Tag: Song Writing

Musical Day – So Far

364/365

Let’s summarize today’s musical milestones.

First, I mixed a song. It was the 26th song for 50/90 overall, but it was also the 10th song written and recorded entirely within the month of August. That means for the seventh month in a row I have completed an RPM Challenge rules, album in a month in 29 days. That is insane.

After that I arranged two sets of ideas, just bass and drums, into something that passes for a song form.

After that, I recorded lead guitars on two songs, then took a break to help my step son with a project, then recorded lead guitars on three more. When I ran out of songs that were ready for leads I added rhythm guitars to three songs.

I am now, temporarily, out of songs that are ready for guitar parts of any kind. I have five songs that are ready to mix, and I expect to pick off one or two tonight, and six songs that are ready for lyrics.

Wow.

I still want to kick off at least three more ideas before August ends. I want to be at least at 40 songs by the end of the month and I’m at 37 now.

Next up is dinner, and then probably a memorial viewing of Black Panther. Then I’ll try to mix another song.

Yikes.

Almost Halfway

I have a meeting starting shortly and I’m all prepped for it with a few minutes to kill. I’m sitting here thinking about 50/90. I’m at 24 songs completely complete. I’ve got two more ready to mix and I should be able to get to them tonight. That will put me over the halfway mark. It will also be 10 songs started and finished within the month of August, meaning I will have completed the album-in-a-month thing by the 29th once again. Is 10 songs in 29 days some how a natural thing for me now? No, don’t be stupid. The only reason you’ve finished as much as you have over the last seven months is you haven’t had to commute to/from work. Don’t get cocky, jerk.

Anyway, I wasn’t going to do this, but here’s another song that I mixed last night. It’s nothing special, but there is a little three-part harmony near the end.

New Songs

I mixed three songs tonight. 50/90 is up to 24 complete, and the August album in a month is up to eight.

This one isn’t too bad. I know I use the gimmick of having the instruments come in one at a time but I’m old, what can you do?

Music All Over the Place

This morning before work I put vocals on five songs. Tonight after work I put lead guitars on five other songs, and rhythm guitars on two more. That’s a productive day, musically speaking. Depending on how the Bruins game goes tonight I might throw in a mix down too. We’ll see.

One little mildly concerning tid bit. The last two times I played guitar I felt a little numbness in my right thumb. The right thumb being the one that does not have tendinitis. Oh good. It was just a little pins and needles, but it definitely shouldn’t have been there. Maybe I was just nervous about the left hand and squeezing the pick really hard with the right. Who knows. I will keep an eye on it.

Singing with Karen

Last night after work I cooked up some quinoa with chopped up chicken for dinner for me and Jen and it was lovely. Jen was working on a computer hardware project so we ate in the office. I did what I’ve been diligently doing for the last week and a half, I went to Netflix and watched an episode of Agents of Shield (season three, episode one… the blitzkrieg re-watch continues at a break neck pace) while I ate my quinoa.

I had Netflix on one monitor screen and on the other I opened up the Trello board I use to keep track of 50/90. I had a lot of songs in the these-need-lyrics bucket. Next thing I know, it’s 90 minutes later and there are five songs in the ready-for-vocals bucket. I cranked out five melodies and five lyrics in 90 minutes. How the hell did that happen?

This morning I got up early and drove over to the parking lot behind The Loop and put vocals on those five songs. It went okay. None of the gear issues I had the last time. Nothing special, musically, but I made some good progress.

I thought I was going to have my very own Karen moment. I seriously wonder, if my skin were a different color, would something have actually happened? Let me explain:

As I was finishing up the last line on the last song a car pulled up. It wasn’t directly next to me, but it was only two spots away. There was an older woman in the driver seat and as she pulled into the spot she did so very slowly. The whole time she was staring at me. You can bet your sweet ass that I was starting right back. I was sitting there with my headphones on and a mic in my hand and a computer on the seat next to me, and I was giving her the what-the-hell-are-you-looking-at-karen look. There was as much stink eye as my face is capable of.

