Music Day Continues Continued

WOW! Five years is a LONG TIME.

The saxophone came out of its case and amazingly, miraculously, I can still play it.

Can I play it well? Oh my sweet christmas I CANNOT. I SUCK! I put sax parts onto three songs including the instrumental where the sax plays the melody. It sounds awful, my playing is awful, and the whole thing is just awful and I don’t care because oh my goodness was that fun.

I lasted about 10 minutes before my body started to reject the whole experience. I mentioned calluses in the last post. When you don’t play guitar often you lose your calluses and it hurts. It is a similar thing with wind instruments except it is about muscle strength. There are muscles in your mouth and around your jaw that you don’t use very often that are used A TON when you play a woodwind instrument. I made it about 10 minutes before those muscles decided they were done. I would then play for 20 seconds or so and follow up with a 2-3 minute rest. After about half an hour of that I had to stop. For now at least. I am going to break for lunch and maybe watch a TV show and then see how I feel. It’s entirely possible the 2025 saxophone experiment might be over. We’ll see.

Speaking of lunch, one thing about playing sax that I forgot all about is that it makes you wicked hungry. I think that’s a wind instrument thing in general because I remember everyone in my high school band complaining about how they were starving at the end of each rehearsal. Yeah, I needs me some lunch now.

Saxophone, babie! I can still play!

Music Day Continues

Over the last hour and a half or so I have added lead guitar tracks to five songs. My finger tips are in a state of pure burning agony. That’s what happens when you don’t play enough and your calluses fade away. Ouch town, population me, bro.

I need to give my hands a break. Know what that means? It means it’s time for some saxophone. It’s been five years since I’ve taken my cheap little alto out of it’s case. Can I still play? Let’s find out!

Frozen Solid

I just got home from some car music. I think it was a success. I’m not sure though because I am literally frozen solid and can’t tell if I am even alive or not. It is soooo freaking cold out right now.

I spent about an hour and a half in the car in the (mostly) empty movie theater parking lot, singing my lungs out while trying to keep my extremities safe from frost bite. It is tough to use a laptop while wearing winter gloves, but I sort of made it work. I put vocals onto seven RPM Challenge songs all while the temperature topped out at 19 degrees Fahrenheit (that’s -7.2 or so for our metric, Celsius using friends).

Right now I am sitting in my living room, hoping that the feeling will return to my toes soon. Once it does, I will go down cellar to my music nook and start recording lead guitar tracks. Today is Music Day, boys and girls, and it is off to a cracking good start.

RPM Challenge Day 19/28

Day 19 (yesterday) was an office day so there wasn’t a lot of time for music. I spent too much of my off-work time stuck in traffic to be super productive.

I added guitars to one song before I left in the morning, and then before bed last night I added lyrics and melodies to two songs.

Today (day 20) is a vacation day for me and I plan to run a couple of errands but otherwise it’s a music day for me. At least on paper. My stomach has been… difficult… over the last 24 hours or so and the start of the day today is more of the same. Yippee.

Sneaky

I was sneaky this morning and I did something that if I were smart and responsible I probably would not have done. I did not oversleep at all, which is kind of miraculous. That means I was able to get my morning exercise in nice and early. It’s an in-the-office work day today and usually on those days I start packing up and getting ready to go as soon as the exercise is over.

Because I finished early I decided to sneak in a little guitar playing. I put two tracks of acoustic guitar onto one RPM Challenge song. It was the one that I started working on last night. Now it’s on the list of songs that are ready for tomorrow’s expected singing in the car session. Nice. If I had more time I would have tried to sneak in a second song, but that would have been pressing my luck. I smartly didn’t even try.

I did take today’s photo a day picture. Day 172/365, to be exact. It’s a guitar pic, of course.

This wasn’t the pic I had planned though. The pic I had planned ended up being awful, as you can see here:

Oh well. Here’s hoping I can write some lyrics and some melodies so that I can have a lot of stuff ready for singing in the car on my vacation day tomorrow. Fingers crossed I can make the time for it tonight.

