Tag: Recording

March is Almost Over

I know that no one else on Earth gives even the slightest fuck about yet another stupid song writing project.  We all have much bigger fish to fry.  I don’t care.  You’re getting another March Music post and that’s all there is to it.

I’ve got three days left.  Tonight while watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, I wrote the lyrics and the melody to the last three songs.  I now have three vocal parts to record, and six lead guitars to record.  I am hopeful that I can get them all done tomorrow, though that will require another trip to an empty parking lot for the three vocals.  No problem.

That will leave me with Sunday night, and Monday and Tuesday before and after work to mix the six remaining songs.  Easy Peasy, Lemon Squeezy.

Once that’s done all I will need to worry about is the global pandemic and the news stories detailing a growing sense of panic in some parts of the world… some of which are not too terribly far from me.

Until April 1st that is, when I start another month long writing challenge.

March Music

I finished two songs.  One last night and another just a few minutes ago.  I’d post them both here but hearthis.at is being a pain in the ass and not uploading the second song.  I couldn’t get the first one to upload last night either, but it worked this morning.

Both songs are crap, but they exist so there’s that.  If the second song ever uploads I’ll share it.  Until then, you’ll just have to settle for one stink burger.

 

Risky Behavior

I did two crazy things this morning and it’s still not even time to punch in to work.

  1. I left the house
  2. I recorded myself singing

It was risky behavior, not because I left the house.  Sure, I left the house but I never left the car.  I never even cracked the windows.  No, it was risky behavior because the security guard working at the strip mall whose parking lot I was hiding in buzzed me twice in his mall security mobile.  If he had come over to me I would have had to explain what I was doing and boy would that have been embarrassing.  I’m glad I avoided that hassle.

My mobile studio:

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Thursday Night Music

The March 2020 Music Album in a Month RPMarch thing whatever it’s called made progress tonight.  Two of the four rhythm guitar free songs now have rhythm guitar.  I played my SG tonight instead of my Les Paul.  I don’t know why.  It means I have SG Hipstamatic pics to post though.

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Shake to Shuffle rides again.

Music and Money

I’ve mentioned that at the start of March I decided to curb my post-RPM Challenge blues by doing another RPM Challenge.  I’m still working on it though it is very easy to be distracted by other things right now.  I’ve got two songs done, six more partially done, and I still need two more.

This morning there was a post on the RPM Challenge Facebook group (I didn’t check the actual RPM Challenge website, it might be there too) suggesting we all take advantage of being stuck at home indefinitely and do another RPM Challenge in April.  Good idea!  I mean, I was already planning on it, but I don’t have to do it alone.  Why not?  Why not use our stay-at-home time to do something creative?  I’m all for it… but I would have been without a global pandemic to lock me in the house so I guess I’m not the target audience there.

Turning to politics, remember when Andrew Yang was running for president and proposed giving everyone in the USA a $1,000 stipend every month?  I thought it was a good idea.  A creative way to help those in need as well as to stimulate the economy.  I also loved the implied, “you think Sanders is a socialist?  Wait till you get a load of this” vibe.

Yesterday Mittens Romney threw out a similar proposal.  Today Joe Kennedy did as well, though he provided some actual details with his idea.  Now it sounds like the fucking white house is jumping on the wagon.  They may be considering a plan similar to Yang’s.

First off, let me get it out of the way… if the dickless president really wants to make being anti-socialist a platform in his campaign, then giving away money isn’t a good way to do it.  I expect that anyone who ever said a negative word about socialism should refuse that money, right?  Just like they refuse public schools and public fire departments, and trash pick up, and police, and snow plows, and highways, and all of those other socialist things.

Second, can we just make Andrew Yang president now?  Like, let’s all vote today and just give him the job.  The proposal he made that everyone laughed at could very well be law within days.  Good work, Mr Yang.  Smart leadership is what we need and it is literally the furthest thing away from what we have.

So as for the social distancing, today is my second day working from home.  Yesterday felt like a normal telecommute day.  All day long I had this idea in the back of my mind that I would be back in the office tomorrow, same as any other telecommuting day.  It really wasn’t until I got up this morning and didn’t drive to work (I drove to the super market instead) that it really started sinking in.  Things are different.

