My RPM album project is now officially electric/acoustic.
I added 12-string guitar to song #9. That means the rhythm guitars are done on two songs. Let’s see if I can sneak another one in before work tomorrow.
Tag: Recording
Checking In After Day Four – #RPM2020
I just posted this onto the RPM Challenge site:
I’m up to eight songs now. Seven have the song form sketched out and one has rhythm guitars (technically that’s a day five thing as I did it before work this morning).
Three of the songs are going to go with the acoustic guitar/hand percussion arrangement. My initial hope was to have five acoustic and five rawk-power-trio. Not sure how that’s going to shake out though.
The RPM Challenge needs at least 10 songs. FAWM needs 14.5 (it’s a leap year). RPM does not need newly written songs, FAWM, by definition, does. Given that I’m losing the entire last week of the month I have more or less decided to give FAWM a miss this year and shoot for 10 songs. If I can get two more and then get them all recorded quickly I might pull some old ideas into the project.
Last summer I spent a day with my acoustic 12-string, sitting on the patio, noodling chord progressions and strummy riffs. I was thinking of doing the whole acoustic guitar/hand percussion/sax thing then too and I actually started a few decent sounding ideas. I never finished them though. I might revisit some of them. I also did an album-in-a-day project a couple of months ago and there was one song that I might want to re-record.
It all depends on how quick I can get through the songs I’ve already started. We’ll see.
As mentioned, I was able to get a little recording in this morning. I finished all of the rhythm guitar parts for song #1. I double tracked it, as usual, but this time each take was two tracks, for a total of four tracks. I have been wanting to record through two amps at once for ages. I did it a few years ago but the two amps were both direct input into the computer, they weren’t mic’d. Today, they were both mic’d. Today it was… real. I guess.
The signal path was my Les Paul into the Klon KTR overdrive pedal with the gain cranked into a Radial ABY box (one input split into two outputs) into both of my Fender Bassbreakers (the 15 watt version and the 18 watt channel on the 18/30) to two Shure SM57 mics. I’m not sure what the reality of the situation is, but it sounded pretty flippin’ sweet to me!
Last year I made a rule stating I could not copy and paste sections of a song. That means I couldn’t record a verse section of a song once and then use it for three verses, stuff like that. I want to do that again this year, but the song I worked on today was kinda hard. Not really hard, just a little hard. It required a lot of takes to get everything kinda/sorta right. Unfortunately that took a lot of time. It actually took all the time I had available this morning.
Maybe I need to start waking up earlier?
Too Sleepy
The plan was to get up early and be ready for work before my beloved Jennifer left. That would give me a little time to record guitar parts before I had to leave for work too.
Unfortunately I couldn’t get to sleep last night. I was still up around 1:00AM which meant there was no way I was getting up early. I slept as late as I could and barely made it to work on time.
I did use all the setup I did last night as an excuse to take today’s photo-a-day pic. That’s me looking at the positive like some kinda fuckin’ optimist.
RIP Iowa Caucuses.
Record Ready
I noodled a little into GarageBand tonight, just to check the mics and the USB interface. My new mic stand (that I bought last year but only took out of the box today) was a lemon. Otherwise, all is well. Now I just need guitar parts to record.
Checking In on Day 3 – #RPM2020
I just posted this to the RPM Challenge website. Just checking in:
It feels like I’m off to a slow start but I don’t know if that’s accurate or not.
I have this vague idea of splitting the album into two, one being my usual three piece rock band kinda thing, and the other being an acoustic guitar/hand percussion/sax/voice thing. The acoustic stuff will probably fall by the wayside but for now it’s still on.
I’ve got two songs sketched out for the rock side and one sort of unfocused idea for the acoustic. The rock things are okay, the acoustic thing is garbage and should really end up in the trash.
That’s it so far. I had a gig on the 1st and I was very pleased with the way I played. Here’s hoping that carries through the month and I nail a few decent guitar parts.
I am hoping to get everything setup in my little corner of the bedroom tonight. Two amps, two mics, and the 8 input USB interface. If I can sneak in some recording too that would be great. We’ll see.
Time to Get Ready
Today is a good day. I got a bonus from work today. That’s good. I got my tax documents from work too. By the time this posts my taxes might even already be filed because my wife is amazing. That’s also good. I just spent my lunch break working on a time sensitive issue and I figured it out with a minimum of stress. That’s good too.
The RPM Challenge starts in less than nine hours. That’s good, but I highly doubt I’ll be awake at midnight to celebrate. We have a gig tomorrow night. That’s good as well. I’m not nearly as stressed as I was for the last gig and that is doubly good.
