What did I post on that dumb music project Tumblr account as a summary for day two of the RPM Challenge?
Day two was not as productive as day one, but I got some stuff done and I am pleased.
I put rhythm guitars onto one song and also gave that song a melody. Later in the day I added song idea number five and finished the MIDI bass and MIDI drums and gave the whole thing a complete song form.
Day three has already seen some progress, but you’ll read about that tomorrow.
Yup. A decent haul on day two. One new song format, one song’s worth of rhythm guitars, and one vocal melody without lyrics.
Similar to yesterday, I wrote my summary of day two after I did some work on day three. I put rhythm guitars onto two songs this morning after breakfast. Hopefully I will have some more melodies and maybe a lyric or two or three at some point today. I won’t be able to do an early morning car vocals tomorrow, but I should be able to do it on Monday so I want to have a lot of stuff available to work on by then.
Every February I try to post daily RPM Challenge updates on a Tumblr page that I set up a thousand years ago and only ever use to try and track daily updates of music projects. Why? Why do I do this? Why do I even keep this Tumblr account? What the hell is wrong with me?
I find that I post to that page for a week or two and then I fall off and eventually forget all about it. It’s lame. I am lame. You could probably tell that by all the lame posts though, so I don’t expect anyone to be surprised.
Anyway, I posted the day one summary this morning even though I have already done some work on day two today. Whatever. Since I am a content whore I will quote the Tumblr post here because… ya know… reasons. I guess.
The RPM Challenge is underway once again. Will I manage to post daily updates here? Probably not. Oh well.
Day one went really well. I managed to start four songs before I punched into work for the day. Three of them were multiple riffs/changes that I noodled out on guitar. The fourth was just a bass/drum groove that I worked out on my iPhone.
After work I added bass and drum parts (MIDI) and a song form to two of the three ideas that started on guitar. I started adding bass and drums to the third but was unable to finish.
And that is my wrap up for day one. I’ve already done a little work on day two.
There you go. There is my day one summary. I mentioned the morning stuff here yesterday but the after work stuff should be new news.
As for today? I put rhythm guitars (two guitars through two amps each for a total of four tracks) onto song idea number one. I didn’t have time to add them to song idea number two too. Maybe this evening. We’ll see.
155/365 – The two amps are a Fender Bassbreaker 15 and a Vox MV50 Clean. Both are running direct into my USB audio interface.
I get a certain amount of personal time off from work each year. We accrue one 12th of that total amount of annual time each month. We can carry over some of that personal time off from month to month, but we do have a cap on how much we can have stored up at any given time. The cap is higher than the annual allotment, but it is pretty easy to accrue up to the cap on any given month. With today being the first of the month, our accrual numbers were updated today and sure enough I have hit the cap. Shit. I got a friendly reminder to make sure I book enough time off this month to get back down below the cap so that I don’t fail to accrue any more time next month.
I already had one day off booked in February. My beloved wife and I both took her birthday off. I need to take two more days to ensure that I get far enough below the cap to not have a problem in March. I booked those two days for later in the month. Interesting that this comes up in February… the one month out of the year where I go absolutely bonkers crazy working on writing and recording an album’s worth of music. Sure I do album-in-a-month things throughout the year, but February is the only one that really counts. February, also known as the RPM Challenge, is the one that matters to me. As silly as it is, I get super invested in this thing every year. I am not really sure why it is so important to me, but it is… and now I have a four day weekend near the end of the month where I can cram in tons of music project work.
We are 11 hours into February now. Was I able to get anything done this morning?
Why yes, yes I did.
After finishing my exercise and my breakfast and my daily writing prompt blog post, I picked up my guitar and noodled out three (3) new song ideas. Three of them. Already! Crazy right? Sure is, especially when you realize that just before I punched into work I noodled out a fourth new idea in GarageBand on my iPhone. It’s just a bass riff for now, but it’s there and that means I have FOUR songs in progress already.
I also have two potential album cover photos. Not that these are really in the running, but just expect to see lots of square format pic over the next four weeks. One of them is bound to end up as the cover.
154/365
In closing, allow me to summarize the progress made in the pre-work hours of day one…
I’ve been talking about it all month, but finally we have a new recording all mixed and ready to share. This is a song that was written and originally recorded for the 2021 RPM Challenge and re-recorded here for Quarantine Tunes Volume Seven, aka The Great 2015 Re-Recording Project.
What do you think, should I have put some more reverb and echo on everything? This is the wettest mix I’ve ever done… maybe. It’s pretty much dripping wet.
Hopefully there will be more stuff coming in the next few days.
It happens around this time every year, or at least every year since 2008…
I just signed up for this year’s RPM Challenge. The annual musical extravaganza/torture event is happening and I will be eye ball deep in it all throughout the month of February. We wouldn’t have it any other way, would we?
I have no idea what I am going to do this year. No goals other than to finish. 10 songs or 35 minutes of music… or maybe 20 songs or 70 minutes of music, as maybe I might shoot for a double album this year. Who knows.
