Not sure about the mix for this one. My left ear hears much better than my right, and I do all of my work with headphones. Sometimes when I have two doubled tracks split left/right I end up having a hard time keeping them balanced. I over compensate one way or another and then I end up throwing all the other tracks out of whack as well. That might have happened here.
Overall I kinda like this one, but as with the last song I uploaded the cutting and pasting feels really choppy. Bad punches all around. The lyrics are about my 1997 decision to go back to college which, at least for a while, turned into a kind of career for me.
I mixed one song tonight after mixing two last night. 50/90 is now 25/44. I hit the 50% complete point one day after reaching the halfway point. I need to step up the pace a little.
Here’s tonight’s song. I don’t really care for it, although it is in 5/4 and makes the prog fan in me happy.
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Last night I mixed a song that sounds alarmingly similar to a song I mixed the night before. Repetitiveness is a bummer.
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I also mixed this angry little ditty that is sort of maybe about Ferguson, MO although at the time of writing I had very little factual knowledge of the protests. I was just going on tweets from the scene and most of those were more emotional than factual.
The tail was sung off today. I made use of every non-work second and wrote and recorded six (6), that’s SIX vocals today. The song above is the first of those to be mixed, and the 19th song posted to the 50/90 page.
My head is spinning with all the progress I made today.
Here are a couple of random thoughts for a pre-work Monday morning.
The drive from Methuen to Canton today took less than an hour. We are firmly in the summer traffic lull. Two weeks from now cities and towns will be starting up their school years and the 55 minute drive I made today will take 90+ minutes. I know how bad it gets, but seeing how good it can be (not that 55 minutes is really that good) just makes September through June that much worse.
I indirectly gave my step kids the weirdest compliment they are ever likely to get. I was in my room getting dressed and that cat jumped onto the bed where I was sitting and got all affectionate. I tend to baby talk to the cat when I am petting her. I was saying goofy things about how the kitty loved her mummy and her big sister and her big brother. Then I said that kitty’s sister and brother love her too because they have good taste in kitties.
I told the cat that the kids have good taste in kitties. What the hell is wrong with my brain? How did that sentence even form in my head? Good taste in kitties? Please!
I played a lot of guitar this weekend. On Friday I finished (except for vocals) one song and started another. On Saturday I finished two songs (except for vocals) and started another. On Sunday I started four songs. That’s nine songs worth of guitars recorded. I was not physically prepared for so much playing and today my finger tips are literally on fire. Oh the pain!
We came back to the hotel a little early tonight. Both kids wanted to stay up late. I had all my pictures from the day sorted and uploaded. What to do? How about mix a song for 50/90?
I’ve got this goofy idea for 50/90. I’ve got these three electric guitars, see? How about I use one guitar per day. I used my ES 335 on everything I worked on on Friday. I used the Strat for everything I did today. I plan on using the Les Paul tomorrow.
But there’s a hang up here. The Strat is just plain hard to play. I recorded three songs worth of leads today. One of them needs to be done again. The other two aren’t great, but they are okay. If I re-record them tomorrow, do I use the Strat, because the song is a Strat-day song, or do I use the Les Paul, because the tracks will be recorded on a Les Paul day. And how do acoustic guitars fit into the plan?
I set out on June 1st to write and demo 10 songs. When June ended I had 10 complete songs and three more that were still incomplete. As of this moment, all three of the extras have been recorded. One has been mixed, I posted it the other night. The other two had vocals recorded yesterday and today. One of them is in three separate parts but will still probably be only five or six minutes long. No prog masterpieces here. The other one is just a little thing for 12-string and vocal. Nothing complicated. If I can mix them tonight, then I’ll have a clean slate for the start of 50/90 tomorrow.
I keep talking about the left over song from May that I was adding to the pile of June songs. Here it is. Just a dopy little 12-bar blues that was really just an excuse to write something on my new Strat. In the end, it’s kind of a fun little groove.
Yesterday I posted a song that was recorded entirely on my iPhone and had ugly distorted vocals that I was embarrassed to share with the interwebs. I said that there was one other song from this month that was also recorded entirely on the iPhone. This is that other song.
Vindication, or what?
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Short and sweet with atheist leaning lyrics. 1000 years ago I would have burned at the stake for this tune. I love living in the future!
The drums on the iPhone mix followed the guitar and bass much more closely, especially in the verses. I used the GarageBand Drummer again and while it lost a bit in the verses I think the groove is groovy enough to justify it. I wasn’t gonna, but I did.
This is a little better than the last one. No unwanted distortion.
I didn’t use the GarageBand drummer on this one. I kept the iPad drum part but changed the sound. Same with the vocals. The guitars are all the same between the two mixes except for the signal processing. I added a slap back delay onto the lead and toned down the reverb and delay on the two rhythm parts.
The real question though is when did everything this month turn into either 3/4 or 6/8 time? Is this what it’s like to play in a swing band?
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Here’s the iPad mix for comparison. Again, not too different.
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As far as the iOS mixes are concerned, I can call the June Music project successfully complete (under RPM Challenge rules). I have written and recorded 10 songs this month. There are two additional songs that don’t have vocals/lyrics/melodies yet. I don’t believe I will have time this weekend to finish them. I think I’ll do them next week in the first three days in July before 50/90 starts on the 4th. Then I’ll have 12 “June” songs and one left over from May, with two different mixes of each song. That will make a nice bandcamp.com playlist.
As of right now I am in for 50/90. I have not been writing at a fast enough pace to feel confident, but at least I’ve been building up to it. We’ll see how it goes.
Inside the Red Head's Head 