There are some things that royally suck but I am not letting them bring me down. The triumph of authoritarianism over democracy is progressing in the US Senate right now as the republican party makes a farce out of the constitutionally mandated impeachment process. That royally sucks. I am beginning to think that secession is a viable option. Brexit takes place today. Midnight Brussels time, 11:00PM London time, That’s 6:00PM Boston time, I think. That royally sucks too.
I’m weighing the good against the incredibly bad and choosing to ignore the fact that, in the grand scheme of things, the bad is infinitely more important than the good. Today I am deciding that the good will outweigh the bad even though that is amazingly, shockingly naive. Screw it, I’m going to Disney in a couple of weeks.
For now though, I have to start planning my packing for the gig tomorrow. I need my Les Paul and my SG, my Bassbreaker 18/30 and my Vox MV50 with the 12″ cab, my full pedal board, the handful of new cables I bought (bright orange so you can see them from space), a couple of backup pedals (looking at you, Keeley D&M Drive) and power cables for each one, the microphones, stands, and cables I took home from the rehearsal room recently, the little pick/slide holding microphone stand attachment, and a new glass slide. Then I’ll go to Mike’s house and get the rest of the mics, stands, and cables, my gig bag with all my emergency stuff in it, and the little stand I sit my amp on when we play. Oh yeah, and I have to change the strings on both guitars! Can’t forget about that!
Sunday after the gig I’ll put the amp and the pedal board (and the associated cables) back into my room where they currently sit (see the pic from last night), Setup a mic, stand, and cable on that amp and on the Bassbreaker 15 that is not leaving my room for the gig, then plug those into the 16 channel USB interface that I also took home from the rehearsal room recently. I will plug the USB cable into my MacBook and make sure I can get both mic signals into GarageBand. Once that’s done, I’ll be ready to record guitar parts in stereo. When I record the acoustic guitar or a vocal or a saxophone I can just swing up one of the mic’s that will be on a guitar speaker and use that. I also dug out my little acoustic guitar pickup that I got a few years ago and still haven’t taken out of the package. I can use that to record as well. I’ll keep the laptop and my iPad and my iPhone good and charged so if an idea comes to me I can play it into one version of GarageBand or another. Once that’s all taken care of I just have to… you know… write a shit load of songs. Yikes.
This year is a leap year so we get a whole extra day for the RPM shenanigans. So really it’s no problem at all this year.
Yikes indeed!
But it’s still a good day.
What the Hell is a Cajon?
I can’t remember when it was, maybe about two years ago? I was listening to a cover band podcast and one of the hosts was talking about an acoustic duo he played in. One guy played an acoustic guitar and sang, the other was a percussionist/singer who played a cajon. I thought to myself, what the hell is a cajon?
It’s this. It’s a box. There is a pad on one side of it that has wire snares built into it. If you slap the middle of the box you get a thump. If you slap the edge you get a snare drummish snap.
Fast forward to October 2018. I was in Epcot Center, at the cafe outside of Soarin’. I was sitting at a table by my lonesome and I don’t remember why. I wonder… was this Summer 2018 and not October 2018? Maybe. Whatever, it doesn’t matter. I was thinking about a songwriting challenge, either NaSoAlMo or 50/90 and I was trying to think of things that I could do to mix up my usual workflow. I thought about arranging a couple of songs for acoustic 12-string, a cello instead of a bass, and hand percussion instead of a drum kit. I never did it, partly because the strings function in GarageBand for iOS kinda blows, but while looking at GarageBand Percussionists in the Drummer function I found one with a cajon.
This past summer, just before another trip to Disney World, I was working on 50/90 ideas and I came back to that guitar/cello/percussion idea. I scrapped the cello for an upright bass at first, and I declared that all hand percussion would revolve around a cajon… because why the hell not? Then I got a really crazy idea. Why have a bass at all? Why not just go 12-string, percussion, and voice. That would be way out of my comfort zone. Then the kicker came to me. Where I would normally play lead guitar… play saxophone. Oh we’re just one step beyond now!
Of course I never did any of that at all.
Well now we’re three+ days away from the RPM Challenge and I’m looking for ideas again. Due to still another Disney World trip (this is becoming a trend) I am going to be in quite the time crunch. I thought about maybe doing half of the songs as usual, and then half as trippy instrumentals. Last year I did 20 songs, the equivalent of two RPM albums. Maybe this year I stick to 10 songs but make it two separate five song EP’s. Then I thought about that damn cajon again. How about five rock songs, five trippy instrumentals, and five acoustic songs. The rockers would be guitar/bass/drums/voice, the trippy instrumentals would be guitar/keys/bass/drums with shit loads of sound effects, and the acoustics would be 12-string guitar/hand percussion/alto sax/voice and the percussion would center on a cajon. Three EP’s which would let me have a complete RPM project and a complete fawm.org project (which I haven’t even considered shooting for this year). That sounds awesome. Super awesome. Super epic awesome.
