Tag: rpm2016

One!

RPM 2016 is officially more successful than RPM 2008. Or 2009. Or 2010 and 2011!.

One song finished. I wrote it last night. Long after I had 14 songs in progress, which means I should have quit while I was ahead. Onward to 20 songs!

RPM Update

Well, my plans for recording vocals more or less went down the shitter. I had Monday off for the holiday, and I took vacation days on Tuesday and Wednesday. The plan was to sing my ass off on the two vacation days, after using the three day weekend to get all the backing tracks done.

I got the backing tracks done, but my beloved wife Jennifer came down with a really awful cold. She called in sick yesterday, so I spent some time writing lyrics and melodies and whispering them into a mic because I’m too big a pussy to sing when there are people in the house.

This morning, my beloved wife Jennifer went to work and I immediately set up the mic and went to work. I decided to save the songs that I worked on yesterday until last, thinking that I should focus on the songs that still need lyrics to be written first. Good move. I finished three songs before Jen texted me that she was coming home. She gave it a shot, but she was too sick to stay in the office and risk passing it on to everyone else. She came home and telecommuted. That means in two vacation days off of work I managed a whopping three vocals. I am screwed.

I have my telecommute day tomorrow, so I can crank out some singing before work and during lunch. Over the weekend there will be a couple of hours where I will be able to be alone and get a little more singing done. Then I have to find time next week, when there isn’t any time to be had. Like I said, I’m screwed.

The good news is, there are a total of 13 songs with lyrics written, including the three that I’ve already recorded. If I can quickly record vocals for the rest of those and write and record one more, then I will be set for both RPM and FAWM.

Further good news, one of the songs with finished vocals is ready to mix. Guess what I’m doing tonight. So I have a goal to write and record 14 songs. The song that I finished tracking today is song number 18. I wrote the whole thing on my iPad last night, including the lyrics and melody, and recorded the whole thing today. I still have this half baked idea of sending in two 10 song CDs to RPM headquarters in Portsmouth. I actually started piecing together song #19 today. It’s just a 12-string and a little bit of a lyric so far, but it’s there. Getting to 20 songs is a given at this point. Finishing 20 songs feels like a pipe dream.

Of course the best news of all is that my brilliant, beautiful, beloved wife Jennifer is feeling much better this afternoon. Hopefully she’ll be right as rain tomorrow. I hate it when she’s sick and I can’t make her all better. Poor sweetie.

It Lives!

The 12-string guitar… it lives!

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Three of the 14 songs had space reserved for acoustic guitar. One of those three was designed to have all of it’s rhythm guitar parts be acoustic (and it’s in drop D too!). Those parts are all finished now.

After I recorded the last piece I sort of felt like I was in the groove, ya know? So I kicked off two new songs. One is just a 12-bar blues but it’s in 7/8 time. Take that, establishment! The other is the second song inspired by something I read on the FAWM forum. Someone threw out a challenge to write a song using the “ice cream changes”. That refers to a chord progression that was used and reused extensively in the 1950s and early 60s. Basically, rock and roll pre-Beatles. It is, for the theory nerds in the audience, I – vi – IV – V. I actually used that progression once already, on song #14, but I transposed it to a minor key, making it i – VI – iv – v. (For the non-theory folks, a capital roman numeral refers to a major chord, and a lower case refers to a minor chord.) As I referenced with The Who song I posted yesterday, I am embracing the fact that all of my songs sound the same, and just not worrying about it this year. Given that, I used the ice cream changes again, only this time I kept it in a major key.

So if you do the math, I’m up to 16 songs now. No lyrics yet, and some of them don’t even have a song form yet. Still… 16 songs! WOOHOO

Go RPM Challenge!

Inventory

I took a little RPM inventory tonight and updated my trello board.  I have 14 songs in progress.  Seven have all of the rhythm guitar parts done and are in the ready for vocals list.  Three more have guitars recorded but still need to have the song forms worked out.  Four more still need more pieces to be written.  Tomorrow is the half way point of the month.  I’d say I’m in half decent shape.

Some, not All

I didn’t even come close to getting as much done as I’d hoped today, but RPM progress has been made. I am now up to nine songs with rhythm guitars recorded. Yay, eh? It’s almost time to break out the acoustic guitar. Be afraid!

I thought I was going to have two full work days with the house to myself. I was wrong. I will have one full work day with the house to myself. I will have to get as much vocalizin’ and socializin’* done on that day as possible, and then cram in the rest when I can get a free minute here and there. The double album plan is kaput.

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*That is a Bloom County reference. Death Tongue. Remember that? Before they sold out and went all corporate rock and changed their name to Billy and the Boingers? When Opus learned what Bono already knew? No words rhyme with Nicaragua? Remember? On the Death Tongue comic, Steve Dallas was listed as lead vocalising and socialising. One of the two spellings I’ve used on this post might be correct. Also, both of the spellings could be wrong.