RPM Challenge Day 18/28

Yesterday was day 18… what did I do, what did I do…

I put rhythm guitars onto two songs. They were both easy songs but I struggled with them for some reason. I was hoping to get to three songs (the only three songs I had that still needed guitars) before work, but I only managed two.

Later in the day I added a new song idea. This makes 17. By the time the day was over it had MIDI bass and drums, a MIDI guide track for the guitar parts, a MIDI piano track acting as a guide for the melody, and lyrics. Nice. Spoiler alert for tomorrow’s post, it now has guitars too.

After that I finished the lyrics and melody for a song I started working on the day before (at least I think it was the day before) and then added lyrics and melodies to two more songs.

That’s it for day 18. Tomorrow (day 20) is a day dedicated to music as it’s my annual oh-crap-I’m-not-going-to-finish-so-I-need-to-book-a-vacation-day day. Today (day 19) is an in the office day so who knows if I’ll have time for much tonight.

The current state of the project (including work I’ve already done today):

Zero songs complete
Zero songs ready to mix
Six songs ready for leads (be they sax or guitar or both). Five have vocals and one is a planned instrumental
Five songs ready for vocals (which I expect to record during my day off tomorrow)
Five songs ready for lyrics and melodies
One song ready for rhythm guitars
Three songs ready to exist because I have 17 songs in progress and I want to get up to at least 20

RPM Challenge Day 17/28

I keep doing this. Before I get a chance to write up the previous day’s events, I have already started recording something today. It’s throwing off my whole summarization vibe. Maybe this year will be the last year that I do daily posts like this. I used to do them on the RPM Challenge website itself, but that functionality no longer exists. Oh well.

So day 17 was yesterday. What did I do? I recorded vocals! I managed five songs. My performance sucked and the sound sucked worse. I think there might be something wrong with the microphone I keep in my car-music backpack.

After that I added another song idea. We are up to 16 songs now. I also started on lyrics and melodies for one song but I didn’t finish. My next shot at car music (my code name for vocal tracking) is the day after tomorrow. I need to write a bunch of lyrics and melodies before then. I also still want to get up to 20 songs, so there is still an absolute mountain of work left to do and very little time left to do it. 10 days to go.

RPM Challenge Day 16/28

Let’s look back at the day that was RPM Challenge Day 16 (yesterday). I did a lot, and I’m having trouble remember exactly what.

I started with a new song idea and went a little nuts on it. Song Idea Number 15 got the song form, the MIDI bass, the MIDI drums, two tracks of acoustic guitars, a melody with a MIDI piano as a guide track, and lyrics. The whole kit. It would have been better if I could have cranked out the vocals and the leads and had the whole thing done in one day, but that’s too much to ask.

After that I put two tracks of acoustic guitars onto one additional song, and then got busy with the lyrics and the melodies. I added three more on top of song number 15. That put me at six songs in total that were ready for vocals. Spoiler alert for day 17, five of them are done.

I feel like I should have done a lot more yesterday, but all in all it was a decent day’s worth of progress. I still feel terribly behind the pace though. Here’s hoping for a productive week.

Car Music Tomorrow?

I am ready to do some car music tomorrow*. I have six songs ready for vocal tracking so I should have plenty to do before work.

Or will I?

I just looked out the window… it is snowing again. If the roads are bad in the morning it will totally screw up my plans.

I hate winter.

*Car music is the act of getting into the car and driving to an empty parking lot somewhere in order to record vocals for my crappy songs in a place where no one will hear me sing. Not because anyone in my house complains about me singing, but because I have this weird phobia kind of thing about singing my shitty songs when people can hear me. It’s a hang up that I’ve learned to live with… I guess.

Sunday Music Day

I put guitars onto a couple of RPM Challenge songs this morning, but I am trying to focus on writing lyrics and melodies now. I’m having a tough time. I’ll stick with it though, I want to record some vocals tomorrow and I need a bunch of songs prepped before then.