Granted there is zero chance of it happening. I’m going to end up with 10 bluesy rock songs in odd time signatures arranged for a bad power trio. Eh, that would be cool too.
Three days, 10 hours until RPM officially kicks off.
RPM Challenge Global Listening Day
Today is a big day for RPM Challenge participants. Portsmouth, New Hampshire’s community radio station, WSCA, 106.1 FM has declared today as the RPM Global Listening Day. They are going to play one song from each of the 500 or so albums submitted this year. They are literally playing music from all across the planet. You can listen to their audio stream at this link right here.
Check it out. There will be some great music, some not so great music, some music that lives somewhere in between, but all of it was made by people who felt the need to put the rest of the world on hold for a few weeks and let their own creativity shine for a while. I applaud everyone who finished, and everyone who gave it a shot but didn’t finish, and everyone who thought about starting but never did (because next year they will own this thing).
Everyone, that is, except me. My project was crap this year. If you listen to the stream and you hear this song… then you know it’s me.
RPM Challenge Day 11/28 — #RPM2017
I haven’t been keeping up with the updates, but I have been making progress. Not a huge amount of progress, but we’re getting there.
Let’s take a look at the Trello board, shall we? There are currently three active columns: Idea Stage, Ready for Rhythm Guitar, and Ready for Lyrics and Vocals. you can tell that I put a ton of thought into my naming conventions.
The Ready for Lyrics and Vocals column has three entries. Each one consists of a sketched out song form made up of fake bass and fake drums from GarageBand, and a couple of tracks of rhythm guitar. There is also a photo of my amp settings for each song, just in case I need to revisit it.
The Ready for Rhythm Guitar column has six entries. Each one represents a full song form made up of fake bass and fake drums from GarageBand. It is my sincere hope that each of these will be moved to the ready for lyrics column by the end of business today.
The Idea Stage column has five entries. Each one represents a little guitar noodle recorded into my iPhones Music Memos app. I haven’t listened to any of them in about a week, but I believe two of them are similar to things that were used already in one of the songs.
To sum up, I have nine songs in various stages of progress, and three to five little ideas that might become songs at some point down the line. The running time for the nine songs is currently 31:38 (according to my works in progress soundcloud playlist) and that means I have yet to hit either of the RPM Challenge goals (10 songs or 35 minutes). I haven’t given much thought to the FAWM.org (remember, .org. Never .com) goal of 14 songs, but I usually don’t really worry about that until I get closer to the end. My main focus is always on RPM.
My unstated personal goal for the year is to do what I almost did last year. That is to finish off two RPM albums. I ran out of time at 18 songs last year (although there was a leap day to work with, which helped me get that far) and I would like to have 20 finished songs and then pick the 10 best for my submission.
So that’s where we stand right now. What is the plan from here?
Well, we got a little snow this past Tuesday. Some ice on Wednesday. A ton of snow on Thursday. A little snow last night. It’s snowing right now. The forecast also calls for another decent storm tomorrow night into Monday. In other words, the weather sucks right now and I don’t want to leave the house. That means lots of time for music (theoretically at least). If the storm holds off tomorrow I will have band practice, and I probably have to go grocery shopping at some point. There’s also a truck load of laundry to do. Other than that? I want to get the ideas turned into songs and the six songs that are guitar free to have at least some rhythm guitar done. That’s my minimum goal for the weekend. I’d also like to kick off at least a couple more ideas and get them up to speed as well.
What are the chances of me completing all of this work by tomorrow night? I’d say… 3%. Maybe 2%.
Bring it. Let Us Rock (or something similar).
RPM Challenge Day 5/28 — #RPM2017
Where did I leave off? I don’t remember.
Here’s the status… Seven riffs or groups of riffs still in the idea stage. One of them has the rhythm guitars already recorded. It will take some big time copy and paste to bring it into a song, but it’s a start. One more song sketched out and ready to record rhythm guitars. Two more have guitars already and are ready for vocals.
So effectively, three and a half songs that are more than just ideas.
The really cool thing is that the amp I bought last week has a line out that includes a digital speaker simulation. That means you can use the tube amp, bypass the speaker, and record without annoying the hell out of the family on a Sunday afternoon. Much to my surprise, it actually sounds good! I never thought I’d live to see an amp with a line out that actually still sounds like the amp. I am pleased.
Inside the Red Head's Head 