Tag: Recording

Where the Music Projects Stand

I haven’t been pushing the recording very much so far this month. I have one full week left to get stuff done before I take a week off from work. When I take that week off, I’m not going to want to do anything but relax.

There are a total of 20 songs. All of the basic tracks (drums, bass, rhythm guitar) are finished. What’s left?

Three songs still need lyrics, vocals, melody, and lead guitar. They are all from March.
Three more songs have vocals but still need lead guitars. Two from March and one from April.
Two more songs are fully recorded, but still need to be mixed. Both are from April.
The remaining 12 songs are all completely finished. Five from March and seven from April.

And that, dear friends, is where it stands. I suspect it will probably trickle into June. I still haven’t decided if June will get it’s own music month project. July won’t, as 50/90 starts on July 4th and I am planning on failing that one once again.

Two Songs

I mixed two songs last night. Let’s start with the bad news. This song is from April. You’d think it would be bad enough that after finishing the recording I realized that it’s awfully similar to a 2013 RPM song, but I had to go and put together this crap fest of a mix. I expect to be doing this one again.

http://alonetone.com/robertjames1971/tracks/its-not-easy.mp3%20

On a slightly better note, I also mixed one from March. This is the first of the RPMarch songs, and one of the Christmas vacation things. All that’s left from the original iPad file is the bass, and even that is using a different sound. I like this one… sort of. The vocals were sung in the car while sitting in a parking lot waiting for the kids to get out of karate. The lyrics are about how weird it is that so many people get so wound up about RPM, and about how dumb the idea of doing a second RPM right away felt.

I’ll probably end up remixing this one too. I have no confidence in any of the mixing I’ve done. I’ve already redone two of these things. I have been using more plug in effects and some how I just get bogged down with the individual tracks and I lose the sense of the complete song. When I go back and listen a few days later, everything is swimming in reverb, or the bass is buried, or the lead is buried, or the drums are too loud. It’s always something. I might end up remixing everything.

http://alonetone.com/robertjames1971/tracks/overkill-1.mp3%20

Nerdus Extremus

I just made a list of all 20 March and April songs and color coded it based on the state of completion (or incompletion) in which each recording currently resides.

There are two that are ready to mix. Hopefully I’ll get one in tonight.

Rock & Roll, eh?

December/March/May Music

Here’s another song from the March 10. Back in December while the kids were on Christmas vacation I had a brief idea of writing and recording 4-5 songs as a Christmas Vacation project. It got as far as four Garageband files on my iPad consisting of bass and drums. When the dumb idea of continuing RPM into March came along I rolled those four ideas into RPMarch. Now we’re in May and here we have the first of those four to be mixed. This is actually #3. Not that it matters.

The lyrics are another @floridaman story. If I do 50/90, I might take the lyrics ideas for all 50 songs from that twitter account. It’s a gold mine.

http://alonetone.com/robertjames1971/tracks/i-just-explode.mp3%20

While I was at it tonight, I also remixed the most recent April song. I brought up the lead guitar (duh) and reduced the sauce on the vocals. I don’t know if it made any difference, but here it is. It still doesn’t have the Highlander line. I guess I’ll have to remix this at least once more.

http://alonetone.com/robertjames1971/tracks/time-has-almost-caught-us-my-friend-remix.mp3%20

Absent Minded Nitwit

I mentioned yesterday that I was hoping to mix two songs tonight.

Every other Friday I spend the evening hanging out with my mom at my folks’ house while my dad does volunteer work. I get there around quarter to seven and leave about quarter past 10. My mother is usually asleep not long after 8:00, so I usually bring my computer and mess around with music while I wait for Dad to come home. The plan tonight was to try to mix one or both of the two songs that are ready.

This morning before I left I put my computer into my backpack (MacBook Pro, beetches). I had my awesome new blue tooth Bose headphones in their case sitting right next to the computer. I also had my awesome Sennheiser cans, the ones I used to mix last February’s RPM, and last November’s NaSoAlMo, and every thing in between, sitting right there on the desk next to the Bose headphones and the computer.

