Tag: Recording

Record Every Month – Tracking Complete

I got up a little early-ish. Not as early as I’d planned, but early enough to get the trash out to the street, close my exercise ring for the day, have some protein supplement breakfast, and watch an episode and a half of The X-Files before 7:30am. That gave me enough time to record lead guitar tracks for the two songs I’m working on for Record Every Month this month. Tracking is done for both songs. Boom. I just have to mix them, and I have 3+ days left to do it. Nice.

My playing was rusty so I kept my leads simple. Nothing special. I did have some timing issues at the end of one solo, but not enough to redo it when the rest of the solo sounded pretty good. Part of me wants to push myself to do more than two songs next month. I don’t know if that would be 10 songs or five songs or three songs or what, but I’ll probably just do two… or one.

Here are a couple of pictures…

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Overslept

I set my alarm for 5:00am and didn’t get out of bed until about 6:40. Oh well, after a rough few days I think I needed it. I still do, I am feeling super tired still.

I was planning on getting my exercise in for the day, then getting ready for work, then (assuming Jen was awake and not in an early meeting) I was going to add the final guitar parts to the two songs I’ve been working on. Nope. It’s after 8:00 now and I just closed my exercise ring and had a protein supplement breakfast. My stomach is okay so far, though not really 100%. I’m still feeling a little beat up after the rough week, but yesterday was 99% fine and I am hoping for a trend. I’ll use the stop watch at lunch and dinner and see if it keeps me on track. It doesn’t always work, there are other ways to fuck up apart from just going too fast, but it worked for me all day yesterday. I still don’t know what went wrong with the late night pudding cup snack last night. I was really shocked at how that one turned out.

I am planning to go food shopping after dinner tonight. Once I get home I will try to add the last guitar parts to the two songs so that I can start mixing and get them in before the end of the month.

We did a lot of planning for Bellana’s college graduation weekend last night. Once we get through all of the logistics I am going to start obsessing over the photography options. I’m hyper focusing on lens options (yes, the pun was intended… focusing… get it?). I was thinking about trying to get a long zoom so that I could get close up shots of the stage from our cheap seats. Now I’m not so sure. Now I think I might want to go for something super wide so that I can get the whole scene when the family is all together. Like, what if we go to dinner to celebrate afterwards. If I have a 40mm lens on the digital camera and a 50mm lens on the film I’m not going to be able to get multiple people into a shot unless I stand up and walk away. Maybe I want to look into getting a 28mm, or even an 18mm lens so that I can grab nice wide group shots.

Oh to be able to actually know what I’m doing. Heh heh.

Okay, time to go get showered and dressed and get ready for work. Happy Monday, he said with biting, dripping sarcasm.

Car Music for March

Musical progress, folks! The Record Every Month Challenge is still happening for March 2023! I went to my favorite singing-in-the-car parking lot this morning and put really terrible vocal tracks onto two songs. The challenge is to record a song each month. I am upping the ante to recording two songs every month because I am insane.

The view out my “studio” window, complete with my rubber duck assistant audio engineer:

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Weight loss surgery has changed a lot for me in terms of singing. My lung capacity is WAY down, which seems odd but maybe not that surprising. There is a new finding that I just came across today. Car music workflow had me putting the laptop on the passenger seat and leaning over to read the lyrics off of the notepad. Today it occurred to me that without my huge stomach I can do this instead:

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Finally, in closing, I drove through the center of town. I actually brought Dad’s film camera with me, fully intending to stop somewhere and snap a few pics. When the time came though, I just drove home… like I always do. I did almost get hit by a guy running a stop sign, and then get hit again when he decided to change lanes without looking while I was literally right next to him. 9:00am and already driving drunk. Dude’s gonna have a banger of a day, methinks.

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Doctor’s Appointment and More Stomach Fun

Nothing much came of the doctors appointment. I have to make a couple of follow ups and I’ll be getting an MRI at some point. I’ve been crazy busy at work so I haven’t had a chance to make any of the calls I need to make.

