Tag: Rpm Challenge

I Need to Practice

Listen to the section of this song where the saxophone and the guitar are trading four bar solos. The first four bars of sax sound okay. The second four bars of sax… I don’t know about anyone else, but I can literally hear my body decide it has had enough sax playing for a while and needs a rest. It’s something in the amount of breath support behind each note. The tone just gets thinner out of the blue. Again, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I find that hysterically funny.

Here’s song number four for this year’s RPM Challenge.

Pre-Work Music

Did I mention that I did some car music this morning? My weird, random bout of insomnia last night meant I was up super early and had more than enough time to drive out to the movie theater parking lot to record vocals. I made it through five songs. One of them had the lyrics and the melody written on the spot. I haven’t done that in quite a while. I still have two more songs to add vocals to. I am going to be in the office the next two days (Tuesday and Wednesday) so hopefully I’ll have them all ready to go by Thursday morning.

The RPM Challenge is stressing me out big time this year, and none of the songs are any good. It has me questioning whether it’s all worth it or not. I still think so… but by how much? Who knows.

Obligatory Clock pic from the drive home which will act as today’s photo a day challenge picture:

177/365

RPM Challenge Day 23/28

On day 23 (yesterday) I made some good progress, but given the late date and the mountain of stuff left to do I probably didn’t make even close to enough progress. It was the final weekend day of the month after all.

I put a MIDI bass track onto one song, then I added lyrics and melodies to four songs. The only songs still in play that don’t have melodies yet are three songs that don’t have rhythm guitars yet either. I added a MIDI guitar as a guide track to one of them in the hopes that I could come up with lyrics for it but I ran out of gas and never got any further. I did manage to add one mix down though.

There are a total of 20 songs in the pipeline at the moment. A whopping three are finished… and they all need to be finished by Friday. Yikes.

Three Songs Down

I mixed my third RPM Challenge song of the year tonight. I was able to spend some quality time working on music tonight, but not nearly enough. At least not as much as I had hoped to do.

Mixing a song is always a good thing though, even when the song is meh like this one.

RPM Challenge Day 21/28

It was hard to find time to work on RPM Challenge music on Day 21 but I got a few things in. More than I expected, actually.

I started my day by adding a new song to the pipeline. Song number 18 has a full song form, MIDI drums, and acoustic guitars. No MIDI bass yet, but I’ll get there soon enough. During my lunch break at work I added two more song ideas. Nothing solid yet, just a few bass riffs grouped together. That brings me up to 20 songs. That was my goal. 10 electric songs, 10 acoustic songs. Still very unsure if I will finish them all, but at least we’ve gotten this far.

Before I managed to fall asleep last night I mixed a song too. That’s two songs mixed and finished. I didn’t think I was going to have time for any mixing last night but I just couldn’t turn off my brain to fall asleep.

Today is day 22 and there is a strong chance I am going to get completely shut out and have no progress at all today. There is one week left (counting today) so… yeah. Get crackin’ red head.

Two Songs Down

I know I said I was going to sleep, but I just had to take some time to finish another mix. Two RPM Challenge songs down and anywhere between eight and 18 still to go.

There’s no electric guitar on this song. None at all. There’s acoustic guitar and saxophone, but no electric guitar. I originally saw this as sort of a throw away. Just a little blow off thing to pad my numbers. Somehow though I am finding I kinda dig it. Weird.

RPM Challenge Day 20/28

Right… Day 20… I took a vacation day to focus on the RPM Challenge. It was a fairly successful move.

When the day started I had zero songs mixed, zero songs ready to mix, six songs ready for lead guitars and/or saxophone, and seven songs ready for vocals. Now that you know the back story…

I put vocals on seven songs, saxophone on five songs, and lead guitars on 10 songs. As the night came to a close I mixed one song.

That means the current state of the project is that I have one song mixed and finished, 11 songs ready to mix. One song is still ready for vocals.

Yeah, that was a full day. I’m not sure what I will get to today (Friday, day 21), and tomorrow has a very strong chance of seeing exactly zero progress. There are a lot of non-musical things on my agenda for this Saturday.

We’ll see.

Finally, a Finished Song

After 20 days I finally have a finished mix of an RPM Challenge song. The mix is pretty shitty but I don’t care. As I was working on this one I had visions of it being the single pulled from this year’s album (that’s assuming singles were still a thing that people like me thought about, which they really aren’t) but the closer I got to finishing it the less it felt like a stand out. It’s not my worst song but it’s not my best either. So far all of this year’s songs feel that way, though they are all much closer to being the worst than they are to being the best. The pickings are slim this time around.

Mush

After a second round of guitar playing and a second short round of sax playing I can honestly say I have reduced myself to mush. The tips of my fingers on my left hand are looking a little like ground beef, and my lips and my jaw don’t work anymore and I am kinda drooling everywhere.

So worth it.

When I started my day I had zero songs ready to mix. Now, as I am about to start cooking dinner for the love of my life, I have 12 songs ready to mix.

What a day!