There is a little sense of stir craziness, sure, but mostly what I am feeling today is the sense that this is going to be really hard to do.  Some how removing the commute and the office from the work day equation is going to make things more difficult?  I don’t get it, but that feels like where this is heading.  I wish I could explain it, but I can’t.

There is so much wrong with the world right now, and I’m not even talking about that textbook nazi prick in the white house.  There is so much out of wack that I can’t figure out what to focus my worries on.  I’m trying to only worry about things I can control like stocking the pantry and working from home and making sure everyone has what they need to do their work/school work without driving each other to drink (wink).  I don’t want to worry about all the other shit.  I don’t want to worry about the projections or the infection rates, or the mortality rates, or the stock market, or layoffs or closings, or the fact that I am weeks overdue for a haircut and now can’t get one (anyone want to lend me their flowbee?).

Positivity used to be the hardest thing in the world for me before I met Jen.  It’s still not easy, but it is closer to my normal mindset.  I am trying real hard to stay positive through all of this.  I may need to bash my guitar around in order to pull it off, but I owe it to everyone to do my best to keep the ship upright.  (I typo’d ship as shit and somehow that sounds better to me, hehe)

So keep your shit together, planet Earth.  I have faith in you.  You can do it.  Now let’s all celebrate St Patrick’s Day in our self imposed isolation by listening to some Irish music.  No, not U2.  No, not Makem and Clancy…

Rory Gallagher (I wanted the Irish Tour album but those pukes at Spotify don’t have it)

Yesterday’s Music

Here are the two songs I finished recording yesterday.  I mixed them this morning.  I bent my low-fi idea a little and put some more effects onto some of the tracks than I was planning on, but it’s still pretty simplistic.  No doubling anywhere (though there are more vocal harmonies than I was planning to do.  I have a hard time not putting harmonies into choruses).

And just for schnitzengiggles (we watched Beerfest last night) does wordpress.com recognize hearthis.at sets yet?

DOOOD!  IT RECOGNIZED THE SET!  (at least it did in preview mode, let’s publish the post and see what happens)

Addendum: The playlist displays, but it doesn’t seem to play anything but the first track.  That could be my browser though.

I’m a Terrible Musician

I finished two of my March Music songs today.  Everything’s done but the final mix.  I wrote two songs worth of melodies and lyrics, and then recorded two songs worth of vocals and lead guitars.

Given that these are the first two songs I’ve brought along this far this month it might be safe to assume they are my favorites of all of the things currently in progress (there are eight songs so far) and you would be correct.

After today’s contributions though, these are now officially the two worst songs I’ve ever written, the two worst vocal performances I’ve ever recorded, and the two worst guitar performances I’ve ever recorded.

I suck.

I tried to make myself feel better by going a little nutty with Hipstamatic.  Shake to Shuffle didn’t shake my current musical sucking.

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Guitars and Statistics

I doubled the number of songs with guitars recorded tonight.  I had three, now I have six.  They all suck and my attempts at keeping things low-fi are making them suck even more.  What can you do, right?  Two of the songs are in 7/8 time because prog, and two are in 3/4 time because… I don’t know, waltz maybe?

So… COVID-19.  WHO has declared it a pandemic.  Duh.  It is pretty global now so, yeah.  Pandemic.  Dig it?

I’m seeing all sorts of people calling the responses so far “panic”.  They don’t seem to get it.  It’s not panic, it’s resource management.  Every single infectious disease expert is telling us to put “social distance” into practice.  Why?  Resource management.  There are going to be x number of infections, based on the data we have from China, and y percent of those infections will require hospital care.  Finally, we only have z number of hospital beds available at any given time.  y is less than x, but y is greater than z.  Dig?  Statistically speaking there will be more infections requiring hospital care than there are hospital beds to put them in.  If we put “social distance” (I fucking LOVE that term and I’ve been practicing it since I was about four years old) into place then we spread out the infections over time, thus reducing the number of cases requiring hospital care at any one time so that suddenly y is less than z.  Boom.  Problem if not solved then partially alleviated.  Statistics, babie.  Stats for the win.

Read this from the New York Times: Flattening the Coronavirus Curve

Read this from WBUR: Harvard Global Health Expert: Mass. Hospitals Face Capacity Problem If Coronavirus Cases Spike Quickly