Guitar Tracks

I spent about two hours recording guitars today. I finished five of the 10 songs that are currently in the fifty-songs-in-90-days-challenge pipeline. Including the song that is in 13/8 time, and the song that is in 15/8 time. First time I have ever knowingly played guitar in either of those time signatures. Milestones, babie!

I used direct input into the USB audio interface for all of the tracks, including using two amps at a time. I took the obligatory pictures, but Flickr is being a dick today and won’t let me upload PNG files, or any files for that matter, on the web. I had to dumb these down to JPGs and share them onto my iPhone and upload them from the Flickr app. I am thusly annoyed.

2023 50/90 Challenge Day 5/90

It’s not even 8:00pm but I think I’m calling it a musical day. I didn’t play guitar at all today but I did do a lot of work on the project. I had four song ideas that were just a couple of riffs. I worked all four of those ideas into a full song form. I then added two more songs, both with the full song form. One of them is my first attempt at 15/8 time. I am out of control.

I now have 10 songs in the pipeline. They are all still just midi tracks, though three of them have melodies and lyrics. Here’s hoping I get a chance to add a ton of guitar tracks tomorrow, and maybe some vocal tracks on Monday morning.

Oh, and band practice is on for Thursday. We just have to avoid earthquakes or natural disasters, or follow up plagues between now and then.

2023 50/90 Challenge Day 4/90

Another less than spectacular day but still seeing some progress. Two new song ideas started. One is just a few noodles, the other is a full song form with a swing groove. Scary.

I’m up to eight ideas in progress now. Still no real instruments recorded, just MIDI tracks. Hoping for more substantial noise making tomorrow. Fingers crossed.

2023 50/90 Challenge Day 3/90

Not much today. Two new song ideas. Just a handful of eight bar noodles that I can stitch together to make a couple of song forms.

There might be some guitar tracking tomorrow. I hope so, at least.

Guitar Rig

Okay folks, the guitar gear is setup and ready to record some new music.

I put the new Analog Man King of Tone overdrive pedal onto my stay-at-home pedal board and plugged the whole thing in. I have three amps setup. The Fender Deluxe Reverb will be used when I can make oodles of noise and want to record with a microphone. The other two amps are the Fender Bassbreaker 15 and the cute little Vox MV50. They are both connected to the ABY switch so that I can run them both at the same time, and they are also both plugged directly into the USB audio interface so that I can run direct at times when I cannot make any noise.

Now I just have to actually play. Any minute now, right?

2023 50/90 Challenge Day 2/90

As expected, working in the office meant I was in the car commuting when I normally would be trying to make a little music so there wasn’t a lot of progress made on the current musical challenge.

I did come up with three little eight bar noodles that may be worked into a song somehow. Better that than nothing, right?

2023 50/90 Challenge Day 1/90

One day of the 50 songs in 90 days challenge is down. Well, it will be in about 2.5 hours, but I am definitely done for the day so I’m calling it now.

How did I do on this rainy and dreary 4th of July?

Not bad, if I do say so myself. Three songs underway. No guitars or voices or actual real life musical instruments yet, but all three songs already have all of the changes, the song form, a guide guitar (MIDI only) track, a vocal melody, and complete lyrics.

Like I said, not too bad.

Day two probably won’t have much of anything as it’s a work-from-the-office day, but at least day one went well.

New Music Project

It’s the 4th of July. I think I mentioned that in a post already. That means it’s Independence Day but it also means it’s the first day of the 50/90 music challenge. Write 50 songs in 90 days between July 4th and October 1st. I’ve completed this back breaker a few times in the past (2016, 2020, and 2021, I think). Will I pull it off again this year?

Not likely.

I did, however, kick off song #1 for this year’s challenge. It’s just a rhythm exercise, really. I have never written anything in 13/8 time so I started out with a drum loop in 13/8 and just waited to see what happened. An hour later I am sitting here with the first song of the challenge completely written. It’s short and sweet and not very good and it’s only MIDI tracks in GarageBand at this point, no real live musical instruments are involved yet, but it exists.

Now let’s celebrate with a couple of pictures of Lily being lazy, and then I’ll go to the Apple Store to run an errand for the love of my life.

Happy 4th of July, everyone!

Finished

I just finished my June album in a month challenge thingie. 10 songs down. I am not sharing any of the songs I finished yesterday or today on this page though because they suck.

They suck.

They Suuuuuuuuuuck.

Oh well. I think we’ll punt on the rest of the May stuff and take a couple of days off before starting the next challenge, to write 50 songs in 90 days without logging onto the actual fifty ninety site at all. Faux 50/90 or bust, kids.

June is Ending

Today is the last day of June. I haven’t mentioned the June music project lately. How is that going? Are you going to reach your goal of writing and recording ten (bad) songs within the 30 days of June?

Maybe?

I mixed two songs yesterday. That put me at seven songs complete. At the start of the day today I had one song that needed lead guitars and two more that were ready to mix. Well, I just put some really pathetic guitar leads down on that one song, which ironically is song #1 for this month. Why is the first song started going to be the last one finished? I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.

Anyway, that one guitar track being finished (poorly) means that tracking for this album in a month challenge is done and I just have to mix three songs. I think I can do that today. We’ll see.

What about the 10 songs from May? I gave myself to the end of the day on July 3rd to finish those 10 songs. I don’t think I am going to make it. I still have one song that doesn’t have rhythm guitars, and six that don’t have lyrics. Yeah, there’s pretty much zero chance of me hitting this new deadline. 50/90 starts on the fourth of July so the May stuff is probably going to be ignored for a few additional months. Oh well. I am not really doing 50/90. Not officially at least. I am going to see what I can do with a faux 50/90. We’ll see.

Okay, time to add a couple of guitar pics and then punch into work on this fine Friday. 8 hours and 45 minutes until the weekend.