Tag: Rpm Challenge

#RPM2021 Day 17

Not much to report today. I put the lead guitar onto one song. That’s it. I used my new Wampler Plexi Drive Mini overdrive pedal in place of the Malaise Forever Black Lives Matter. I think I prefer the BLM. It’s only a very small use sample, but the Plexi Drive being pushed by the Ryra The Klone resulted in a bit of an over compressed blob of flub. It wasn’t terrible, it just wasn’t as good as I was hoping. I bet if I removed the Ryra from the equation it would be better. I think the Plexi can take 18 volts instead of the 9 volts I’m giving it. That should improve things, but I don’t have that option with the setup I have in place right now.

Spaghetti and all

No car vocals tomorrow. My car is blocked in and I don’t want to worry about swapping with my step son. There is supposed to be snow for Friday morning too, so no car vocals on Friday either. I’m banking on Saturday and Sunday to finish the eight I have left to do, and probably redo some of the six I have already. I listened back to two of them tonight, including the song that got the guitar leads, and they were okay, but those two were the ones I knew would be okay. It’s the other four that scare me.

Hopefully a few more leads and maybe a mix will come tomorrow. Fingers crossed.

#RPM2021 Day 16

Lots of progress today. I put vocals on six songs. I fear one of those six needs to be completely rewritten because it sucked so bad. Another two or three just didn’t come out too well. I’ll have to see if time changes my mind, but my throat was scratchy and phlegmy and my ears were having a hard time picking out the right notes, and my voice was having a hard time hitting pitches. It was a rough morning. I’m hoping to do another round of car vocals tomorrow. Here’s hoping for better results.

The other good news is that I finished the rhythm guitar parts. They are all done. Most of the songs are simple with just one take on two tracks all the way through. Some songs are more complicated. One song has three rhythm parts (on two tracks each) jumping in and out, all using different tones. There is enough there that I might actually drop some of the parts. It was fun to piece it all together.

So the current count is 14 songs in progress, all of them have guitars, all but two have lyrics, and six have vocals. I was hoping to sneak in a lead guitar part or two before bed but Jen and I ate ice cream and watched Property Brothers instead… because home renovations are our thing these days.

And that is where the RPM Challenge stands tonight. It’s 9:00, I’m almost 50 years old, and that means it’s bed time. G’night, moon.

The Playlist Didn’t Work

Okay, so yesterday when I posted the playlist from hearthis.at that had all of my May music project songs on it, it embedded into the post okay, but it only played the first song. Jerk.

So here are links to the 2020 music projects so far. I don’t do this because I expect anyone to click on them, I just do it so I can look at it and say, “awwww.”

I’ve already made a trello board for June. Starting in July the tracking gets weird because July through September fall under the 50/90 FAWM challenge. I still want to try to have at least 10 songs started and finished during each calendar month while slaving my way toward a total of 50. Like ya do.

I still have one song from April that is unfinished. It just needs a guitar solo and a mix. I might complete that today and tomorrow and then be ready for June. I don’t want to declare any gear restrictions but I am thinking it’s just going to be my ES-335 and my RYRA Klone pedal. I’m a little worried about the buzzing on the first string of the 335 though. I might try to raise the action a smidge but that will probably screw up the intonation… though the intonation might already be screwy. The guitar did sit in the cellar for almost two years.

Who knows. Well see.

The year of music projects will continue, starting on Monday.

May Music: Finished

Well, February, March, April, and May all have 10 song RPM Challenge style recording projects (February and April actually are officially RPM Challenges) that were all finished on the 29th day of the month.

May has 11 songs. I just finished mixing the last two.

Is it good?

Nope.

Do I care?

Nope.

Music and Money

I’ve mentioned that at the start of March I decided to curb my post-RPM Challenge blues by doing another RPM Challenge.  I’m still working on it though it is very easy to be distracted by other things right now.  I’ve got two songs done, six more partially done, and I still need two more.

This morning there was a post on the RPM Challenge Facebook group (I didn’t check the actual RPM Challenge website, it might be there too) suggesting we all take advantage of being stuck at home indefinitely and do another RPM Challenge in April.  Good idea!  I mean, I was already planning on it, but I don’t have to do it alone.  Why not?  Why not use our stay-at-home time to do something creative?  I’m all for it… but I would have been without a global pandemic to lock me in the house so I guess I’m not the target audience there.

Turning to politics, remember when Andrew Yang was running for president and proposed giving everyone in the USA a $1,000 stipend every month?  I thought it was a good idea.  A creative way to help those in need as well as to stimulate the economy.  I also loved the implied, “you think Sanders is a socialist?  Wait till you get a load of this” vibe.

