Arrangement Track

I never noticed the Arrangement Track in GarageBand for MacOS before.

It’s useful, but not a game changer.

COVID Blues

Three songs in the pipeline right now. I put guitars on all of them. Two of the songs seem okay so far. The third is a sloppy awful mess. It’s a 12-bar blues. Should I call it The Covid-19 Blues?

RPMay Underway

Hey, that post title rhymes!

I thought about taking the first couple of days off this month but instead I have two songs sketched out. Nothing special but they exist.

Eight more to go.

Decibel Levels

I just did an experiment with the two amps I have in my bedroom right now.

I plugged into the Bassbreaker 15 with the same setup I used for lead guitars on the April music projects. I had the free decibel meter app on my phone running. I hit the mid 90’s a couple of times. The average was in the high 80’s.

I then switched to the Bassbreaker 18/30 with no pedals. I started on the 18 watt channel, which I used for the February music. I lowered the volume all the way and then slowly raised it until I actually got a steady, consistent sound out of it. The decibel meter was showing high 90’s and low 100’s. It peaked at 103.

Well, there goes that idea. I did the same thing on the 30 watt channel and it was averaging higher but the peak was only 104. Regardless, With all the headroom that amp has, when I plugged in my pedal board the volume level was absolutely going to go up. I could try to set everything at unity gain, but why bother. I shut the 18/30 off and went back to the 15. This time with all the pedals. There is a distinct possibility that I might do this whole month with just the Klon KTR for gain. I’ll have the Fulltone OCD and the Wren and Cuff Tri Pi 70 there if I need it, but that KTR is just perfect all by it’s lonesome.

One thing I might do different though is I might put the small amp on top of the big amp. with it sitting on the floor I can’t quite get the mic stand low enough to get the mic in front of a good place on the speaker. If I put the 15 on top of the 18/30 I won’t have that problem.

We’ll see.

May Gear

I finished my April music project last night so obviously I’m sitting here thinking about what gear to use for May.

In February I used all three of my Gibson guitars, both Bassbreaker amps, and my full Lizardfish gigging pedal board. Basically I used everything I had in the house. In March I restricted myself to just the SG and the 15 watt amp. No pedals. It was awful (not really, just being an overly dramatic pedal nerd). For April it was the 15 watt amp for everything with the SG and the low gain side of the D&M Drive for rhythm parts and the Les Paul and the high gain side of the D&M for leads.

I think I might be tired of overly restricting myself. For May I want to use the gigging pedal board again. I miss my wah pedal. For the amp… I don’t think I can get the 18/30 watt Bassbreaker to play quiet enough to not annoy the crap out of everyone in the house. I might try it though. I think I might plan to use the 30 watt channel until someone complains, then switch to the 18 watt channel until someone complains, then switch back to the 15 watt amp. Either that or I’ll just use the 15 watt amp. I’m starting to really miss my Deluxe Reverb. It’s at Mike’s house and it would sure be fun to play with right now.

I’m going to have to change my strings on both guitars at some point too. Yikes.

Finished

The RPM Challenge – April COVID-19 Quarantine Bonus edition is complete.

One or two songs aren’t terrible… I guess.

Reverse? At Long Last!

Oh Apple, you really do love me.

April Tracking is Done

Tracking for the April Bonus RPM Challenge is done. Sort of. I have seven songs mixed and complete and three more ready to mix. I say sort of because there is an 11th song. It has a melody and lyrics but I didn’t record the vocals and frankly I’m not gonna. If time allows I am going to record the melody with a guitar (or two… or three) and call it an instrumental.

For now though, I have everything I need to finish the COVID-19 RPM Bonus Challenge thingie.