I finished putting lead guitars on the two songs I still have going for April’s entry in the Record Every Month challenge. One song is terrible. The other is just weak.
Here is my “studio” for today. Note there are no Fender Stratocasters in sight.
How about a selfie or two? How lame am I?
The April entry for the Record Every Month Challenge lives! I hopped in the car this morning, drove to an empty parking lot, and recorded vocals for two songs. One song is abysmal. The other is okay, I guess.
I was able to stick to this month’s gimmick of doing all of the work on my iPad. I tested out my little mic interface before I left the house, just to make sure it would work. It did.
Instead of the usual pictures, I decided to test to see if iMovie still was a thing and I took a bunch of fake super 8 clips and then stitched them all together into a nearly five minute long snore fest. Don’t worry, the downtown clock is there, it’s just at the very end.
I’ve worked on four seriously crappy song ideas today. My fingers are killing me and my iPad’s battery is close to dead.
What do you think of my recording studio?
Gibson SG standard into Ibanez Tube Screamer Mini into Vox MV50 Clean into IK Multimedia iRig split into iPad Air running GarageBand and an old pair of Bose headphones.
The only downside is the crew working on the bay window in the living room unplugged our router so my iPhone is now my only source of internet. Oh well.
I haven’t done much for the record every month thing this month. I have a couple of less than good ideas in GarageBand on my iPad but they aren’t really worth pursuing. What should I do? I might have a plan for something to force some music out of me.
I am off work on Monday and Tuesday. We are having new windows installed on those days and I took them off so that I could be available to the crew doing the work if they need anything. Other than letting them into the house, I can’t imagine I will have much to do so I have been planning on hanging out in the cellar (or if the weather is nice, maybe on the patio in the backyard) watching Star Wars Rebels (I’m a smidge over half way through my rewatch) and The X-Files. Maybe I should plan to use those two days for music.
I also recently bought a new iRig so that I can run my guitar into my iPad again. Maybe to shake things up I could restrict myself to GarageBand on my iPad instead of mostly using it on my MacBook Pro. That could be fun. Maybe I could further restrict things by using the cab sim on my Vox MV50 and using that for an amp. That way I could use an amp and not be super loud and annoying while the window folks are working upstairs. That could be fun too. I’d probably also restrict myself to a single overdrive pedal. I tried doing that in February with the Keeley Super Phat Mod (the one pedal that I want to really love but somehow cannot bond with) before switching to the Chicago Stompworks Blooze Maker.
I wouldn’t be able to pull off an album in a day thing, but maybe I could try to do an album in two days? I’d have to record vocals in the car on Tuesday morning before the window people arrive. Maybe I could just plan to do as much music as possible over the two days and then finish off whatever I don’t get to afterwards. I don’t know.
I think a plan has been formed. Let’s see if I can actually follow it and pull anything off. Maybe I could spend two days working on my iPad, and then take any music that I manage to finish and redo it on the MacBook and end up with two different versions of each song. I did that once back in 2014 where I did an album in June with each song mixed on the iPad and the MacBook. Huh… maybe.
Let’s see what happens.
The second of two songs for March is complete. I guess. The vocals are atrocious and the whole thing feels kinda blah. The song is okay, I just didn’t play it very well. It could use a little editing and a little… enthusiasm? Maybe? It’s fine for a B-Side. The other song is much better.
The record every month challenge is a success for March. One month down.
I got up a little early-ish. Not as early as I’d planned, but early enough to get the trash out to the street, close my exercise ring for the day, have some protein supplement breakfast, and watch an episode and a half of The X-Files before 7:30am. That gave me enough time to record lead guitar tracks for the two songs I’m working on for Record Every Month this month. Tracking is done for both songs. Boom. I just have to mix them, and I have 3+ days left to do it. Nice.
My playing was rusty so I kept my leads simple. Nothing special. I did have some timing issues at the end of one solo, but not enough to redo it when the rest of the solo sounded pretty good. Part of me wants to push myself to do more than two songs next month. I don’t know if that would be 10 songs or five songs or three songs or what, but I’ll probably just do two… or one.
Here are a couple of pictures…
I set my alarm for 5:00am and didn’t get out of bed until about 6:40. Oh well, after a rough few days I think I needed it. I still do, I am feeling super tired still.
I was planning on getting my exercise in for the day, then getting ready for work, then (assuming Jen was awake and not in an early meeting) I was going to add the final guitar parts to the two songs I’ve been working on. Nope. It’s after 8:00 now and I just closed my exercise ring and had a protein supplement breakfast. My stomach is okay so far, though not really 100%. I’m still feeling a little beat up after the rough week, but yesterday was 99% fine and I am hoping for a trend. I’ll use the stop watch at lunch and dinner and see if it keeps me on track. It doesn’t always work, there are other ways to fuck up apart from just going too fast, but it worked for me all day yesterday. I still don’t know what went wrong with the late night pudding cup snack last night. I was really shocked at how that one turned out.
I am planning to go food shopping after dinner tonight. Once I get home I will try to add the last guitar parts to the two songs so that I can start mixing and get them in before the end of the month.
We did a lot of planning for Bellana’s college graduation weekend last night. Once we get through all of the logistics I am going to start obsessing over the photography options. I’m hyper focusing on lens options (yes, the pun was intended… focusing… get it?). I was thinking about trying to get a long zoom so that I could get close up shots of the stage from our cheap seats. Now I’m not so sure. Now I think I might want to go for something super wide so that I can get the whole scene when the family is all together. Like, what if we go to dinner to celebrate afterwards. If I have a 40mm lens on the digital camera and a 50mm lens on the film I’m not going to be able to get multiple people into a shot unless I stand up and walk away. Maybe I want to look into getting a 28mm, or even an 18mm lens so that I can grab nice wide group shots.
Oh to be able to actually know what I’m doing. Heh heh.
Okay, time to go get showered and dressed and get ready for work. Happy Monday, he said with biting, dripping sarcasm.
Musical progress, folks! The Record Every Month Challenge is still happening for March 2023! I went to my favorite singing-in-the-car parking lot this morning and put really terrible vocal tracks onto two songs. The challenge is to record a song each month. I am upping the ante to recording two songs every month because I am insane.
The view out my “studio” window, complete with my rubber duck assistant audio engineer:
Weight loss surgery has changed a lot for me in terms of singing. My lung capacity is WAY down, which seems odd but maybe not that surprising. There is a new finding that I just came across today. Car music workflow had me putting the laptop on the passenger seat and leaning over to read the lyrics off of the notepad. Today it occurred to me that without my huge stomach I can do this instead:
Finally, in closing, I drove through the center of town. I actually brought Dad’s film camera with me, fully intending to stop somewhere and snap a few pics. When the time came though, I just drove home… like I always do. I did almost get hit by a guy running a stop sign, and then get hit again when he decided to change lanes without looking while I was literally right next to him. 9:00am and already driving drunk. Dude’s gonna have a banger of a day, methinks.
Inside the Red Head's Head 