Tag: Recording

The Downside

I just stumbled on the downside of being in a band again.

I was recording some guitars tonight using my Les Paul. I had decided that Les was going to be the only guitar I used on these old songs this month, and it would probably be the only guitar I used for RPM next month.

Then I broke a string. I haven’t broken a string inyears. It wasn’t until this moment that I realized all of my spare strings are in my equipment bag at Mike the Bass Player’s house.

Damn it! So the ES-335 makes an appearance on this months demo project. The best laid plans and all that happy crappy.

Old Music

Say hello to the first demo of 2015!  RPM starts in just under 13 days so it’s time to start blitzing you all with new demos of old songs.  This is a Prime Meridian song.  One of the last we wrote.  It comes from 1999 (or so) and was more or less forgotten about.

It’s kinda groovy, isn’t it?

What was I Thinking

I’ve been warming up for RPM by digging out old songs and recording new demos.  I have done this the last two years as well.  This year most of the focus has been on 1997-2000 when I was in a band called Prime Meridian with Mike and Maria (and John and Dave and Leah and Tracey all at varying times).  I’ve got six of those songs ready to mix and I think I might try and crank out two or three more as well.  I have three old RPM songs left over from last January, and both last March and April had songs that qualify as well so I’ll use those as well when the time comes to make a playlist out of this stuff.

I’ve also started digitizing old cassette tapes and I’ve found a few decent sounding songs there as well.  I started working on two of them today.  They were both written and recorded in the MIDI room at Northeast Broadcasting School, probably in 1994 or 95.  Those two along with another that was actually used by Prime Meridian (and might have been used by Break Even too if I’d been up for it) were things I’d written on a keyboard and pieced together with other random things to make songs.  Kinda like what I do now with RPM.  Actually, there were probably 20 such songs before I left that job, but only 3-5 or so are worth listening too.  Back then though I wasn’t thinking in terms of actual songs.  These were arranged many months after they were recorded in the sequencer.  I also had never really been a singer before.

One thing I learned a couple of years ago when I was messing with demoing songs from the band I played in back in high school is that we never took little things like breathing into account.  Well, that was still the case in the mid-90s too.  I just finished tracking one of those songs and OH MY GOD MY HEAD HURTS!  I have been doubling all of my vocal tracks this time (rhythm guitar too) and the vocal lines are so long that they all cram in together without any room for breathe.  I’ve been breaking things up so that I sing one line on one track and the next on another, and then I double everything.  I don’t know how I ever could have considered putting something like this together as a song.  It’s so ridiculously difficult to sing.  No one could ever do it live.  Ever.

All of the singing has literally given me a headache.

Ouch, babie.

It’s not February Yet

I’m ready to start the RPM Challenge. I’m ready to start writing bad music and recording bad demos. Ive taken December and January off, but I’m already looking at my guitar, and at GarageBand thinking I’ve got to get crackin’. I need to wait until next month though.

So I figured I’d record a couple of old songs. I started one tonight. Maybe do two or three just to keep the edge sharp? Sure. There will be a demo of a mostly forgotten Prime Meridian song coming soon.

NaSoAlMo Song #2

Here is the second of 10 (probably) songs written and recorded for NaSoAlMo. As has often been the case lately I am 90% asleep right now, so I have no idea if the mix I just finished is listenable or not. I’d consider it a big bonus if it sounds okay.