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.
Tag: Recording
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.
RPM Challenge Day 3/28 — #RPM2017
Last night I put together a file on my iPad that has three eight bar phrases. That’s it. Not really a song form yet, but a start.
Today I did something totally different, for me at least. I bought a new amp and as I was putting it through it’s paces I had the iOS Music Memos app open. I put down four little licks or phrases. Most are sort of similar, but they all count as the start of an RPM song idea. There was also that video that I posted earlier today. That has another riff that seems useable.
That’s eight ideas so far. Only two are ready to start actually recording, and some of the music memos might be combined together into one song, but who cares. The ball is rolling. The ideas are coming. The game is on, brothers and sisters!
RPM Prep Work — I am Such a Nerd
I started some of my annual RPM Challenge prep work. I created a new soundcloud account to use for listening to works in progress on my various mobile devices. Also, I created a new trello board to keep track of the progress of each new idea. It’s not much, but it’s a start.
I still have to do some test work with my new MacBook Pro. I’ve used GarageBand on it, but I haven’t recorded any live audio. I have to make sure my Lexicon audio interface will play nicely with the USB 3 connections via an adapter. I don’t expect any issues, but who knows. If I can’t get audio into the computer then it will be another iPad based project. Of course, Apple went and updated GarageBand for iOS yesterday. Couldn’t they have waited until March so I wouldn’t have to waste time learning any new features? How inconsiderate of them, eh?
Then I have to set up my amp and my pedal board and my mics so that when the urge hits I can just plug in the lappy, switch on the amp, and play whatever needs to be played.
The January prep work always makes me feel like a super nerd, but I don’t care. It’s fun… in a super nerdy way.
RPM 2017
I just signed up for the 2017 RPM Challenge. I’ve been playing the game since 2007, and playing it successfully since 2012.
Given the political climate in the United States these days, I think we can safely assume there will be a lot of songs about hating fascism. I can’t say for sure that will be the case (last year most of the songs were about how the Earth is not flat…really) but if you are a betting man/woman…
I have already decided that my Fender amp and my pedal board are staying at home until March. If I’m going to do this, I want to do it right.
The musical chaos begins on February 1st.
Inside the Red Head's Head 