Yesterday Mittens Romney threw out a similar proposal.  Today Joe Kennedy did as well, though he provided some actual details with his idea.  Now it sounds like the fucking white house is jumping on the wagon.  They may be considering a plan similar to Yang’s.

First off, let me get it out of the way… if the dickless president really wants to make being anti-socialist a platform in his campaign, then giving away money isn’t a good way to do it.  I expect that anyone who ever said a negative word about socialism should refuse that money, right?  Just like they refuse public schools and public fire departments, and trash pick up, and police, and snow plows, and highways, and all of those other socialist things.

Second, can we just make Andrew Yang president now?  Like, let’s all vote today and just give him the job.  The proposal he made that everyone laughed at could very well be law within days.  Good work, Mr Yang.  Smart leadership is what we need and it is literally the furthest thing away from what we have.

So as for the social distancing, today is my second day working from home.  Yesterday felt like a normal telecommute day.  All day long I had this idea in the back of my mind that I would be back in the office tomorrow, same as any other telecommuting day.  It really wasn’t until I got up this morning and didn’t drive to work (I drove to the super market instead) that it really started sinking in.  Things are different.

There is a little sense of stir craziness, sure, but mostly what I am feeling today is the sense that this is going to be really hard to do.  Some how removing the commute and the office from the work day equation is going to make things more difficult?  I don’t get it, but that feels like where this is heading.  I wish I could explain it, but I can’t.

There is so much wrong with the world right now, and I’m not even talking about that textbook nazi prick in the white house.  There is so much out of wack that I can’t figure out what to focus my worries on.  I’m trying to only worry about things I can control like stocking the pantry and working from home and making sure everyone has what they need to do their work/school work without driving each other to drink (wink).  I don’t want to worry about all the other shit.  I don’t want to worry about the projections or the infection rates, or the mortality rates, or the stock market, or layoffs or closings, or the fact that I am weeks overdue for a haircut and now can’t get one (anyone want to lend me their flowbee?).

Positivity used to be the hardest thing in the world for me before I met Jen.  It’s still not easy, but it is closer to my normal mindset.  I am trying real hard to stay positive through all of this.  I may need to bash my guitar around in order to pull it off, but I owe it to everyone to do my best to keep the ship upright.  (I typo’d ship as shit and somehow that sounds better to me, hehe)

So keep your shit together, planet Earth.  I have faith in you.  You can do it.  Now let’s all celebrate St Patrick’s Day in our self imposed isolation by listening to some Irish music.  No, not U2.  No, not Makem and Clancy…

Rory Gallagher (I wanted the Irish Tour album but those pukes at Spotify don’t have it)

Projects

March kinda sucks.

I go through this every year.  I finish my February music projects and then feel this gaping hole in the universe during March.  From reading blogs and forum posts on rpmchallenge.com I’m clearly not alone in feeling this way.

So what to do?

A few months ago I was working on a way to add the rest of my old myspace blog to this site.  I started up on that again last night.  WordPress.com is able to back date posts but it’s a royal pain in the ass to go back to 2007 and 2008.  Instead, I created a Blogger account and I’ve been posting back dated entries there.  Once I have them all I’ll export them to an .xml file and import them here.  That should work fine.  The myspace blog covered pretty much all of 2006 through November 2008.  I had pulled all of 2006 into my previous wordpress.com site so those are all here already.  As of last night the Blogger page has almost all of 2007.  I think I have about 75 more posts to go.

I’m still going with my Flickr photo-a-day project.  It suddenly feels difficult though.  It was easy last month.  There was always music happening so I could take pics of that, and Disney made things even easier.  Now?  What the hell do I take pictures of now?  Where’s the cat when I need her?

Back in January Jen and I did a tutorial for a javascript extension (I think that’s the right way to describe it… a scripting language built on top of javascript).  It was fun and interesting but my javascript knowledge is ancient and more or less nil at this point.  I thought I might have gotten more out of it if I did a javascript tutorial first.  I would like to try something like that in the coming weeks.  I would like to be a better all around programmer than I am right now.  My company’s development tools and programming languages are proprietary, so even if I’m firing on all cylinders at work it doesn’t really extend to the rest of the world.

Years ago I found a set of wordpress.com tutorials called Blogging University.  There are various beginner and intermediate level courses to help you get the most out of your wordpress.com experience.  There were classes for customization, writing, photography, and interacting with other blogs.  I might give some of those a try again, just for schnitzengiggles.  If I remember correctly they were mostly prompts.  Things like, today you should write a better About page, or today you should take a picture of water.  Stuff like that.  The photo stuff would be fine to redo, as I just said I’m always looking for ideas for photo-a-day.  The basic blogging stuff is probably too simple for this page, but there is always the lizardfishmusic.com page.  I could make some changes there.  I don’t think I’ve made any changes to the layout there since I first created it.  Maybe a face lift would be fun?

