Tag: Rpm Challenge

2023 RPM Challenge – Day 1 of 28

I just posted this on the stupid little tumblr page I sometimes use to keep daily updates for internet based music writing and recording challenges.

It’s February 1st again and it’s time for another round of the RPM Challenge. There is a ton of stuff going on in the real world right now so finding time/energy/motivation is going to be difficult at best. I’m off to a respectable start though. There are two songs underway. They are just midi tracks, but there are guides for guitar parts, a melody, and sketches for bass, drums, and percussion. Not bad for a hectic and stressful day one.

Sunday Morning

It’s 7:13am on a Sunday morning in January. What’s going on?

Tons. I’m going to have a busy day, I think.

My exercise is done for the day, as well as over 60% of my calorie goal. Nice. I am going to visit my father today and take him to visit my mother. I’m not going to have a ton of time to spend visiting though. I have to work today. I have a ton of paperwork to do that should have been done over the last week but got pushed aside due to some super hot customer issues. I’ll get as much of it done today as possible and get to the rest of it tomorrow. I’ll have it all done on time, but it’s going to make today suck a little.

What about the new cat? She started under the bed. We took one of the little covered cat bed/house things we got for Patches last year and put it into the bedroom. We also brought the cat tree we got for the cellar remodel and put that in the bedroom too. We sat in the room with her for a while but eventually just left her alone. Jen snuck back in to check on her and found her sitting in the cat bed/house. She called to me to come and see and when I called back the cat got spooked and ran into the bathroom and hid under the vanity. Sorry, kitty. She stayed there for hours, even when we left her alone again.

When we started getting ready for bed she was in the bed/house thing again. She stayed there the whole time. We thought that was an improvement. Around 2:30am Jen got up for something and managed to coax her out. She was purring like a porche and rubbing against our legs and just being super friendly. We got her to jump up onto the bed so we could pet the crap out of her. She seemed to love it. When we tried to lay down though she jumped off and tried to hide behind the cat tree. After a minute or so she ran out of the room and down the hall. I found her in the other bathroom crouching behind the door. When I moved the door a little she ran back to the bedroom and went back into the bed/house.

While she was walking around in the middle of the night, Jen was able to show her where the food and water and litter box are. We had all of it in the bedroom because we wanted them close so she could find them if she needed them. I am a little worried because I don’t see any signs that she’s eaten anything yet. We had dry food and lots of treats and we put them out for her, but I also went to a pet store to buy some toys (Patches didn’t really go for cat toys so we didn’t have any) and some wet food. I am going to put some of the wet food out this morning and see if she goes for it. We were told that she had surgery on Friday (she was spayed) so she might not have an appetite as she recovers. I just want to give her all the options we can though.

What else is going on? Music. Have I played the guitar at all this weekend? No, no I haven’t. Asshole. I am starting to think about recording ideas for RPM, even if I haven’t had a single musical thought. I am considering going with two amps at a time again. I have my Fender Deluxe Reverb here so that amp is going to be used like crazy. I might bring out my Fender Bassbreaker 18/30 and use it and the Deluxe Reverb together through the AB/Y splitter. It’s going to be pretty loud down here if I go this route, so I might try it to start with and then change my mind. The amps will be in a corner of the cellar that is as far away from the living room as I can get, and it’s reasonably far away from Jen’s office so hopefully it will be okay. If I bother her at all though, I’ll turn off the 18/30 and just go with the Deluxe. I have a speaker soak for the Deluxe so I can turn up the volume knob without getting obscenely loud. As for the guitar I want to use, it will be the Les Paul Standard again. I freakin’ adore that guitar. I will wait until either next weekend or the actual start of February before I put new strings on the guitar, but I really need to play at least a little bit every day to try and get my fingers into something that resembles playing shape.

Okay, I think that’s the gist of today. It’s time to start waking up for real and get something to eat. Happy Sunday, folks!

Practice, You

The RPM Challenge starts in 11 days and I haven’t touched my guitar in ages. I need to practice my ass off in the time remaining to get myself into playing shape. I swapped an overdrive pedal on my board today in the hopes it would trick me into playing tonight. It didn’t work.