She pulled into the spot, always looking at me. One heartbeat… two heartbeats… and she pulled out. She went to another spot, a row or two away from me, and sat there. She didn’t get out of the car.

(that white car was empty, and it had been there the whole time I was there)

Now as I said, I had just finished the last line in the last song, so it was time for me to go. I packed up my computer and all of my stuff and put it into the backpack I keep it in. I was a little disappointed. Had I had more to do I would have hung out longer, and karen wouldn’t have the opportunity to think that she drove me off… assuming she actually was a karen and actually would have thought that she drove me off… you know what I mean, right?

I decided to drive past her on my way out. It was out of my way, but it gave me the chance to continue my stink eye. She didn’t look at me as I drove by. I’d like to think it was because she was afraid she poked the bear.

Obviously all this was because she was meeting someone there and thought that maybe my car was that person’s car and when she saw the fat dude with the SM-57 she just went on her way. Maybe she was meeting a tinder date. She was probably retirement age, but maybe she was just looking for a hookup. Maybe she was a spy and she was meeting up with some illicit contact.

Most likely she was just wondering what the hell some fat ass red head was doing in the parking lot of closed movie theater at 8:30 in the morning.

Rock and Roll, am I right?

360/365

That Didn’t Hurt Too Much

The guitar was played tonight. I put rhythm parts onto four 50/90 songs. There was a little pain. Nothing too bad. There’s this thing where my thumb won’t bend at the knuckle. The doctor told me that my tendon is swollen and it gets caught on the bone. It hurts a little but it’s more unsettling when it happens than painful. It happened a couple of times while I was playing. The best way to describe the sensation is… icky.

I didn’t play anything challenging. It was all simple power chord riffy stuff, but it was still nice to not be in pain when I was expecting to be in pain, ya know?

Picture #1… please make a note of the bitchin’ DIY amp stand the Fender is sitting on.

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Picture #2… it’s really muggy today. I was sweating, and my right arm was rubbing against the body of the guitar. See the sweaty smudge? That’s about 75% Calamine Lotion.

Picture #3… I usually keep the blinds closed on the window in my little practice nook. There was a thunderstorm today when I was setting up my stuff so I opened them. Wouldn’t you know it, I did so just in time to see a house down the street loading up to go to a wedding. How awesome was that? I mean… how do you have a big wedding ceremony and reception while maintaining social distance, I don’t know… but it’s still beautiful.

There was a wedding down the street, a quarantine-wedding.

Random Stuff

It’s Sunday. My thumb hurts, and the rash on my arm is bigger than it was yesterday. I’m falling apart completely. Quarantine is finally breaking me, it seems. So what’s a red head to do? How about some reflection on the state of his world? Also known as a post full of random stuff? Sounds good to me!

Today is kind of a big day. Symbolically, if not literally. Today is the last weekend day that the kids are at our house before Bellana goes back to school. We’re going all out. Jen is making her favorite dinner tonight. Harry is making her favorite dessert right now. I’m so worried about the future. I want her to go and have a great second year at college, but I don’t want her to go and be at risk of catching the plague. I want her to stay here and be safe. Basically all the same arguments I made last August, with a few pandemical twists. Mostly I just don’t want to miss her again. Selfish, yes, but it’s still true. At the same time, if they can keep the Covid bubble closed and stop her and the rest of the students from being exposed, then I want her to have a great semester. I want her to have a ball. She doesn’t leave for a little over a week, but her last weekend is a dad weekend so we’re giving her a send off a little early.

I feel a little better about my step son’s school plans now that I know he’s only going in person half of the time instead of all the time. I guess you could say I feel half better than full bad? Get it? I would feel full better if he was going full remote, but that’s probably going to require an outbreak in the high school and I don’t want that either. I want him home and safe.

