Tag: Rpm Challenge

RPM Challenge Global Listening Day

Today is a big day for RPM Challenge participants.  Portsmouth, New Hampshire’s community radio station, WSCA, 106.1 FM has declared today as the RPM Global Listening Day.  They are going to play one song from each of the 500 or so albums submitted this year.  They are literally playing music from all across the planet.  You can listen to their audio stream at this link right here.

Check it out.  There will be some great music, some not so great music, some music that lives somewhere in between, but all of it was made by people who felt the need to put the rest of the world on hold for a few weeks and let their own creativity shine for a while.  I applaud everyone who finished, and everyone who gave it a shot but didn’t finish, and everyone who thought about starting but never did (because next year they will own this thing).

Everyone, that is, except me.  My project was crap this year.  If you listen to the stream and you hear this song… then you know it’s me.

Finished with 90 Minutes to Spare — #RPM2017

My 2017 RPM Challenge album is finished and submitted. Done, done, and done.

I mixed nine songs tonight and they all sound like cow dung, which is to be expected. Of the 14 songs completed (yeah, I won FAWM too) I dropped two. One was kind of annoying (and I think I forgot to include the lead guitar in the mix… oh well). The other wasn’t a bad song, it just sounded kinda blah and crummy. I could probably do it again and pull it off, but for now it gets the axe.

All in all it’s not a good album, even by RPM’s reduced standards. It’s kinda crappy. I don’t care. I finished on time for the sixth year in a row, once again staving off failure.

Now it’s bed time. G’night, everyone!

#RPM2017 Day 28/28 — PANIC

This morning, I posted the following on my blog over at the RPM Challenge website:

Let’s take stock of the situation…

14 songs.

All of the tracking is done as of about 8:30 last night. I cranked out seven songs worth of lead guitars at a frenzied pace that pretty much guarantees I played the same solo on every song. Who cares, it’s done.

Five songs are mixed. Poorly. I want to have a mix of every song so that I can have my RPM album and a decent recording for fawm.org for anything that gets cut. Unfortunately I don’t think there will be time to listen back to everything and actually edit the sequence. I know one song is probably going to get dropped from the album, but will I decide to drop others? I should, but I don’t know if I will. The running order is probably going to be the order I finish the mixes. Just like the old days.

I get out of work at 5:30 tonight, if I am lucky. My commute home is a little more than an hour. I will end up having from about 7:00pm to midnight to finish mixing between five and nine songs.

I’ll probably work right up until midnight and then check myself off as done at the last possible minute. After that, just make sure I get a decent burial and all will be well.

Thanks, RPM folks!

Five Down, Nine to Go #RPM2017

I finished the tracking tonight with a marathon lead guitar recording session. Now I have one day to mix everything that is still unmixed. That’s a grand total of nine songs, after I managed to mix two tonight.

This one might be my favorite of the bunch this year, although I literally fell asleep while mixing it (long, long day) so who knows if it sounds okay.

And Then There Were Three… #RPM2017

The lyrics to this song were partly inspired by the following tweet:

#RPM2017 — Proof I Haven’t Bailed

Just to prove to everyone who is(isn’t) reading these stupid RPM Challenge posts that I haven’t given up on the project (the way I told the RPM website I was), here is the first mixed song.

It sounds like dog shit in every measurable way.

RPM Challenge Day 11/28 — #RPM2017

I haven’t been keeping up with the updates, but I have been making progress. Not a huge amount of progress, but we’re getting there.

Let’s take a look at the Trello board, shall we? There are currently three active columns: Idea Stage, Ready for Rhythm Guitar, and Ready for Lyrics and Vocals. you can tell that I put a ton of thought into my naming conventions.

The Ready for Lyrics and Vocals column has three entries. Each one consists of a sketched out song form made up of fake bass and fake drums from GarageBand, and a couple of tracks of rhythm guitar. There is also a photo of my amp settings for each song, just in case I need to revisit it.

The Ready for Rhythm Guitar column has six entries. Each one represents a full song form made up of fake bass and fake drums from GarageBand. It is my sincere hope that each of these will be moved to the ready for lyrics column by the end of business today.

The Idea Stage column has five entries. Each one represents a little guitar noodle recorded into my iPhones Music Memos app. I haven’t listened to any of them in about a week, but I believe two of them are similar to things that were used already in one of the songs.

To sum up, I have nine songs in various stages of progress, and three to five little ideas that might become songs at some point down the line. The running time for the nine songs is currently 31:38 (according to my works in progress soundcloud playlist) and that means I have yet to hit either of the RPM Challenge goals (10 songs or 35 minutes). I haven’t given much thought to the FAWM.org (remember, .org. Never .com) goal of 14 songs, but I usually don’t really worry about that until I get closer to the end. My main focus is always on RPM.

My unstated personal goal for the year is to do what I almost did last year. That is to finish off two RPM albums. I ran out of time at 18 songs last year (although there was a leap day to work with, which helped me get that far) and I would like to have 20 finished songs and then pick the 10 best for my submission.

So that’s where we stand right now. What is the plan from here?

Well, we got a little snow this past Tuesday. Some ice on Wednesday. A ton of snow on Thursday. A little snow last night. It’s snowing right now. The forecast also calls for another decent storm tomorrow night into Monday. In other words, the weather sucks right now and I don’t want to leave the house. That means lots of time for music (theoretically at least). If the storm holds off tomorrow I will have band practice, and I probably have to go grocery shopping at some point. There’s also a truck load of laundry to do. Other than that? I want to get the ideas turned into songs and the six songs that are guitar free to have at least some rhythm guitar done. That’s my minimum goal for the weekend. I’d also like to kick off at least a couple more ideas and get them up to speed as well.

What are the chances of me completing all of this work by tomorrow night? I’d say… 3%. Maybe 2%.

Bring it. Let Us Rock (or something similar).

RPM Challenge Day 1/28

It’s February, folks. It’s time for some RPM Challenge. I kicked off the season by noodling together one bass/drum part. Its a shade over three minutes, it’s generic as all hell, and its mine. More will come tomorrow!

Mood Swings

I went to the RPM Challenge website during my lunch break to check out any new blog or forum posts. There aren’t many at this point, but come February 1st, there will be a lot. I figured I’d add a blog post about how I sort of want this year’s project to sound one way, but it will probably end up as something different. I think I tapped into something unconscious. This is what I posted:

These days I am stuck in a teeter totter of mood swings that go from depressed defeatism to just roaring mad. This is the world we live in now, I guess. If it weren’t for my wife and step kids I’d probably go nuts.

Join me!

I want this year’s music to be mean and angry and complicated and anti-social and to have as little as humanly possible to do with what anyone else might want me to write or sound like. Of course I lack the talent to write music like that, so at best we’ll get noisy songs that sound kinda mad but otherwise sound like everything else I’ve ever done.

Or, I’ll go into it wanting angry and mean and anti-social and end up with quiet and moody woe-is-me stuff (with the occasional wah-wah guitar solo).

How the hell should I know what it’s going to sound like? I’m not even sure who I am anymore. I had all these preconceived notions about the world outside my door and BANG they’re all wrong.

A wise man (who played in a band called Traffic) once said, “who knows what tomorrow may bring?”

Two weeks from tomorrow. Come on February, you son of a bitch. Bring it on. Do your worst.

Okay, where the hell did that come from? I think I can guess, and I think the answer has to do with a certain American transfer of government that is scheduled to take place on Friday. That’s pretty much coloring every thought these days.