Tag: Song Writing

Vocals are Done

Last night before bed I added quick and dirty lyrics to two of the four outstanding songs. This morning, after exercising, I went out for some car music. I recorded the vocals for those two songs and then improvised a vocal part for a third song.

That’s it. I’m done with the vocals. I mentioned a few days ago that I was thinking of dropping songs before they are finished. That’s what I am doing with that last song. Song #3, if you must know. It’s just too crappy to continue. That’s going to leave me with 14 songs which, years ago, would have given me a complete FAWM. I don’t do FAWM anymore, but it’s still as good a goal as any, right?

The exercise this morning has a funny story to go along with it. Last month, thanks to walking for hours around Disney World, I doubled my 30 minute exercise goal nine times. This month, my Apple Watch activity app challenged me to do the same in February. On Friday I doubled it for the seventh time. That gave me four days to do it two more times. I had every intention of making yesterday the eighth but I failed miserably. This morning I decided to get it done right away and not leave anything up to chance. I ran for a full 60 minutes. I set a bunch of personal work out records on the various Watch apps. I need to do it one more time over the next two days. I mean… I feel pretty lame getting worked up about stuff this stupid but… there you have it.

Episode seven of The Last of Us airs tonight. Three more to go. The serious is stellar. Absolutely fantastic. The Mandalorian season three kicks off on Wednesday. I started watching Star Trek Deep Space 9 from the beginning the other day. As I am typing this I am eating breakfast and watching the first episode of The X-Files. I guess you could call it binge watching season now.

Back to music, but this time guitar gear, I have spent the last couple of years trying to find a suitable replacement for an overdrive pedal that I removed from my board because the designer/owner of the company that makes it is a racist piece of trash and I can’t in good conscience use his products anymore. I have two pedals that are damn close and I think I found another one that I want to try out. It’s a very small pedal builder somewhere in Canada called KO Amps. How much is 140 Canadian dollars in US dollars?

Okay. Let’s finish breakfast, let’s finish this episode of The X-Files, and then get some serious work down on the ol’ RPM Challenge. Three songs complete, between seven and 11 left to go.

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2023 RPM Challenge – Day 25 of 28

I posted to that useless Tumblr page again…

Okay, how much did I get through today?

I put vocals down on four songs, mixed two songs, put rhythm guitars on one song, put lead guitars on four songs, and wrote lyrics to two songs.

Looks like more vocals in the car tomorrow, assuming the weather holds. Still a ton of mixing and guitar soloing to go, and still a couple of songs that need lyrics. I’ll make it to 10 songs for sure, but I don’t know if I will get through all 15 songs that I’ve started this month.

So much still to do.

Progress

I’ve already mentioned putting vocals on four songs this morning, and I’ve already posted two songs that I mixed today, but now I am posting about putting lead guitar parts onto four songs. My fingers are killing me. I still don’t have calluses on my left hand and good heavens am I feeling the repercussions of that right now. I still have four more songs that are ready for leads but I have to take a break for a while. Maybe for the rest of the day. Jen and I might be going down to Cambridge for some tech gear after dinner tonight, so this might be it for guitar on this fine Saturday. I still have to write melodies and lyrics for the last four songs as well.

Soooo much left to do.

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Baby Yoda? That’s Grogu to you, punk.

Three Songs Down

I think I like this one. In fact this might be my favorite of the bunch. That’s not saying much. My heart hasn’t been in it this year and I’ve been just going through the motions and as a result everything sucks even more than usual. So I guess this is in the running for song that sucks the least? I don’t know. It doesn’t have a “track #1” vibe to me though. It might end up as track #2. Maybe? We’ll see. There’s still a long long way to go before I have to worry about stuff like running order.

Two Songs Down

Two songs down, somewhere between eight and 13 to go.

This one is okay. That’s about the best review I could give it. Okay.

I think I’ll mix one more and then go down cellar and start adding leads to more songs. That sounds like a good move.

Frozen Car Music

Holy crap, is it cold out there. I just got home from car vocals at the movie theater parking lot and I am frozen to the core. It was six degrees out when I left. It rocketed up to 10 degrees by the time I was done. Heatwave! I would record a song, then listen back to the entire thing as an excuse to turn the car on and run the heater for 3-5 minutes or so. Once I forgot to turn the car off and recorded a whole song worth of vocals with the heater’s fan on full blast. So… professionalism, yeah?

I put vocals on four songs. That was all I had lyrics for. It brings me up to 11 songs with vocals and that means I will have an RPM submission this year. Thanks, I appreciate all the applause.