Exercising should be an obvious target for new projects.  I had a really bad night Weight Watchers wise last night and I’m feeling a little crummy about myself today.  I got home from work and just started shoveling food into my face and I really didn’t stop until I fell asleep.  I need to be better than that.  The gym might help in that regard, or at least minimize the damage of any future bad days.  Right now I am having a problem with one of my feet (again).  My right foot feels a little swollen and it hurts to walk.  It’s not the same thing I had a month or so ago, and it’s not nearly as bad, but it is slowing me down right now.  Once that eases up I need to get back to the gym, and I need to get into a regular routine.

There is always more music to record, and more songs to learn for Lizardfish, and more practicing in general to do.  Just because February is over doesn’t mean I can stop playing.  I was doing pretty well with finding time to practice back in January.  I need to keep up with it.  I’m tired of feeling like the weak link in the band.  I’m also thinking of trying something new gear wise.  I want to try to run a two amp rig in the band, but most of the amps I have now are way too powerful and if I paired them up I’d be unable to not drown out the rest of the band during rehearsals.  I keep looking at my 15 watt Fender Bassbreaker as the solution.  If I could pair that with another lowish watt amp that could work.  I am thinking about going to Guitar Center to inquire about trading my Fender Stratocaster in for a Vox AC15.  I think that might be the key to making it all work.  A Fender Princeton reissue could do it, but it’s only a 10 inch speaker and I’d prefer to stick to 12 inch speakers if I can.  I just like them better.  We’ll see.

Should I start looking into using in-ear monitors?  One of the guys in the band uses them.  One of the hosts of the Gig Gab podcast swears by them.  So much so that he’s always inspiring the other host to try them, even though he has a hard time with them.  I don’t really want to spend money on it, but we’re getting to the point where we’re going to be mic’ing the room during rehearsals and I always wear ear plugs anyway.  Is it time?  I’m trying to decide.  I’m definitely on the fence.  We’ll see.

I was hoping that by this point in 2020 I would be able to do something to help out with the Warren for President campaign.  I guess that isn’t going to happen.  At least it seems highly unlikely now.  I can get behind Bernie Sanders, but the idea of a candidate in his late 70’s who has already suffered a heart attack during this campaign is a little depressing.  Platform wise I can 100% get on board.  Human wise… ugh.  As for Joe Biden.  He’s a great guy and I love him to pieces, but he’s literally my last choice of all of the candidates we’ve had.  Dead last.  Yet another guy in his late 70’s but this time one who just feels like a frat boy who got lucky.  He just seems a little too dumb ass for the oval office, and we already have a total dumb ass in the office now.  If he ends up with the nomination he’ll get 100% of my support… I was just hoping the rest of the country would jump on the Warren bandwagon, that’s all.  Yet another reason to feel let down by my fellow Americans.

There are a crap ton of TV shows that I want to watch.  February has resulted in me falling way behind on all of the CW super hero shows that I like to watch.  I’m like two months behind on The Flash, Supergirl, and Batwoman.  I’ve been trying to get caught up on Star Trek Discovery.  Season two is really good, I just haven’t had time to power through.  The last season of Star Wars The Clone Wars is either about to come out or has just recently come out.  I wanted to binge the whole series before I watched the new season but… Jar Jar… he kinda killed my interest in that.  I want to finish season two of You even though it’s definitely meh.  I want to watch Lock and Key and The Expanse and I still want to get back into Breaking Bad and Preacher.  I’ve started both of them, but just haven’t been able to keep going.  I’m not sure why, the are both good.  I’m caught up on The Walking Dead, and the second spin off is just a month or so away.  One show that I did not fall behind on in February is Star Trek Picard.  It is so good.  Just, so very good.  I wish it was going to be a 25 episode season instead of 10 (I think it’s just going to be 10).  I don’t want it to end… ever.

I’m sure there are other projects I can come up with that are just there for fun and a sense of creative accomplishment.  If we get lucky and Spring actually gets here there are always day trips up to the mountains that I can drag my beloved Mrs to.  There are so many waterfalls, and so many scenic views up there.  They are all just sitting there, waiting for me and Jen and my camera to come and visit.

There’s also always Disney World.  Or Disneyland.  Or Euro-Disney, if that’s even still a thing.  I’d say Tokyo Disney too but I have a co-worker who was supposed to go there next week and he told me it’s closed due to some global pandemic* thing.  Maybe you’ve heard of it?

On an unrelated note, I am trying a new browser again.  The same podcast that inspired me to try Brave has inspired me to try Vivaldi.  This post is the first thing I’ve done with it.  Isn’t that exciting?  I’m just glad that the Last Pass plug in for Chrome works in Vivaldi too.  That makes life a tiny bit easier.

 

*Go wash your hands.  Seriously.