The Weather Might Help Me

It’s cold out there.  This morning when the kids and I left the house it was four degrees out.  Right now at home in Methuen it is 20 degrees.  Cold, but not brutally end of the world cold.  This weekend there is a chance we could break the record for the lowest temperatures ever recorded on the 13th or 14th of February.  I think the record for tomorrow is -3.

Strangely, this cold snap might work to my advantage.  I’m so ridiculously behind on my RPM recording this year.  I’m ahead of the game on writing, but way way way behind on recording.  In a rare moment of optimism, I see a deep freeze of a weekend as a good reason to stay home and get some work done.  My wife expects to be busy working this weekend.  While I would much prefer the two of us spend the weekend doing things together, it is Valentines Day on Sunday after all, if she is going to be wrapped up in code, I can use the time to get wrapped up in tunes.  Monday is a holiday.  I have the day off, but my beloved doesn’t.  I also took Tuesday and Wednesday off from work with the intention of getting as much singing recorded as I can (even though I have no words or melodies written yet).  That gives me a five day weekend.  If I buckle down, I might be able to finish the whole project by this time next week!  That’s impossible, but maybe I could somehow magically manage to increase my out put from the 13 songs in progress today (with the FAWM goal of 14) to maybe 20?  If RPM defines an album as 10 songs or 35 minutes, could I possibly turn this month into a double album?  Or maybe two entirely separate albums?  Three of the 13 songs are leaning toward being acoustic guitar centered.  Might I end up with an album of electric songs and an album of acoustic songs?

The answer, of course, is no.  I’m getting to 14 and then I’ll probably drop four of them and have a normal 10 song RPM album.  But a boy can dream, right?  I mean… right?

Then the question is, what to do about Valentines Day?  Valentines always gets the shaft in our house.  We still haven’t gotten back to normal from Christmas yet, and then the first week of February has two birthdays in the house, my step son and my beloved brilliant amazing wife, and just when you’ve gotten everything squared away for the birthdays… BAM… you’ve practically missed Valentines.  Personally, I think we should move Valentines to April.  That way we can have enough time to financially recover from Christmas and Birthday week, and have the wonderfully silly celebration of all things romance coincide with the anniversary of our first date.  That would be something I can get behind.  I think the United States, if not the entire world, should get with me and make April Valentines day a reality.  Let’s do this people!  Working together in a massive grass roots effort we can accomplish anything!  First let’s get Bernie Sanders into the White House, then we’ll move Valentines Day to April 5th!

What was I talking about?

Oh yeah… it’s going to be cold this weekend.  Stay warm, New England.

Finally

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At long last, I have actually recorded guitar parts that are usable. Last Thursday I recorded the guitars for two songs but there was a lag issue between GarageBand for iPad and the Amplitube amp sim I was using and things sounded just a tiny, hair off. Other than that, there had been no actual instruments on any of my RPM songs to this point. It’s February 11th and I didn’t have a single guitar part recorded!

Today is my telecommute day though, and I was home from dropping off the kids by about 7:10. I spent the next hour and 40 minutes on guitars. I rerecorded the bad parts for those two songs from last week, and then cranked out two more songs. That’s four guitar parts down, nine to go, and I still need to add at least one more song.

My time management is pretty awful this year, but I will… I WILL… get everything done on time.

RPM Challenge – Day 9

This has been the weirdest RPM to date.  I have 13 songs in progress, but I don’t have a single recorded instrument track that is useable.  I’ve got a few guitar tracks down, but I want to replace all of them.  Everything I have so far is just built in GarageBand sounds.  Guitar, bass, and drums.  I have so much guitar to do that it’s starting to feel overwhelming.  Every day I come home and say, tonight I record guitars!  Then every night something comes up.  It’s getting frustrated.  I took a couple of days off from work next week to start vocals.  I need all of the rhythm guitars done before then, never mind adding real bass guitar.  

Like I said, weirdest RPM experience ever.

RPM Challenge – Day 5

I’m up to seven songs in the works. I thought I made decent progress yesterday, but I didn’t do as well as I thought.

I’ve been working soley on the iPad. Just using the built in guitar, bass, and drum sounds to work out short phrases. I piece together 4-5 of these little segments and group them into one song file. Yesterday I started moving on a little. I recorded rhythm guitar parts for two of the song/segment collections. I then ported the iOS files into OSX and arranged the segments into song forms.

That’s progress, right? Well it was until I realized that one of the guitar parts had a really bad edit and needs to be redone. I was also going to record bass guitar onto the iOS files, but I didn’t. I just didn’t want to wait anymore. There was also the little problem I had when I tried recording rhythm guitars for a third song, and I couldn’t play the part. Urgh. It’s a simple little thing, but my fat friggin fingers just didn’t want to do it. I will probably split it up into two parts rather than just double the one part. It’s a cheat, but it’s also RPM… so I guess it’s okay.

The kids have a snow day today so I am going to work from home. Usually working from home means progress gets made, but I don’t see much happening today.

I made a Work in Progress playlist on Soundcloud. I am deleting and replacing files from it all the time, so it will show my latest progress. Right now, there isn’t much to listen to, but it’s there if you want to torture yourself.