dio? Brad Delp? Hell, Graham Bonnet? Joe Lynn Turner? Naw, not Joe Lynn Turner. Whatever.

Brain Droppings

Random stuff coming……….

I am very pleased that I was able to cast my ballot in the presidential election early and safely. My state and my city have seriously come through for me in these unhealthy, uncertain times. I am proud of what we the people have accomplished in this regard and I am proud that as an American I was able to have my opinion heard.

However…

The downside of voting early is that November 3rd, election day, is kinda irrelevant to me now. Maybe not irrelevant, but more like unimportant. At least until the returns start coming in. I go on social media and have a thousand people asking thousands of other people, what are your voting plans, or how are you going to vote, or are you excited to vote, or everyone get out the vote, etc, etc, and my response is… been there, done that. I took election day off, just in case. I should have taken the day after so I could stay up all night watching returns. On second thought, that would probably be a bad idea. I tend to get a little… animated when fascism is taking over my country and I don’t want to put any added stress on my ticker, or wake up the neighbors, or anything like that.

Basically though… I’m done, there isn’t much excitement about the process left.

Counting today, there are nine days left in October. At the start of the month I decided I wasn’t going to do an album in a month. A few days ago I changed my mind. I’ve got 10 songs in the pipeline. They are all short. They are all weird. They are all simple things based around little poly-rhythmic tricks, or guitarmonies. I haven’t written any lyrics or melodies yet. None of the songs will be instrumentals, but they will all be mostly instrumentals. There aren’t going to be any hooks. Vocal tracks will be short and simple and lyrics will probably just be a line or two. The point of it all is to hear a guitar playing in 4/4 in your left ear, and a guitar playing almost the same thing in 7/8 in your right ear, and how they occasionally line up with each other. Or, songs where the “melody” is just three guitars with tons of fuzz playing in harmony.

In other words, October Music is Robbie’s “I’ve been listening to King Crimson” month.

I still can’t believe that Massachusetts had 1,000 new Covid-19 cases yesterday. The last time we’d had 1,000 cases was in May. All of the progress we made has been flushed down the toilet. How are we as a society capable of landing a space ship on an asteroid 300 million kilometers away and bring it home with a sample of asteroid rocks, but not able to stay in our houses so we don’t get sick. Why are we incapable of just wearing friggin masks and washing our friggin hands?

I thought I was going to have more this morning, but I’m letting myself get distracted. In closing, let me paraphrase my favorite line from this week’s episode of Archer.

I’m your rampage sherpa.

Talk to you all later. Happy Friday.