I got home with a few minutes to spare before punching into work, but as soon as I did things got crazy busy. I tried to sneak in some lunch and I ate too fast and my stomach rebelled in a big way. It took two hours to calm down but I did get through my lunch. Granted, lunch stretched out almost all the way to dinner time but what can you do.

I’m drastically behind on both my water and protein goals right now. I’ll make it for both today, but I’m annoyed with myself, especially after I had such a good start this morning before going to see the doctor.

Change of subject: I need to do car music. We’re running out of days in March and I have to finish Record Every Month. I have three songs in the pipeline but I’ll probably only get to two. I am planning to do another album in a month this spring, but it depends on guitar gear. I’ve mentioned that I am about to come to the end of the Analog Man King of Tone waiting list. The first full month after I get my mitts on one of those suckers I will do an album in a month using it on every guitar track. That’s the plan at least. Will it be April? Will it be May? Kinda hope it will be April, but that seems highly unlikely.

What else… Star Trek Picard was good today. The whole gang is back on the show. All we need now is Tasha. Good stuff. The show has been fantastic this season. I really need it to keep up the good work and stick the landing. On the other side of the Trek/Wars coin, I started re-watching The Bad Batch over the weekend. I’m still not sure why, but I will finish the first season tonight (I think) and the second season is going to end next Wednesday, I think. Am I right about that? There are two episodes left but they will both be released next week? I head that somewhere.

I’m tired. I’ve had such a stressful week health wise. Between multiple stomach issues and yet another migraine… I need a nap. A long, comfy nap.

Six minutes left until quittin’ time. I’ll make dinner after I finish work, but I will probably be too full from lunch to eat it right away. We’ll see. 16 ounces of liquid left to go. A whopping 37 grams of protein left to go. I’ll make it to both goals, and then some. It’s just going to take some extra time tonight, I think.

Okay. Signing off. I’ll likely post again later. Yesterday was the lowest page view day I’ve had on this page in over four years. I blame the migraines, but I’ll try to write something interesting that will bring the folks by… or not. Probably not.

What the Hell, Stomach

In the last post I mentioned that my stomach has been acting like a dick since dinner. After 90 minutes without eating I thought I was through it and tried to have a little cup of pudding. One bite clued me into the fact that whatever was going wrong hadn’t even remotely passed. That was an hour ago and it still hasn’t cleared.

So we are at 2.5 hours or so now with just the smallest bit of sugar free pudding taken in and still my stomach is acting like an asshole.

What the hell, stomach? Why you gotta be such a dick?

Still Going

The RPM Challenge is over, but I still managed to play some guitar today. I’m up to three new song ideas. I was thinking of trying to do two songs per month for the rest of the year, but I just had to keep going today. I don’t think I am going to do 10 songs in March, but will I? Who knows. It’s just good to play.

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Catching Up After a Couple of Off Days

The last couple of days have been weird, health-wise. First it was the headache issue on Tuesday, then it was stomach issues on Wednesday. Now here we are on Thursday and I am feeling a little like a wrung out face cloth. Here’s hoping today will be a quiet day.

We’re having some HVAC folks come and tell us what they need to do to replace the mini-split in the bedroom. We’ve had it serviced a couple of times this winter, but it’s just not working and we’re more or less unable to heat the bedroom without using a space heater as a supplement. They won’t actually replace it for another week or two, but they are coming for a fact finding mission.

So, television. Yesterday was the premier or season three of The Mandalorian and I could not be at a higher hype level. The first episode was excellent but… I think today’s third episode of season three of Picard might have been better. I did not see that coming, kids. I was just glued to the screen as I was getting this morning’s jogging (yogging) in. The captain vs admiral conflict seemed a little forced and out of character, but everything else? Fan-freakin-tastic. The bad guys behind the bad guy? Fan-freakin-tastic! I can’t wait for episode four. I also can’t wait for episode two of The Mandalorian, but that’s a given. In the Star Wars vs Star Trek debate, I come down on the Star Wars side, generally, but only by a little bit. Regardless of which franchise you prefer, it’s a pretty good time to be a space opera fan, am I right?

