I do these silly little recap posts one day after the fact. As I write this it is day five but I’m writing about day four. Not confusing at all, right? Not to mention pointless, but what can you do, right?

Day four was insanely busy at work. Also insanely frustrating. It’s a miracle I accomplished anything other than screaming into the void and pulling out fist fulls of my own hair.

I did accomplish a couple of things though. After work I sat in the living room with my laptop and worked a simple MIDI bass line in 7/8 time into a song form that runs for almost six minutes. I’ll betcha a buck that when the song is finished and I have a listenable demo recorded it’s going to be as boring as shit but I’m not worried about that today. That’s a problem for March, not February. Later, before I went to bed, I noodled out a couple of little bass things on my iPad. No song form for that one yet.

That brings the grand total of song ideas up to seven. Three have a song form, four do not. No actual real live instruments have been recorded yet. All I have at this point are MIDI bass and drum parts. I expect that day five’s update tomorrow will be similar.

Also, I just gave myself a paper cut on my left thumb and it hurts like a mutha. Moron.

Progress was made on day three. I added one song (number five). This officially became the first song to have the song form worked out. I also took another song (number three, the one in 9/8 time) and worked out the song form for that too. I had a thought that on day four (which turns out to be today) I would track some guitars and I needed to have a couple of songs ready.

Spoiler alert for tomorrow, I did not play guitar. Sorry.

Day three is done and documented. Day four is underway but I spent the whole work day in meetings and it was brutal. I need a nap.

My arm feels so much better today. 90% better. Maybe even 95% better. I think I’m going to be okay to play the guitar again. Assuming we don’t get more snow in the immediate future and I screw myself up again. We’ll see.

I added three songs worth of bass riffs and drum parts yesterday. It’s all just MIDI at this point and there are no arrangements or song forms or anything. Just riffs. Nothing to write home about yet. I’m up to four total. All four are in different time signatures (4/4, 7/8, 9/8, 3/4) and I’ve only repeated a key signature once (A minor, B minor, and two in E minor… I’m totally a guitar player).

I have a sneaking suspicion that some of the songs will be on the really long side this year, but I almost always have that suspicion and they generally barely hit three minutes. We’ll have to see how things play out. I also want to follow a similar plan as last year’s RPM Challenge where I played more acoustic guitar than usual, and I played a little saxophone. I’d like to do those two things again, but given my time constraints this year (and the fact that there are more people living in the house this year) I might just stick to electric guitar and headphone amps.

As far as lyrics go… I haven’t written anything yet but it’s safe to say that a running theme might be something like fuck fascists. You know… the usual.

So that’s where we stand after two days. Hopefully I’ll be able to carve out some time to make a little progress today on day three.

So I have this arm injury thing right now. I think it’s going to be okay. I am way better today than yesterday, and yesterday was better than the day before. I just haven’t been able to play guitar at all because I haven’t been able to move my arm. I think that by the time the RPM Challenge will require me to record guitar tracks I will be well enough to get by, but the idea of this whole thing crashing and burning before I even start is a real thing.

On top of the injury, I am traveling for the entire last week of February. That means that all of my tracking needs to be done before I leave home on February 22nd. I can make time for mixing while I’m on the road, but not for recording. This year’s project is under a serious time crunch. I don’t think a double album is in the cards this time around. I think I might just get to 10 songs or 35 minutes (the minimum requirements for success) and stop. We’ll have to see.

Day one was yesterday and I noodled out some MIDI bass and drums for one song idea. I have a weird sort of theme in mind as far as song forms and arrangements go. Nothing stylistically or lyrically or anything like that. Just an idea of how I want verses and choruses to be related. This first song idea fits that theme. Other than that, nothing to report on day one.

Let’s hope my left arm starts playing along soon. I don’t want to break my streak of success. I’ve pulled this off every year since 2012 and I really don’t want to stop now.

Let’s see… how did I make out on the last day?

I put lead guitars onto two songs. I mixed eight, count ’em, eight songs. I then sorted all of the songs into three lists.

• Definitely makes the final album
• Might be okay enough to make the final album if I hide it at the end
• No way in hell it makes the final album

Oddly, the third list was very short. I think I ended up with nine songs on the first list, seven songs on the second list, and four on the third. After sorting was done I re-listened to everything on the second list to find at least one that I could put on the final album. I ended up keeping four. There were two that were easy decisions. That put me at 11 keepers. I figured 12 was a better number so I went back and forth between two B list songs but I couldn’t decide so I kept them both.

Next, I “borrowed” a photograph of good ol’ Punxsutawney Phil from wikipedia and used an iOS app to turn it into a very lame album cover. Then I listened through the 13 keepers again and came up with something that passed for a half decent running order. From there, the only thing left to do was go to rpmchallenge.com and submit it.

Done and done. See you next year, RPM Challenge fans.

Done. I whittled the 20 songs down to 13. I was thinking of using 12 but I couldn’t make up my mind between the last two so I kept them both. I just sent it off to rpmchallenge.com and my name is now on the list of winners. Yippee. 14 successful RPM Challenges in a row. What a hero I am. Huzzah and shit.

Now lets see if I can embed a playlist, shall we?

Yesterday was day 27, which means as I type this it’s day 28 and it’s the last day and I am too panicked (musically) to think straight.

I seriously forget what I accomplished yesterday. I know I did two songs worth of vocals, and I know I mixed four songs. I also did some sax parts but was it two songs or three? I also, also did some lead guitar but was it three songs or four? I think it was three parts each but they combined to finish four songs. I think.

It doesn’t matter. I have two more lead guitar parts to record and then I have to mix EIGHT songs, make a cover photo, and pick the running order for the final album submission.

That sound you hear off in the distance? That’s me screaming in frustration.

Yippee, bro.

I just finished mixing the 12th song for this year’s RPM Challenge. I kinda sorta like it. I think the GarageBand drummer would have worked up quite a sweat if it were a real human being and not a piece of software. Oh well.

12 songs down, eight to go. Two of them still need their last guitar tracks to be recorded. So ridiculously much left to do and I only have tomorrow left to do it. Oh, and I have a full work day to get through too. If I manage to pull it all off then I expect my brain to be a puddle of melted mush by the time I sleep tomorrow.

This song isn’t terrible. It’s okay. I wanted an acoustic head banger and this sort of gets the job done.