Tag: RPM2020

Guitar Goofy

Here’s one of the songs I finished today.  I started this a day or two before we left for Florida but I never got a chance to add the guitars.  I was able to carve out enough time to do it today.

It’s goofy… I own three Gibson guitars.  This song used them all.  The rhythm guitar is my 1979 ES 335 Pro, the melody/solo coming mostly out of your left speaker is my 2018 SG Standard, and the melody/solo coming mostly out of your right speaker is my 1978 Les Paul Custom.

Silly, but fun.

I took a picture of each guitar too but one of them didn’t make it to Flickr and I don’t know why.  It’s on my phone, but my phone is in the other room so you’ll just have to wait.

I Am Done with 63 Minutes to Spare – #RPM2020

I am finished with my 2020 RPM Challenge album with 63 minutes to spare.  Kick ass, dudes!

I ended up with 18 songs, seven of which had two mixes.  I was going to go with half electric and half acoustic or something, and maybe have the alternate mixes as their own thing.  In the end I just listed to each song and put each one onto one of three lists:  Good, kinda good, crap.  The good list had 13 songs, kinda good had three, and crap had two.  I then listened to both mixes of any acoustic songs on the good list and decided which mix I liked better.  I was a little surprised that some of the cajon mixes were the better of the two.  Last I took the 13 songs on the good list and kinda sorta ordered them from my favorite to my least favorite, and that became the final album.

hearthis.at is being bitchy and won’t let me upload any new songs tonight.  The RPM Challenge website is completely down too.  The internets are being a jerk.  Alonetone, however, is five by five.  Here’s a link to the final record:

I Only Believe in Truth

No More #RPM2020 For This Vacation

I just posted this to the RPM Challenge website:

Everything that I can do while on vacation in Florida has been done.  Nine electric songs mixed, seven acoustic songs mixed, six of those seven acoustic songs’ alternate versions mixed.

I have a few songs worth of guitars still to do once I get home on Saturday.  Every guitar part I have done this year has been played through a pair of amplifiers (one Fender Bassbreaker 15 and one Fender Bassbreaker 18/30 at 18 watts) and the 18/30 is a seriously loud little bastard.  I have been playing it with the volume set as low as I can get it and still produce a sound.  The 15 watt guy needs to get cranked a bit in order to keep up.

Last Saturday I tried to pick off the last three songs worth of guitars but my family had reached their limit and told me to shut up (in the most polite, supportive way possible).  I got pissy and shut it all down.  On Saturday I am going to finish those damned songs using just the 15 watt amp so that I don’t deafen my family.  I have leads to add to one of the acoustic songs, and leads to add to one of the electric songs.  The last thing is an instrumental idea that needs rhythm and two leads.  I want to finish all three, mix them, and then sequence the album, including figuring out which songs need to be dropped.  I think two or three electric songs need to go.  I don’t know if any of the acoustic songs are bad enough to eliminate, but one might be.  We’ll see.

Everything I can do in my hotel room is done.  Saturday is the final day of the month so it will be musical crunch time.

For now though… sleeeeeeeep

Dedication

On Sunday we flew across half a continent and then went to Epcot Center and I walked until I couldn’t walk anymore.  Then on Monday we went to Hollywood Studios and then to Magic Kingdom where we stayed until late late and I was so tired that I could barely move.  Today we went to Epcot again and stayed for something like seven hours and then went to The Boardwalk and continued the endless walking and my legs hurt so much I can’t see straight.

…..and after all that I still mixed a song for The RPM Challenge and uploaded it all over the world using the guest wifi at Disney.

That is some grade A dedication right there, kiddos.  Testify!

RPM Freakout – #RPM2020

from my RPM Challenge account:

I have 10 songs mixed, so I should be breathing a sigh of relief.  Nope, I’m more stressed than ever.

Revised to do list:

Song #7 needs lead guitar.

Song #15 needs bass and drums.

Song #18 needs lead guitar.

Song #19 needs rhythm guitar and two lead guitars… because I started working on it yesterday.  It’s going to be an instrumental though, so no hiding where no one can hear me sing necessary.

No need to freak out… but still freaking out.  Going on vacation at 4:00am tomorrow.  All tracking needs to be done by bed time tonight.

Freakin’ out.