For the first time in a year, I am suffering from guitar gear acquisition syndrome. There are two overdrive pedals that I really want to buy, and I also really want to buy an amplifier simulator that I can use as a plug in through GarageBand. Last year I finished the RPM Challenge with a plan to do their Record Every Month challenge throughout the rest of the year. I had a goal of two songs each month that I could pretend were a single. I failed completely. I didn’t write a single song over the 11 months between the 2022 RPM and the 2023 RPM (with the exception of a few failed attempts in November). I am going to try again, but I am probably not going to record guitars through my amplifier on a regular basis. I am thinking I can do direct input more often and I want a good amp sim that I can use consistently. The one I am looking at is only $40, but I just don’t want to spend any money. We have a mini-split to buy after all.

Speaking of gear acquisition syndrome, I also really want to buy a new lens for my new camera. I adore the 40mm lens we bought for Disney, but I’d like a little zoom option. Possibly because the cats are suffering from The Zoomies every night and it just sort of inspired me, you know? I also really really want to buy a 35mm film point and shoot and I don’t know why. I want to buy a 35mm film camera with autofocus functionality too, but that’s going to cost some dough, and I think I can get a point and shoot for pennies. I want to go Nikon, as usual, but decent Nikon point and shoots are stupidly expensive on ebay. I looked for Pentax options yesterday and saw some with the starting bid of $1.00… so yeah, that could be a better option. We’ll see. Maybe I’ll hit the thrift stores more often.

Okay, time to get breakfast and get my day started. I have a lot of meetings today and need to be ready for a long day at the home office. Wish me luck.

A Hiccup in the Plans

Hello and welcome to March 1st, everyone. The RPM Challenge is over. Well… technically working on March 1st is allowed, but I don’t.

Last time I posted here I said I had two songs to mix and then I’d be done with everything that I wanted to have done. I managed to mix one of them and then, around 7:30 last night, it went bad. I had one of those episodes where my vision went blurry and I started getting a headache. I went to bed, turned off all of the lights, buried my head under the blankets, and called it a day. I had just finished dinner when it started, but I was still seven grams of protein away from my daily goal. I missed it for the day, but not by much. I’m not that worried about it.

I slept from 7:45 to 3:30. I woke up, put my watch on the charger (it was at 33%), filled up the tank on my CPAP machine, stepped on the scale for the Wednesday weigh in (more on that later), and went back to sleep until about 5:20. Then I got up, got dressed, filled up my water bottle, updated my food tracking spreadsheet and my weight tracking spreadsheet, jogged in place for 40 minutes or so (pronounced yogged, with a soft “j”), watched the new episodes of The Mandalorian and The Bad Batch, packed up my laptop, and started my day.

Wednesdays are in the office days now so I have to get a move on so I can get out onto the road about 50 minutes from now. I have to prep a lunch and a breakfast, refill the water bottle, shower, get dressed, clean off the car, bring in the trash barrel (assuming the city picked up the trash during the snow yesterday, not sure if they did or not), and get going.

My headache is still there, a little bit, but it’s better after hydrating myself some. My eye sight is normal again too. I just have to watch out for crap like that. It’s not fun at all.

Okay, let’s get a move on.

Winner

I still have two songs to mix, but neither of those two songs are good enough to use on the final record… so I submitted it. I threw together a somewhat logical running order, created a playlist on alonetone.com, and sent it off to the RPM Headquarters.

Done and done.

There I am on the list of winners. I filtered it by people in Massachusetts so I’d be easier to find.

Now I just need to finish those last two songs and I’ll be done with everything for this month. I am pretty surprised I made it through. I’m happy I made it, even if I am not happy with the results.

11 Songs Down, Three to Go

This is song #11 out of 14. I think it’s the only song I’ve done this year that’s in 7/8 time. That’s sad.

At least two of the remaining three will be dropped from the final album. One of them is still on the fence but definitely leaning toward the drop list. I think I have enough time to mix one more before work. Let’s see if I can get ‘er done.