Tag: Song Writing

A Couple of Pointless Musical Musings

I think I may have just broken the My Music page attached to this blog. Oops. I have a bandcamp.com page that I don’t promote. I just stick album-in-a-month type projects there. I haven’t updated it since finishing the bonus RPM Challenge thing from April 2020. Earlier today I set all of the projects there to private… forgetting that I had playlists embedded on the My Music page. Again, oops.

The reason I did it was that I am planning to put all of the re-recordings from the last year and a half or so up there and have those be the only thing visitors can see. That seems like a good move, assuming my attempt at having the new recordings be at least slightly better than the old ones. Better sound, better performances, and fewer crappy songs. I think it’s a good idea. I just have to do it.

The album-in-a-month internet challenge with the undisputed worst name of them all, NAtional SOlo ALbum MOnth (NASOALMO) is going to kick off on Monday. I’ll take it for another spin. I’m thinking of a gear swap. I’ve been using my Fender Bassbreaker 15 as my amp for the last four months or so. For November I am thinking of using my little Vox MV50 and it’s NuTube technology which is totally not a gimmick (wink, wink). I remember using it on an album-in-a-month once at some point, but it was paired with the Bassbreaker 15 and they were both using their direct out/speaker sims. I don’t think I’ve ever recorded anything with the MV50 through an actual speaker into a microphone. November seems like a good time to finally use it for reals.

Finally, Klon is going to start shipping the new KTR pedals in about three weeks. I absolutely do not need one. Still… let the Gear Acquisition Syndrome commence!

Granted, all of this depends on whether or not our furnace is working. They are still downstairs working on it. I have said it before (well, typed it) and I will say (type) it again… Heat my house!

I Even Remembered to Submit

The RPM Challenge’s Record Every Month challenge to record one song each month for the entire year started in March. For the first couple of months I remembered to submit a song so that it would be included in the listening party. Most months… well… I just forgot to submit… like a dope.

I didn’t forget this time! Here’s one crappy song, written and recorded this month! Oh, so crappy!

Clawing Back to Life

Just another one of those days where the brain doesn’t want to function and something that feels like what the rumors say is the blues tries to take over. I have three things that are helping me claw my way back to life.

First, Jen. As always. As far as my mental state goes, I really don’t know what I would do without her.

Second, nowhere near as important as item number one, the Bruins are kicking the shit out of the Sharks right now. It’s 4-1 about halfway through the third period. Thanks, Bruins. I appreciate it.

Third, probably more important than number two, but still nowhere near as important as number one, I spent the last hour+ playing guitar. I put leads on the three songs that got vocals this morning, and then put rhythm guitars onto two more from the current batch of songs to re-record for the 2015 re-recording yadda yadda blah. My playing wasn’t great, but it was okay.

Now I have to get some exercise in. Ugh.

Obligatory guitar pics:

First Car Music in a Month

Finally, right? I made it out for some car music today. I had three songs ready to go. One was a new one for Record Every Month and the other two were re-recordings for the great 2015 rerecording project which will likely never ever end. The re-recording things are meant to be a little… I don’t know… they are hopefully to be of a slightly higher quality than everything else. Performance wise if not sound wise. Something like that. The rules of the stupid game require me to be pickier about which takes I keep and put in the final mix. It’s also supposed to be more… live… live-ish? Not live, but also no copy and paste. Every sound you hear should be more or less unique. If a song has a chorus that plays twice then even though the two takes are similar enough that you don’t notice a difference, they are in fact different. For the record every month thing, or in fact for just about all of the demoes I make, copy and paste is fine. Record the chorus once, then paste it everywhere else there is a chorus. I do that for bass and vocals but not for guitars. It’s no fun to not play the guitars all the way through.

So what does it mean? It means I started with the record every month song so I could use it as a warm up before I got to the more involved shit. I opened up the computer plugged in the mic, setup the first verse and nailed it in one take. Well, that was weird. I suck as a singer so getting anything in one take is weird. I then setup each other section of the song and nailed them in at most two takes. What the fuck is going on? I suck, I can’t be getting things right this easily, especially when I haven’t done anything like this in a month.

When I was done, I picked the easier of the two re-recordings and that’s when everything went back to normal. Oh my word, did I suck. I sucked out loud. I sucked as much as anyone who has every sucked at singing has ever sucked at signing before. I. Sucked.

An hour and a half later I was working on the last section of the last song and my MacBook Pro popped up a warning that my battery was about to die. I guess I sucked exactly as much as my battery would allow.

I just suck.

Remember That Thing?

Hey, remember when I used to post about writing shitty songs all the time? The Red Sox have totally distracted me from all of that.

I need to write at least one song this month and tonight in my baseball induced misery I wrote the melody and the lyrics for a new song. Aren’t you proud of me? Aren’t you sad that I’m posting about shitty music again? Yeah, sorry about that.

Car music in the morning?

When I sat down to write this literary masterpiece of a blog post I put the Bruins game on the radio. They were losing to Philly, 4-3 in the third. Almost immediately after I started listening, Philly scored to pad the lead to 5-3.

Sports wise, this is just not my night.

Done… more

I posted yesterday that the 50/90 shit was done. That was sort of true. I hit the 50 song goal and, as mentioned earlier, deleted my account. I’m done with that site. I wasn’t really done with the project though. I still had two songs to mix. I mixed them tonight. Now I’m finished, finished. If you catch my drift.

I made at least an attempt at 50/90 every year since 2013. I finished in 2014 with 50 songs. I didn’t finish again until Covid let me finish it in 2020 when I had 51 songs. Now this year I have finished for a third time with 52 songs. Setting the bar incrementally higher, or some nonsense.

Now it’s back to the Record Every Month thing from the RPM Challenge site. I haven’t been submitting songs over the last few months, but I have still been participating. I have at least one song written and recorded in it’s entirety for every month since March. I need to put together a playlist on Alonetone that acts as an official list, and then use a second playlist for all the extra stuff I did each month. Yeah, that’s a plan.

So we’re back at it on October 1st. See you then!