This morning before work I wrote lyrics and melodies for two of the January songs. They both suck, hard.

After work I cooked dinner for my beloved bride, called my both of my parents, watched a little youtube to learn about remodeling kitchens, had a lovely Facetime call with my step daughter in Vermont, ate a little bowl of chocolate ice cream because stress, and then recorded the last two rhythm guitar parts and added leads to one other song. I then wrote the last two sets of lyrics and melodies.

All the rhythm guitars are recorded. All of the melodies are written. All of the lyrics are written. Tomorrow I am planning on pre-work car music to put vocals on the last four songs. Outside of that I have four songs ready to mix, and nine songs that are waiting for lead guitars (it will be 13 once the vocals are done).

Holy shit snacks, I have a lot of stuff left to do and only five days left to do it.

Uh oh.

On a sort of unrelated, but still very much related, note, the sound I got out of the Ryra The Klone overdrive pedal pushing the Wren and Cuff Super Russian fuzz pedal tonight was bordering on magical. I just hope the recording was able to capture it. I had the gain on the overdrive pedal all the way down and the gain on the fuzz down to about 9:00. It just worked. It was one of those fall in love with Big Muff style fuzz pedal moments. Sweet.

One week to go. I did a lot of work today and most of it was dumb.

The smart work was putting lead guitar onto three songs. I still have eight to go.

The dumb work… As if finishing 14 songs isn’t enough, I stupidly added a ton of work for myself. With all of the vocals done I guess I got over confident. I had eight files in progress from January. None of them had any actual recording, they were just MIDI Garageband instruments. Three of the eight had the song form worked out. The other five didn’t. Like I moron, I brought most of those songs into this month’s project. First I took the three songs with the form worked out and redid everything. They were all just drums and bass, but they were recorded in January so I had to replace everything. After that was finished I went to work on the five that didn’t have the form. On two songs I replaced the bass and drums for the fragments I had and then finished off the form. Of the three remaining, one was too crappy to keep, one was just me humming into an audio track so I dumped that, and the other one was literally an empty file. There was nothing recorded on it at all.

So at this point I’m up to 19 songs. Well, 19 isn’t good enough. If I have 20 I’d be able to have two full RPM Challenge albums. So like a doofus I came up with a 20th song. Call it February #15. When I was last working on car music it was raining out. When I was finished for the day I took a couple of minutes and just pointed the microphone at the sun roof and recorded the sound of the rain for about two minutes. I used that as a background for the extra song. I am such a nerd.

Oh, and if all that isn’t dumb enough, while I was all setup to record lead guitars I decided to warm myself up by putting rhythm guitars on two of the January songs.

What an idiot. Now instead of the end being in site, I have a shit load more to do with only seven days to do it. Moron.

Another day with minimal progress. I put lead guitars onto two songs. I used a fuzz box for a lot of it, and the new Wampler Plexi Drive Mini for some. I ran the Plexi Drive without the Klon Klone in front of it and it was much less squashy than it was yesterday. I’m going to want to find a happy place with the Klone though because that needs to be on 24/7/365.

Three songs completely tracked. I still have to write lyrics for two songs. I can’t forget about that. Lots of vocals planned for this weekend. Fingers crossed.