I forgot to put either pair of headphones into the backpack. I have an old pair of ear buds. Urgh. One of the songs that’s ready to mix is far and away my favorite of this month’s batch (meaning on a scale from 1-10 it’s a 3) so I will mix the other one first. I don’t want to waste the time, and I don’t want to mix a potentially decent song using ear buds.

I am an absent minded nitwit.

Three Songs

Musically speaking, I had a good day yesterday. The first three April songs have vocals. When I got up yesterday morning I still hadn’t worked out the form of any of the April songs. They were just 4 or 8 or 12 bar phrases that happened to kinda fit together. Before work I brought up song #1 and stitched everything together into a form. It actually ended up almost like a suite. I had two 8 bar phrases with clean guitar, and two with overdriven guitar. So the clean pair became verse/chorus of one song and the heavier pair became verse/chorus of a second song. Then I reprised the first song at the end. Next thing I knew I was close to 7.5 minutes worth of rawk. How prog of me!

I had most of the lyrics and melody written and the vocals recorded by the time I had to punch into work. As it turned out, yesterday was a parent/teacher conference for one of the kids. I thought it was going to start at 6:00, which would have let me get there on time (just barely) but it actually started at 5:30. I work until 5:30. So how did I deal? I took some vacation time in the afternoon so I could leave with plenty o’ time to get to the school.

That meant that instead of having a lunch hour, I had a lunch three hours. I finished the vocal on song #1, then blew through the form, lyrics, melody, and vocal for song #2. That’s when I realized I should probably shower and stuff before I go meet with a teacher. Blah, blah, do the right thing. After the shower I had 40 minutes before I had to go. I somehow managed to blow through the form, lyrics, melody, and vocal for song #3! Now three songs in 4-5 hours is not nearly as impressive as my usual RPM Vocal Days, but it’s not bad for an old fart like me.

I still have two songs that aren’t ready to be song-formified. One (the left over from RPM) is still just one 16 bar phrase. The other (the left over from RPMarch) is now up to two phrases, one of which has drums and bass. Then there is the old post-Tempest Fero/pre-Prime Meridian song I want to add. I haven’t started recording any of that yet, although I do have a really bad tape recording of it available for when I do start recording.

The goal is to finish April before I go back and finish March. I might bend that rule from time to time, but that’s the plan for now at least.

So that’s the musical update for today. Maybe I’ll be able to sneak in some more this weekend. There probably won’t be time on Saturday. Maybe a little on Sunday. We’ll see. I’m also still itching for more ocean sun rise pics. Again, we’ll see.

Musically Successful Day

Last night I started recording ideas for the first April song. I’m up to song idea number four. That’s right, I’ve stitched together three more since I woke up today. All of the ideas originated on the guitar. I feel happy about that, even if my playing is getting worse and worse by the minute.

It’s all been on the iPad. I noodle together a phrase, record it, then add drums and bass via Garageband, then I rerecord the guitar so that it’s almost actually in time. I guess just having a click track isn’t enough for me anymore. Was it ever? Who knows.

Some Progress

Last night I recorded two rhythm guitar parts. There are only two left to do. Today I wrote and recorded a vocal. There are only six left to do. Urgh.

I wanted to do more but I’m too tired to think. Maybe before bed I’ll do more guitar, but this six vocals are making me feel pretty sad.

March Music

Who is freakishly tall, has glow in the dark red hair, and recorded a vocal this morning before he left for work?

Me!

The music project is still alive. I had two songs that already had lyrics but did not yet have vocals. I recorded one of them today. So I didn’t actually write anything, but at least I did something.

I’ve got six days left. Frankly there is no way in hell this gets finished this month, but I’m still pluggin’ away. I need to get one more song underway to keep to the RPM Challenge laws. I’ve got nine in progress and the running time is a few seconds more than 30 minutes. That puts me below both goals. I need to get cracking on one more. Then there are rhythm guitars for six songs, vocals for eight, lyrics for seven, and lead guitars and final mixing for all ten.

Here’s a hypothetical…

Let’s say I don’t finish by April 1st. How do I handle that? Do I turn the March project into March/April? Or (and this is insanity) do I start a new project for April and work on both at the same time?

I’m leaning toward the latter… because I’m stupid like that.