Note, I put the hash tag into the title of this post so that it will show up in Twitter.  That’s the only reason.  I’m a nerd.  What can you do.

 

That’s 10!

The RPM Challenge defines an album (for the purpose of the challenge at least) as 10 song or 35 minutes of music.

I just finished mixing my ninth and tenth songs of the month.  I could stop now and the challenge would be completed.  There’s still FAWM which requires four more songs, but I always think of FAWM as an afterthought,  RPM is where my February Music Heart lies.

Oh yeah, and that to do list I posted earlier?  I didn’t do any of it yet.  In fact, I may have added a whole new song.  What a moron!

Anyway, here’s song #9, which goes on the rock band half of the album…

And here’s #10 which goes on the acoustic side of the album…

And now I can go to bed before my battery dies,  Nighty Night, Disney World (not until Sunday though).

To Do List

I’ve probably mentioned most of this before, but why not do it again?  I put up a new blog post on the RPM Challenge website.  Here’s what I wrote:

I am leaving for Disney World on Sunday before dawn so all of this crap needs to be done before I leave.  I think I can do some mixing in my hotel room at night before sleep, but if I don’t get to it all I’ll be home to finish it off on the 29th.  I need all of the tracking done before I go and any song that isn’t done goes onto the dropped list.

So what’s left?

Song #7 needs a bass, drums, and guitar leads.

Song #10 needs bass and drums.

Song needs bass and drums.

Song #18 needs guitar leads.

That’s it.  The three bass and drum tracks are just midi in GarageBand.  I can do those with headphones on tonight before bed.  The guitar leads will be noisy, I’ll have to find some time to do that tomorrow in between packing and vacation prepping.

No problem!

The Florida trip starts on Sunday, but my actual vacation starts in just over four hours.

I’m ready.

I’m so completely ready.

Burned

I stuck around the house this morning so that I could do a little more recording.  I didn’t get to everything I wanted to get to but I’m almost done with the tracking.  Tomorrow I will wrap it all up.

I was able to stay home later than usual because it is Massachusetts school vacation week, which means greatly reduced traffic, and it’s Friday which also means greatly reduced traffic.  I was watching Waze as I worked and my expected travel time never topped 40 minutes.

At least it didn’t until I was actually on the road.  With Waze listing my estimated time of arrival at 9:00 on the dot it suddenly recalculated my route and asked me to get the hell off of route 93 South like pronto.  Uh oh.  The arrival time jumped up to 9:12 and the traffic in front of me stopped dead.  There was an accident between Dascomb Road and Route 125 somewhere.  I was able to get off at Dascomb, but the traffic in Andover was awful and I limped back to the highway one exit further down.  I ended up being 15 minutes late.  Damn it.  I got stuck in some traffic on 128 South too because of an accident on 128 North.  Rubberneckers are jerks, am I right?

Change of subject, I am still putzing along on my Flickr Photo a Day Challenge.  I took yet another picture of a guitar after I wrapped up my “session” (heh heh) this morning.  That puts me at 174 days.  I thought my previous best was 174 too so I was thinking of writing something goofy tomorrow when I broke my record.  I looked back at the blog post where I sketched out all of my previous failures and it turns out my previous record was 154, not 174.  Dumb ass.  So, yippee.  New World Record.  174/365.

174/365

One Day

Did I mention that for some idiotic reason I started a couple of new songs today?  Well I’ve finished one of them already.

When I woke up there was a dumb strummy little riff in my head.  It was a telecommute day so I was able to record it and turn it into a whole (kinda lame) song.  I recorded all of the rhythm guitars to a basic guide drum track.  At lunch time I wrote the lyrics and the melody and recorded the vocals and the lead guitar.  After work I replaced the midi drums with a GarageBand drummer and I added the midi bass.  In the hour or so before bed I mixed it and uploaded it everywhere.

Its not a very good song, but it’s kinda cool to go from nothing to finished over the course of a single day.  I did the same with another new song but didn’t get a chance to add the drums and bass or do a mix.  Everything that requires a microphone is done.  There is a third new song that is just bass, drums, and a piano melody with some lyrics.  I’m hoping I can get all of the recording for that one done before work in the morning.  There is also one other song that still needs a lead guitar.  Fingers crossed I get both songs finished before I have to leave for work.