Tag: Recording

Slept Late

My 18 year old self laughs at me when I say that we slept late today and got up at 8:00am. However, we slept late and got up at 8:00am. I slept okay after my second fully caffeine free day. I woke up a few times but my numbers looked good. The heart rate dip was really good and the restful sleep percentage was the same as the first day. I feel okay today.

Not a lot on the agenda today. Hopefully lots of guitar playing. Jen’s working on a project so I want to stay out of her way. I have five songs that need rhythm guitars. I should see if I can add to that list too. I would like to get to it, but I find myself distracted by a video on YouTube where Rick Nielsen from Cheap Trick shows off some highlights from his massively gigantic guitar collection. It’s only an hour and eighteen minutes. I wonder if they’ll do a video like this with Steve Howe.

Tracking Guitars – #RPM2022

One of my gimmicky ideas for this year’s RPM Challenge is to double the rhythm guitar tracks with two different guitars. I thought of that a few weeks ago but figured I probably wouldn’t go through with it. Tonight? The first time I sat down to record guitars? I did it. One guitar part panned hard left, another panned hard right. I always do that. This time, instead of using the same guitar on both tracks…

You’ll hear the Les Paul coming out of your left speaker:

and the SG coming out of your right speaker:

Fun, huh? I only got through three songs, but that’s a good start.

No Electrical Fun Today

Jen was going to rewire the light switch in the dining room today because she’s absolutely amazing. She was doing a little research last night and found that our switch contains some stuff that we weren’t prepared to deal with, so we gave it a miss and are looking to have an electrician come in. That means one of the two main projects on the agenda for today didn’t happen. The other main project is my super hero wife making spaghetti sauce from scratch. It’s on the stove right now and it smells so good.

You would think that I would have used this extra time to record guitars. Nope. Not yet. Maybe after dinner. That seems like a decent plan. If not, tomorrow. Instead of guitars I worked on drums. Not literally, more like I worked on GarageBand functions that simulate drums.

GarageBand has a tool called Session Drummers. There are a bunch of different “drummers” to choose from, all with different styles and different quirks. I tend to bounce back and forth between two. One that is pretty straight ahead rock and another that is more R&B. For the last two (I think) Quarantine projects I only used the rock drummer. I was planning on sticking with the R&B drummer for RPM but, with eight songs underway, I changed my mind. I went through a bunch of the options available today and picked a different Rock thing. I then changed the drummer on all eight songs.

Will the listener be able to tell the difference? Nope. Not likely.

Does it matter to anyone on the planet Earth other than me? Nope. Not at all.

Damn if that sauce doesn’t smell gooooood.

And We’re Off… Again – #RPM2022

Here we go again.

Welcome to February and the annual onslaught of RPM Challenge posts. Hurray for bad music! Well, a lot of the people who play the RPM game make excellent music. I just don’t feel you’re reading a post from one of those people right now.

The Trello board has been created and the first card has been added! The working title being “RPM 22 01 iPad” because it’s 2022, it’s the first idea, and the file was originally created on my iPad (only because the Logic Remote app isn’t playing nicely this morning, otherwise it would have been started on the Mac).

Does song number one contain a tempo change? Why yes, yes it does. Look at me being all musically thematic and shit.

Have fun, folks!

RPM Starts Tomorrow

Tomorrow is February 1st. That means my 15th RPM Challenge will be underway and you, my poor unfortunate reader, will be blitzed with endless posts about a bad musician making bad music. I mean, you get that crap on a regular basis from me, but in February it’s out of control.

I don’t have any plans. I was thinking of using two different guitars, but I am not sure I want to bother with that. We’ll see. The Les Paul needs new strings before I record anything, and if I use the SG as well then that desperately needs new strings. I was thinking of going for a wetter sound over all. Maybe just longer reverbs and some more delays, maybe? My latest gimmicky idea is to use more tempo changes. I used a slight tempo change in one of the last batch of re-recordings and I kinda like how it came out. Maybe more of that.

Beyond those gimmicks, I don’t have any plans. Just 10 songs. 10 faux bluesy, faux proggy rock and roll songs. Dad rock. Stuff like that.

The RPM Challenge started in 2006 but it was just a local thing in Portsmouth, NH. In 2007 they went international, meaning they just put it on the web. I first heard of it late in the month so I missed out. I did one on my own using old songs the following month, then the month after that I tried doing it again with new songs and failed miserably. 2008 was the first time I did it for real and I failed miserably. 2009-2011 were also failures. 2012 was my first success and it made me very happy. 2013-2021 have all been successes too. Well… successes in that I met the recording requirements. Some were more successful than others in terms of the quality, but they are all kinda crappy. I don’t care. I just enjoy it, even if it is really dumb.

Tomorrow is the day. One your marks… get set……. wait for it!……

The Nerdiest Music Nerd Thing I’ve Ever Done

I’ve done a lot of musically nerdy things in my life. I’m a Rush fanatic so I sort of goes without saying.

Years ago I made a playlist on Alonetone that held songs I wanted to re-record. Before I started actually finishing songs I just kept adding songs to the playlist. When I started finishing songs I added those to the playlist and matched them up with the originals. Now that it’s done there are 114 songs on the playlist.

Through all of this time I kept the playlist private. Today I made it public. Good lord what a nerd I am.

The Great 2015 Re-Recording Project Reference Tracks

Done and Done

At last, The Great 2015 Re-recording project has come to an end. Volume six has 11 songs. For a while there I thought it was going to have 12 or 13, but enough’s enough, right? Maybe at some point in the future I’ll pull together another batch of slightly better than shitty songs, but for now let’s consider this nearly seven year old exercise complete.

The last two songs include one that’s basically meh:

And one that might be okay in more capable hands:

I still have to get volumes five and six onto bandcamp, but for now I think I am just going to rewatch season two of The Mandalorian because this is the way.

Tracking is Done

The Great 2015 Re-recording project started in, you guessed it, 2015. I failed to finish it in a timely manner and it kept getting extended and each time I revisited it I added more songs to it and by the time 2020 came around and I really got to it for really reals it was gigantic.

I just put the last guitar track onto the last song. Tracking is officially done.

What was supposed to be 8-10 songs has turned into 58, I think, and instead of one little best-of playlist it’s going to end up with six.

What did I learn from today’s monumental (#sarcasm) guitar tracking session?

Stringjoy strings last longer than any other strings I’ve ever played, but they don’t last forever. When they’re dead, they are really dead, and the strings on my Les Paul Standard are dead. I will change them before RPM starts next week, I promise.

Also… calluses are important. Ouch.

I’ve got two songs left to mix and then The Great 2015 Re-recording Project, aka Quarantine Tunes, will be over. I want it done today. Let’s move on to new things, shall we?

Song Time

I said in the last post that I was going to play guitar tonight but I decided to mix a song instead. The Great 2015 Re-recording Project only has two more songs outstanding after this one. They both need lead guitars and a mix, but after that the whole shebang is done.

Which means that after RPM is done I’m going to have to think of something new to do to waste my time.