I just read about another music guy who apparently passed away. I didn’t catch when. It wasn’t someone particularly famous, but he owned Boston’s best recoding studio, Fort Apache, and he produced some of my favorite records by some of my favorite bands, House Tornado by Throwing Muses and Surfer Rosa by The Pixies, and he managed some of my favorite bands, Belly and Juliana Hatfield. His name was Gary Smith and it sucks that he’s gone.

2023 RPM Challenge

Get ready kids, the onslaught of RPM Challenge posts is coming. I just signed up for the 2023 run this February. Musically speaking I’ve been asleep at the wheel for months, but once February gets here… woah boy, it’s going to get obnoxious around here.

Bring it on, I’m ready.

Crappy Song Alert

Here’s one of the four awful songs written and recorded in September 2022. It’s probably the best of the four, but that’s not saying much. Maybe I’ll redo it someday in the future when I have an actually functional home recording setup and when I’ve actually been playing the guitar for a while and not on a five month break.

I’m Finished! – #RPM2022

2022 marks the 11th consecutive year with a completed RPM Challenge project.

I’m all done!

Here’s a link to the final playlist on alonetone.com if that embedded playlist doesn’t work.

Also, for shits and giggles, here’s the outtake playlist as well. These were the songs that didn’t make the cut.

And again here is a link to the outtakes playlist on alonetone.com, if you’d prefer to listen to my unlistenable crap there.

In summary…

WOOHOO!

Woah, Really?

I knew this, and I was aware of it, and it wasn’t actually a surprise, but I just looked at my work calendar for next week and saw that I have the entire week off and it sort of just hit me… Wow! Really? I am off all next week? Kick ass!

I have two hours and fifteen minutes left in the work day. After that I am cooking dinner for my love. Chicken and quinoa and broccoli. Broccoli is like a special occasion thing. I just steam it, but it is so good. Maybe we should have it every day. After that, I am going to mix the last two songs. It’s a moral imperative. I’ve had enough music finished to declare RPM a success for over 24 hours now, but I’m not done until every note of every song is mixed and that means two more songs.

There are currently six songs on the A List, meaning they are definitely on the final album, and eight songs on the B List, meaning they might make the album but also might not, and four songs on the C List, meaning they suck too much to share even by my low standards. I would like to end up with 10 songs on the album and 10 songs on a not-album. A leftovers, or outtakes album if you will. I might go with more than 10 on the submission though, but I want to make sure only the better stuff gets submitted, even though in all honesty they all suck pretty bad. I should really hire a singer next year. Yeah, right.

My watch has been blowing up all afternoon. After all of these years of RPMing, I follow a lot of RPM Challenge participants on alonetone.com. They are all uploading songs in batches today and I am getting email notifications for all of them. It’s pretty funny. I would like to apologize to anyone who follows me on alonetone because of the consistent, steady bomb of notifications they got yesterday as I was uploading songs all day long. Sorry about that, folks.

Back to work now. Just get through these last two hours and you can get back to the tunes, Robert. You can do it.

The Last Day – #RPM2022

Hello and welcome to February 28, 2022, the final day of this year’s RPM Challenge! Are you excited?

When I woke up this morning I had three songs left to mix. That was then and this is now, and now I only have two left to mix!

Usually when I write something that swings a little I end up with a terrible song that’s kinda fun to play. This time I think I ended up with the best song of the bunch so far. It is possible though that I will be saying the same thing about the other two songs that still need to be mixed. I think I saved all the best songs for last this year.

Okay. Post this, go to work, finish work, get back to mixing, pick the 10 songs for the final album, sequence the songs appropriately, submit the final album. That’s my agenda for today.

Let’s go!

Done for the Night

The Walking Dead starts in 12 minutes. I’m done mixing for the night.

I mixed 10 songs for a personal single day world record. Of those 10 only two are definitely going to end up on the final RPM Challenge album. This is one of them…