Sports: The Bruins won their first Tuukka Rask free game. They are up two games to one in their first round series against the Whale. I have confidence in Jaroslav Halak, that’s not the issue. I just had more confidence in Rask. A Cup win seems less likely with Halak carrying them, but really given the way they played in the first few games into the return to play, I had lost most of my Cup confidence anyway. We’ll see how far they can go. I’d like to at least beat the friggin’ Whale.

The Red Sox are utterly atrocious. They are very close to being on pace for the lowest win/loss percentage in franchise history, and the franchise has been around for about 120 years or so…. that means they are really, really bad. We all knew it was coming though. They have one major league starter in their pitching rotation and he’s probably a #4 on a real staff. Maybe a #3. Chris Sale, Eduardo Rodriguez, and Nathan Eovaldi together is a nice start for a rotation, but with Sale out getting Tommy John surgery, and E-Rod out with Covid-19 related heart issues, that just leaves Eovaldi and a bunch of minor leaguers and that is a recipe for complete disaster. Add a few hitters having epically bad seasons so far and you have a team that has a good shot at the #1 overall draft pick next year.

Music… 50/90 is 42% complete. I just added songs #20 and 21. I’ve got seven songs with rhythm guitars down that are waiting for lyrics and vocals. That’s it. 28 songs total so far. I need to get to 34 by the end of the month (50/90 takes place over three months and 50/3=16.67). I also want to have a 10 song (at least) album in a month for August. Five of the completed songs were started and finished this month, and three of the unfinished songs were started this month too. Those three are the top of the priority list right now, and I have to keep the new stuff coming so I don’t fall behind. I feel like I am way behind on things, even though I’m really just at the halfway point.

A bird just flew into the window, about two feet away from me. I hope he’s okay. It looked like it might have been a glancing blow. More like he bounced off than crashed.

We applied for vote by mail ballots recently, and our 9/1 Primary election ballots were delivered a couple of days ago. Will there still be a functioning USPS for us to mail them back? The shit stain of a president admitted publicly that he’s hamstringing the post office to tamper with the November election, and the response from those who stand as a check and balance against him? They went on vacation. Also, there is a global pandemic that is killing a thousand Americans a day so they went on vacation. If you still think your government represents you, then that should show you the truth.

That’s kinda a bummer note to end on. Here, let me make it worse by adding a couple of new songs. That should push us all off the ledge, right?

Lots of fulltone Free Guitar

I put rhythm guitars on three songs and leads on two. I used my new Black Lives Matter overdrive pedal on all of it and it is soooo sweet. The Dan side of the D&M Drive is a good alternative to an OCD that doesn’t include any racists bullshit, but it was never quite equal. Now that issue has been resolved. The hole in my life that opened when I trashed my fulltone pedals has been filled by an OCD clone that is racists bullshit free and it is glorious. My OCD was a version 1.7, and the Black Lives Matter pedal is based on a version 1.2, but if this is how it sounds then I would have been just as happy with a 1.2 as a 1.7.

The pedal is on the big board, but it’s not velcro’d yet.

Most of what I did tonight was just the BLM on its own. I did use the Phase 90 and the Crybaby here and there, but it wasn’t until I started doing leads that I stacked the BLM after the KTR and it was just as glorious as I’d hoped. I still have to try it out at gig volume, but for now I’m willing to say that I am really, really happy.

This puts me at 19 songs finished, two ready to mix, and seven ready for lyrics/melody/vocals for a grand total of 28. I need to get to at least 34 by the end of August to stay on pace for 50 songs in 90 days.

How about the pain in my injured left thumb? I took a fist full of Tylenol about an hour before I started playing. I was in some pretty serious pain on the first song or two, but it eased up quite a bit after that. Something is wrong. I’m thinking of going to a doctor on Tuesday. I’ve got this really maddening little rash on my right arm too. I am literally falling apart before my own eyes.

350/365