Tag: Recording

Vocal Explosion

50/90 isn’t quite over yet though my chances of reaching 50 songs is long over.

When I woke up this morning I had seven songs finished. Four others were lead guitars and a mix away from being done.

This morning before work I wrote the lyrics and melodies, and recorded the vocals for five songs. Wow! At lunch I squeezed in another, and then after work I added two more. That’s eight vocal parts written and recorded today. That’s insane! I bet when I listen back all of the melodies will be identical. Heh heh, probably.

That’s One, Babie!

It’s official! I did not get shut out in the 50/90 Challenge this year!

Song idea #28 becomes completed song #1, and only two months late!

Written and recorded on my iPad on Monday and mixed on my iPad tonight. The guitars are my Les Paul.

One down, 49 to go (in 25 days, yeah right)!

50/90 – Day 13

When I woke up this morning I had 22 songs in progress, four with rhythm guitars recorded, and one with a vocal idea sketched out.

At this moment I have 24 songs in progress, eight with rhythm guitars, and still just the one vocal idea.

I don’t feel too terribly well today though, so there’s a good chance all the stuff I did today will need to be re-done.

We’ll see.

Untitled

Untitled

Untitled

Left Overs

For this year’s RPM Challenge I worked on 23 songs. One was just too awful to keep alive and I dumped it. One other never got further than one or two bass lines on the iPad. Of the remaining 21, 10 made the final cut. Eight were completely finished but I put them on the B list. Three others were pretty far along in the process, but I ran out of time before I could finish them. Those three might have been good enough to make the final submission, but now we’ll never know.

I made a playlist for the left overs, including the three unfinished songs. I will finish them in the coming weeks, but for now they are just rough mixes of instrumental nothings.

I think if you listen to both playlists you will see that dropping the songs on the B list was the right thing to do. At least I hope so. Either way, I got a ton of new tunes.

Finished

Finished.

Done.

Complete.

…and with a little over an hour to spare!

This makes five years in a row for me. Feels like quite a milestone. I had 18 songs and dropped eight of them for the final album. Are the 10 that I kept the best songs? I think so, but I feel way too close to this right now so I can’t say for sure.

I zipped up all of my mp3 files and a jpeg with the cover art and shared it with RPM via dropbox. Hopefully that works and they get it. My profile has been updated with the 2016 submission, but I’m way too tired to deal with any more than that tonight.

For now, here’s a soundcloud playlist with my 10 goofy songs. Hope they don’t suck too bad.

Dazed

When I left work on Friday I think I had six songs mixed, two songs ready to mix, and a whole pile that were a guitar part away from being ready to mix.

Here we are on Sunday afternoon and I have 15 songs mixed. My head is spinning. I’m not done though. I have to stop for tonight so I can go to band practice and then eat dinner with the love of my life and watch The Walking Dead (priorities, right?).

I still have to mix one more song tomorrow night, and like a moron I actually added a song last night at about 10pm, and then added another one this morning at about 7am. I only need to add vocals to those two and then they’ll be ready to mix too. Vocal tracking will happen tomorrow before work in a great bonanza of get-it-in-one-or-don’t-get-it-at-all.

Beyond that, there are still four more unfinished songs that will have to wait for another day. One or two of them are just awful and were abandoned by choice. At least one of the others was working for me before, but I just ran out of time.

So I expect to have 18 songs available for the finished product tomorrow. I’ll probably drop at least four of them, maybe more. I really want to try and trim the fat for the album I submit this year. Not to imply there’s greatness here or anything like that. I just want it to be less crappy than some of my previous submissions (looking at you, 2015).

Home Stretch

Six songs mixed and uploaded. When I woke up today I had 10 songs that were only lacking lead guitar. I just blitzed my way through four of them and now I have a happy little blister forming on my ring finger. I’m going to take a guitar break and do some mixing, and then if I need to I am going to lance that blister with a steak knife, seal it up with Elmer’s glue and get back to work.

I love February!