Tag: Song Writing

Wah Wah Pedals are Fun to Step On

Just in case you were wondering if I owned a wah wah pedal or not. Once again, I’m not sure about the mix here. What I need to do is line up all of these suckers in a play list and then drive somewhere that’s 2-3 hours away. Listening to mixes in the car is pretty much the source of truth for the entire recording industry. I’m actually a little bit serious here.

Quarantine Tunes Volume 2 is Happening

The first song from Quarantine Tunes Volume 2 is done! Hooray, babie!

Back in 2016 I wrote a bunch of songs for the RPM Challenge that questioned the mental abilities of flat Earthers. Someone listening commented that I was being closed minded. Really. This song was my subtle response.

I’m not sure I have the mix just right. There are four tracks of rhythm guitar and I was worried I’d get carried away and overpower everything else. I wonder if I over compensated by backing them off too much. I’ll listen back in a couple of days and decide.

One down, eight to go.

“Happy” Seven Months

It’s October 13th. Happy (I mean that sarcastically) Seventh Covid-Quarantine Monthiversary.

This fucking sucks.

Last night one of the guys in the band floated the idea of having a mask-wearing, spread out all over the room band practice. Another guy immediately said yes. The third guy commented but didn’t say yes or no. Then I was the asshole. I’m really tired of being the asshole. Like… really tired of it.

I was going to mix one of the songs last night. I replaced all the bass and drum parts and made sure everything lined up correctly. There was one spot toward the end of the song where the vocals sounded weird. I had two tracks singing the same thing. I’m not sure why I did that, but I did it for the first three songs I recorded. In this particular instance there was a drop out that cut a whole word out of one of the takes. How did I miss that?

I listened to just the vocal tracks, one at a time, and there were little drop outs all over the place. What the hell? I was mostly able to comp together one full track out of the two that I had, but there was one line where both tracks had a drop out. Fortunately it was in a chorus so I was able to fly in that line from another part of the song.

It really pissed me off though. How did I miss that when I was in the car? I knew I was having signal loss issues that day but I thought I was catching them as they happened. I’m so mad at myself. I did the same thing with the two other songs I recorded that day and they both had a drop out or two, but they weren’t nearly as bad. I comped together a full take pretty easily. I then did the same for the four songs I recorded yesterday, when I wasn’t doubling tracks, and everything was fine. I don’t have to redo anything, but it still pissed me off like crazy.

I also had my first bad news on the exercise front, though it wasn’t unexpected. When I started this I said I was going to do the intermittent fasting and 30 minutes of exercise each day and see what happens. I explicitly said I was not going to screw with what I ate, just when I ate it. I have been weighing myself every Tuesday morning and I was losing weight. Today was the first weigh in where I was up. Only a pound and a half, but I was not happy. Not even a little bit. I told myself that weight loss wasn’t my primary goal, but now that I’m up a pound and a half I think I have to face the reality that maybe it actually is my primary goal. Crap. I thought I was more evolved than that (that’s a joke, I didn’t really think that).

The good news is, last time I cut the grass I would do about 10 minutes of mowing and then have to sit for half an hour to recover. After a month’s worth of multiple little “work outs” each day, when I cut the grass this weekend it was more like 20-30 minutes of mowing with little 5-10 minute breaks to recover. That was my original goal for all of this shit. I consider that a small success in an otherwise garbage universe.

Kiss my ass, Covid-19.

Two Days Worth of Music

Lots of progress on the second round of The Great 2015 Re-Recording Project.

Yesterday I finished the rhythm guitars for the last three songs and added lead guitar to one. Today I added vocals to four songs. That makes nine with rhythm guitar, seven with vocals, and one with leads. I actually want to re-do most of the MIDI tracks, bass guitar and drums. A couple of songs have keyboard parts and those are more or less finished too.

My first car singing session was odd in that everything was much harder than I remembered it from the first time I recorded the three songs I worked on. Today it wasn’t so much the songs that were the problem, it was me. I did four songs but I probably should have stopped after two. My voice got tired really fast today. I brought up the first song and cranked most of the sections out in one or two tries. By the time I was wrapping it up though my voice was starting to crack and get a little froggie. The second song was more challenging, but by the end I was croaking on at least a few words on every other take. I don’t think that’s ever happened to me before.

I was hoping to get through three songs but I forced myself to do four. I’m guessing when it’s all said and done you’ll be able to pick that fourth song out without me hinting. I was at it for more than an hour and a half or so, not quite two hours, and my throat is sore from yelling. Do real singers go through shit like this, or are they just trained to avoid it.

Ribbit.

Musical Progress

I did some singing in the car this morning. I’m working on part two of The Great Re-Recording Project of 2015. I put down vocals for three songs. The goal with this project is to make it sound slightly better than the demo quality I usually shoot for. Part of that is there is no copy/paste allowed. That means if a song runs through the chorus section more than once, I sing it more than once. I also doubled almost everything. I’m not sure if I’ll keep both takes in the mix or if I’ll comp them together. It could go either way at this point. Strangely, the three songs I worked on today didn’t have any vocal harmonies in the original versions. I added a little into one song but I didn’t double that. I’m stuck with it as is. I also may have changed one line of the lyrics to one song. I did it on the fly, but it was on purpose. I didn’t screw something up and then decide to keep it because I didn’t want to go back and fix it. I’ve done that before, but not today.

The weird thing was how difficult it all was. When I did part one of this dumb project I was pleased how easy it was to crank out vocals for all of the old songs. Almost as if I was a terrible singer and an amateurish song writer and I purposely made the vocal parts easy. I didn’t, but that’s how it felt. Today was just tough. Literally everything was near the top of my range (which could be a lot smaller than it used to be, I’ll admit it) and I had to pretty much scream to get it all out. There were times when I was incapable of keeping my eyes open because I was belting so hard. Worse, there was one time where I seriously thought I yelled hard enough to make myself throw up. I didn’t, but it was a close call for a second or two.

I had six songs ready to go but in 90 minutes or so I only got to three. If this were the usual album in a month thing I probably would have finished them all. Instead I was adding extra takes and not using copy/paste and just in general being a lot pickier with what I kept. Hopefully that will lead to a better end result but realistically… probably not.

When I started this up again in June I had songs lined up in four groups of eight. After all of the album in a month craziness I have added two more from this year’s batch of crap. I was going to make part 2 be 10 songs but instead I shuffled some things around and now parts 2 and 3 are nine songs each. What does that mean?

Absolutely nothing.

Bad

Worked on the Great Re-Recording Project of 2015 today.

I wrote these friggin’ songs, why can’t I play them? What the hell is wrong with me? I mean, clearly if they came outa my head they aren’t hard to play. Why the constant screw ups?

I’m up to four songs ready for vocals though, so that’s not so bad.

A (musical) Personal Challenge

I took last night and tonight off from recording. After 50/90 I needed a breather. Mentally though… let’s just say that doing these stupid musical things is a source of therapy for me. It helps me keep my head straight when the Covid-19 nightmares threaten to take over.

Tomorrow after work I pick up on the October projects. First and foremost, get back to The Great Re-Recording Project of 2015 and record new versions of 10 old songs. It was going to be eight songs, but I tacked on one song from February’s RPM Challenge, and one song from the just finished 50/90. The goal is to make these new versions of old songs sound better than just home demos.

Once that is finished, spend the rest of the month writing and demoing as close to 10 new songs as possible. I doubt I’ll have time for 10, but I want to get as many as I can. I’ve reached this goal in each of the last eight months. I want to keep the streak going.

Rock on, brothers and sisters.