I currently have two songs ready to mix, eight songs ready for lead guitars, three songs ready for lyrics, and one song that’s still just MIDI bass and drums. It’s going to be a long day.

First though, breakfast and an episode of Star Trek Deep Space Nine… while my laptop finishes adjusting to room temperature.

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See, Flickr? I can shoot abandoned buildings too!

Four Days to Go

As posted on that stupid tumblr that I don’t know why I still use…

Four days to go, counting today. I’m leaving for some car music in a few minutes. I just need to fill up my water bottle first.

I have four songs ready for vocals. I can get through them all this morning. I have four more songs that still need lyrics. I am considering the possibility of dropping three of them now. They all suck more than my sucky songs usually suck. Do I really want to expel energy necessary to finish them when I know I am not going to use them?

Vocals in the car this morning, then lots of lead guitars later in the day, and maybe a mix or two (or three) after that. Then do it all again tomorrow.

Sounds like a plan is forming. We’ll see how it goes.

Crappy Weather and Crappy Singing

We got a couple of inches of snow yesterday followed by some rain and a drop in temperature which turned the snow to ice. I went out after work and shoveled and it was like shoveling bricks. It was not fun. I was happy that the driveway and both cars and the path to the garbage barrels and the area around the fire hydrant were all cleared.

Then later, around bed time, it started snowing again. Not much, but it quickly turned to rain again and immediately froze. When I got up this morning everything I had shoveled yesterday had been magically transformed into an ice skating rink. Yippee. I was also ran out of ice melt last night. Oh goodie.

I did not let it stop me though. I hacked the layer of ice off of one of the cars and proceeded to drive to a not-so-empty parking lot for some car music! I say not so empty because there were two humongous trucks trying to plow the layer of ice off of the lot. You can probably hear them on the vocal tracks. Yippee, again.

I got through four songs and oh my goodness do they suck. That brings me up to seven songs with vocals, with eight more to go. Only two of those eight have lyrics though, so I need to do a lot of work tonight. There must be another car music in the morning. Fortunately tomorrow is Saturday so I can spare a little more time, and if needed I can go out more than once. I can do the same on Sunday. Assuming I can get all of the lyrics written (and one song still needs rhythm guitars as well) then I will have all of the vocals down with a couple of days to spare. Then it’s just lead guitar and mixing, which will likely take a lot of time to get through. I’m already sort of sorting things into two buckets: Songs that might be useable for the final album, and songs that most likely will not be useable. There are two on the later list. Drop candidates, as it were, and one on the bubble. The rest of them are bad, but not so bad as to throw away… maybe. We’ll see how I feel when they are mixed.

My studio view today is thusly:

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Also, a pic of half of my audience for the day:

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And now for a few shots of the scenic drive to the not-so-empty parking lot:

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So the musical plan for later tonight is record some leads, record one song’s rhythm guitars, mix a song or two, and write a shit ton of lyrics and melodies.

Yeah… I can do that. Some of it at least.

Gotta Keep Pushing

Twice this week I was going to go out and do car music before work only to be screwed over by snow. On Tuesday I probably could have done it but today there was no chance. Damn it.

I did the same thing I did on Tuesday though. If I couldn’t go out and sing, I’d stay home and record some guitars. Last night I added a couple of noodles that are now song #15. I wanted to work on lyrics last night but 24 bars of bass guitar riffs was as far as I got. After finishing my faux running (yogging) and watching episode two of Star Trek Picard this morning I worked those little bass riffs into a song form and recorded the rhythm guitars. Then I put leads onto the only two songs that are currently ready for leads. Nothing special as far as playing is concerned, but both songs are now ready to mix. Just before I punched into work I added lyrics to song #9 as well. I now have five songs ready to sing and will get to as many as I can before work tomorrow. Assuming mother nature doesn’t kick me in the balls for a third time.

Obligatory pictures:

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I took the Wren and Cuff Super Russian off the board and replaced it with the Way Huge Russian Pickle. Two different copies of the old Sovtek version of the Big Muff Pi fuzz pedal
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The plan for tonight is to try and write lyrics. I currently have six songs that are ready for lyrics and one more that isn’t quite ready yet. I’m at 15 songs now when I only need 10. Two of the 15 are especially crappy and might go unfinished. We’ll have to see what happens over the next five days.

I will complete this project if it takes everything I have. I am not blowing my RPM Challenge success streak.

One Song Down

Look at that, I mixed a song! The 2023 RPM Challenge will not be a shutout and that is good. The song isn’t good, but the fact that it exists is… and isn’t that the entire spirit behind the RPM Challenge?

One down, at least nine more to go.