Maybe my 1978 Les Paul in your left speaker (or your left ear if you’re wearing headphones) and my 2020 Les Paul in your right speaker/ear? Fun, eh?
I went to sleep last night fully planning to record some singing in the car this morning but then when I woke up I just didn’t have the energy. Tomorrow, for sure. Then some lead guitar playing. That’s the plan at least. I’m not trying to write anything new this month as I am saving that up for RPM February. Maybe I should just noodle some riffs and chord changes onto a memo file to have in the bank for next month. I’ve done that before but I usually try to keep everything 100% February if I can.
So I have signed up for the RPM Challenge… have you? Well why not! Make some music next month. It doesn’t have to be good, it just has to be.
Hey everyone, raise your hand if you were able to sneak some guitar playing in before work this morning.
Robert timidly raises his hand.
Yup, I recorded lead parts for two songs. I now officially have no songs in progress that are currently ready for any guitar tracks. I have to do some MIDI work tonight, and maybe some car vocals in the morning, and then I’ll have some stuff ready to work on.
The Great Guitar Pick Journey of 2024 continues as well. I tried another new one today. Much of my internet research pointed to Dunlop as the brand to go with. I tried Max Grip first (1.14mm) and those were okay, but no as good as the Fender picks I’d been using for ages. They have little grippy things on them that are supposed to keep them from spinning around between your fingers as you play, and that worked but it felt awkward. I am sure I could get used to it but I moved on to option two this morning (for now at least).
Option two is Dunlop Tortex Jazz III. This one was much better than the Max Grip in all ways but one. The little guy is just tiny. I kept going into muscle memory mode and literally missed the strings. It’s just small. It feels really good in my hand, and the overwhelming majority of suggestions I’ve received in my online questioning said to try them. I’ll stick with it for a while, but I am wondering if they make the same pick only bigger.
I have two other options that I want to try before I start looking outside of Dunlop, but I haven’t bought either of them yet. One of them is pretty expensive for a pic. We’ll see.
Anyway, here are the obligatory pictures from this morning’s lead guitar playing extravaganza.
147/365
Dig those shiny new frets
Two amps… I ran them both direct out though. No speakers. Sadface.
Was today the first car music of 2024? I think so.
I snuck out of the house a few minutes after 7:30, got to the movie theater parking lot (which wasn’t quite as empty as I like it to be) by 7:40 and recorded vocals for two songs until 8:25. I didn’t have time for any more, and even if I did I might not have. It was a struggle today. My voice was very scratchy and I’m not terribly pleased with the results… then again I am never pleased with the results so what difference does it make?
The upside is I now have two songs that are ready for lead guitars. The downside is that I have no calluses on the fingers on my left hand so recording lead guitars is going to hurt a bit. I can hack it though. I’m practically a pro at this… not really… whatever.
Here’s the view of my “studio” today:
There was a truck parked right next to my usual spot so I had to move over a few rows.
I didn’t play my guitar this morning. I had to punch in to work early to get some paperwork wrapped up before the start of the business day so I spent my time on that instead of music. A fair trade, I guess.
The plan for tomorrow is car vocals. Get up early, do my exercise, have breakfast, hop into the car and drive to an empty parking lot and sing like a deaf canary. Epic. I have six songs in the current volume of The Great 2015 Re-Recording Project that are ready for vocals. Maybe I can pick off two of them. If things go really well, maybe three. I spend more time on the re-recording stuff than on the usual demo projects. I want them to be better than usual, even though I am a crappy singer and they end up sounding equally as garbagey.
Last night before bed I spent some time adding guide tracks to some of the songs. Just a MIDI piano playing (roughly) the vocal melody and harmony parts so that I can have a little help when I record the actual vocals. All of these songs have been recorded once before, but I tuned the guitar down a half step this time around so they are all in a different key and that’s just enough to screw up my memory of how to do things. My ear is good enough that it can usually rise above such mini-challenges, but why not give it a little help, right?
I already have two songs that are ready to mix. One of them has been ready to mix for about 18 months now and I just haven’t had the energy to get it done. I’d like to pick off one of them tonight, but as the haiku in the previous post hinted, I am freakin’ exhausted already today (it’s 2:46pm and I am ready for bed). I am not going to have the energy for anything tonight beyond making dinner, going grocery shopping, and then coming home and impersonating a vegetable in front of the TV.
I call that making plans.
Car vocals tomorrow! You heard it here first! (Now don’t let the public down, Robert!)
When I finished playing guitar yesterday morning I had run out of tracks that needed to be recorded. Last night I started another re-recording song so that I could have something to work on today. Now here we are again with nothing ready to work on because for the third day in a row I played guitar!
I now have six quarantine tunes ready for vocals. That’s what I call a backlog. It’s going to take me a while to get through all of that. I have one more song on my list for this round of re-recordings. I had two but I decided to drop one of them. If I can prep that one with bass and drum MIDI tracks today then I’ll have something to do tomorrow morning. Then we start doing car music on Tuesday? We’ll see how it shakes out.
Obligatory guitar pics, via Hipstamatic shake-to-shuffle….
Inside the Red Head's Head 