Tag: Song Writing

Car Music Happened

I did some car music today. It went much better, gear wise, than last time. I had three songs ready to go and I got to two of them, but I was in a bit of a time crunch. Also, it was super hot in that car and the MacBook Pro was actually almost too hot to touch so… yeah. Call it.

The digital drop out problem was sort of addressed. At least I attempted to address it. I changed the USB cable and the USB to USB-C adapter. I had some problems early on that lead me to believe the mic cable might be the source of the fails. Next time I’ll use a different cable. I am really hoping it’s not the mic or the interface itself because those kids are expensive.

I did both of the songs that I started working on in the last week. I hope to put leads on them today and then mix them while I’m Nana Sitting tonight. That would mean one song was started on Saturday night and finished on Sunday night. 24 hours from the first idea to the finished mix. Cool.

In closing, here’s the obligatory “I drove through the center of town” pic. This time it has a groovy old timey filter because… why the hell not, yeah?

Patience is a Virtue or Something

The 50/90 challenge starts in about a week. It’s probably not the best idea to try and force out a song this close to the starting point. A song that had it waited a week would have been one of the (hopefully) 50 but now cannot be. You know.

Maybe a little patience is warranted on the musical front right now?

Screw that, I need this.

I took out my new guitar again and told myself that the first thing I play is going to be worked into a song. Welp, here we are a little while later and there aren’t any lyrics and there isn’t a melody, but the song structure is there and the rhythm guitars, bass, and drum parts are all down.

Good boy.

I need to come up with lyrics for this one and the one from the other day so that I can do some car music in the morning. Tomorrow is my last chance this month… I think. Schedules are screwy, you know?

Want some unrelated good news?

Harry’s paying us a visit tonight. WOOHOO! Harry time!

June Song Again

I wrote last night that my hearthis.at account had run out of upload space and that I would get around to creating a second account. I don’t remember doing this, but it turns out I already made a second account. Did I time travel back from the future and do it so that it would be there when I needed it? Am I Marty McFly? Am I one of The Avengers?

No and no.

Here’s the crappy song.

New Song for June

I think I had a little too much caffeine this afternoon. It’s late but I’m not really tired at all. The Vegas Knights and Montreal Canadiens are going to overtime in game six. Vegas has to win. Vegas. Must. Win.

So in my non-sleepiness I mixed a song. The Record Every Month Challenge thingie will have an entry from me for June.

No Change for Me (Part 1)

Note how the link to the song is a link and not a little embedded audio player. Why is that? Well, kids, I found out the hard way that hearthis.at has an upload limit for free accounts and I’ve reached it. I’ll make a second free account and somehow link them together, but not tonight. Tonight I am not up for that challenge. Tonight we’ll just settle for a link to alonetone.

Rewrite Or Two Parter

I put lead guitars onto the song that got the vocals during car music this morning. All tracking is done on one song so barring any catastrophic failures I’ll have a song to send into RPM this month.

Before recording that lead track though I recorded the first thing to pop into my head when I picked up my new guitar tonight and wrote a whole song form around it.

You’d think that was a good thing, right? It would be if the first thing that popped into my head hadn’t been 95% the same as the chorus of the car music song. It’s 34 bpm slower, and the turn around in bars four and eight is different, though still similar. Otherwise it’s the same thing.

So what to do with it? Is it a rewrite? No… it’s part two of a two song suite. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Let’s go with that.

Car Music Fail

I knew this was going to happen eventually, and today kinda became the day.

If you go back to all the car music posts from the last year or so, at some point I start talking about having signal flow problems. There are signal drop outs and extraneous noises and things that make takes unusable. Eventually the system I use for my personal Rolling Truck Stones Thing was going to fail. Today I only had two songs to work on and I spent a full hour on one of them, just trying to get the signal to hold together for eight or nine bars. It was so painful.

The frustration comes from not knowing where the breakdown is happening. What could it be?

  1. The microphone
  2. The connection between the mic and the mic cable
  3. The mic cable
  4. The connection between the mic cable and the USB interface
  5. The USB interface
  6. The connection between the USB interface and the USB cable
  7. The USB cable
  8. The connection between the USB cable and the USB to USB C adapter
  9. The USB to USB C adapter
  10. The connection between the USB to USB C adapter and the USB C port on the computer

Today’s issues happened in more than one USB C port, so I know it wasn’t the port. I also know it isn’t the sound card or GarageBand itself because both of those work perfectly when I’m at home and using a different USB interface. That rules out the tail end of the chain, but every other device or connection could be the culprit.

The next time I do this I am going to take a different mic, a different mic cable, a different USB cable, and a different USB adapter. If it still happens then I know the interface itself is the problem.

The upside is that I actually did get that one song finished. It probably sounds like dung, but it’s finished. So the trip was a success as far as the goal to record one song per month is concerned. It was a frustrating, painful fail as far as everything else was concerned.

Pencil In Car Music for Tomorrow

I have four songs underway this month. They all blow chunks. I thought two of them were useable and two were disasters. I wrote lyrics for one of the better ones today and then tried writing for the second better one, only to realize it was garbage. I then listened to one of the disasters and decided it was awful but not too awful so I wrote lyrics for that one. The other disaster is still a disaster but it’s better than I thought. I tried putting lyrics to that one too but I’m kinda burned out.

So car music tomorrow should happen, even though there are only two songs ready to work on. That should be enough for now.

On a totally unrelated note, I just head that two members of the cast of the show Batwoman posted spoilers today that kinda make me want to catch up on season two. I am so easily lead. Baaaaah, babie. Baaaaaah.

July is Coming

After working on a couple of seriously atrocious song ideas tonight it’s got me wondering about the near future. The 4th of July is right around the corner, and for a musical net nerd like me, the 4th of July means 50/90.

Should I do 50/90? I’ll definitely do Record Every Month, so there’s three songs. Should I try to bang out the other 47 as well?

I’m not sure. I’ll be pulling shifts at my parents house again probably starting next week, so there’s a lot of time where I won’t be recording. I’ve used that time to put initial ideas down, and to mix, but I can’t do guitars or voices.

I guess we will have to just wait and see where my head is a couple of weeks from now.

Play

I did it. I snuck in some guitar playing. Dinner is going to be late tonight so I went straight from work to the new Les Paul.

I worked on rhythm parts for two really terrible songs. Les Paul Standard 50s into a Rock Your Repaired Amp The Klone overdrive pedal into a Vox AC15. Life felt good for a few minutes there. Excellent.

Up next is some hamburgers cooked on the grill where life will continue to feel good for a few more minutes.

Baby steps, babie. Baby steps.