Tag: Songwriting

Not Fun and then Fun

It is 3:30pm and it is already the longest day in the history of the universe.

I went to sleep at about 10:30pm last night. Later than I would have liked, but earlier than most days over the past month or so. I woke up at about 2:15am needing to go to the bathroom. I’m old. It happens. Deal with it. When I was done I fell right back to sleep.

Then at 3:51am my phone rang. It was work. The overnight staff were dealing with a customer issue that was causing the customer a lot of stress. I knew what the issue was but I wasn’t sure how to find the process that was causing it. Fortunately the overnight guy I was on the phone with mentioned one little detail which set off a trigger in my teeny tiny little mostly still asleep brain and I knew where I had to go to set things right. By 4:15 I was off the call. I took a few minutes to write a message to all of my staff members who would be involved in the follow up during normal business hours and I went to bed. I didn’t sleep much before my alarm went off at 5:30am, but I did manage to snooze a little.

All of that was not fun. Not fun at all. It was a lot less catastrophic than it could have been, but it is never fun having work call in the middle of the night. I’m just glad I was able to help. Even though the situation was not fun, I felt pretty good about myself when it was over.

By 6:00 I was out of bed and starting the day. By 6:15 I was in the cellar starting my daily exercise. The ball was rolling. An hour later the fun part of the day was starting. Guitars, babie!

On Monday I wrote two new songs and started recording demos. Bass and drums were MIDI instruments, rhythm guitars were the real thing, the melody was sketched out on a keyboard and lyrics were written stream of consciousness style to fit the melody. Yesterday before work my laptop and I drove to an empty parking lot in town and I recorded the vocal tracks for both songs. Today before work I recorded the lead guitar parts. Normally the lead guitars are my favorite part of the song demo process but right now I am so out of playing shape that there are no calluses on my finger tips and playing for more than a few minutes hurts. The strings start to feel like razor blades, especially when you play like I do and you bend strings all over the place. Ouch.

Still, despite the pain, I was able to finish tracking both new songs. Now all I have to do is mix them so that they are somewhat listenable (relatively speaking, of course) and then they are done. A few years ago I was writing 10+ songs each month over the course of the whole year. Last year I did the RPM Challenge in February (write and record an album’s worth of music all within the month of February) and then nothing for the rest of the year. This year was starting to look the same. I finished RPM in February and then it wasn’t until Memorial Day weekend that I even thought about doing anything more. Now that I am feeling like I am back in the saddle again, or some horse shit like that (get it? Saddle? Horse shit? Oh, come on!) I am thinking about trying to write a bunch in June and then do the fifty ninety challenge over the summer (that challenge is to write 50 songs in 90 days between July 4th and October 1st). We’ll see if I can stick to that.

So on this fine Friday in May, in fact the last Friday in May, the day started off not fun, and then for a little blast of time it was fun, and then it was just the usual… right up until about an hour after lunch when the lack of sleep caught up with me and now I am completely out of gas with 93 minutes left in my work day.

It’s going to be a long afternoon.

Blah

Memorial Day Weekend: Three days of rain and gloom and cold.

The Tuesday after Memorial Day Weekend: Blue skies, sun, 80 degrees.

Mutha puss bucket.

It was a good weekend otherwise. We tried to have a cookout but had a cook-in instead. I was hoping my step son would be able to join us but he was too busy. My step daughter was away for the start of it but she came home Sunday afternoon. That was nice. 

I didn’t go out to take pictures or anything, not just because of the shit weather. I was also feeling too lazy. I sort of made up for it, in the creativity department, on Monday though. I wrote two songs. The demos aren’t finished, but everything is written for both of them. My finger tips are still burning from recording the rhythm guitars. The strings on my ES-335 felt like rusty razor blades. It was fun.

We found out today we’re going to have a little bit of work done on the house that is going to require me to do a HUGE amount of work in the cellar to prepare for it. It’s not for a couple of weeks but I am already feeling overwhelmed by the very thought of it. It’s an important project that will lead to an even more important project a few months down the road, but for now… fuck me.

I’m going to a concert next week. Expect me to be super psyched about it in the coming days. That’s a little blog spoiler for you.

Nothing much else to write about today. I had to commute to the office today and I’m about 20 minutes away from my commute home. I’m in the office again tomorrow. Hopefully the commute is better tomorrow, but I doubt it. Whatever.

Okay, I’m clicking publish now.

Musical Epic Urges

I have this weird musical urge right now and I don’t think I will be able to stop myself from trying to make it happen.

I have this urge to write a song that runs for at least 20 minutes.

  • Introduction is slow and quiet. Maybe just a cleanish electric guitar soloing over an electric piano. The intro needs to be long… very long.
  • Next we have basically a 4-5 minute uptempo, noisy rock song. Preferably in an odd time signature with shouty vocals in the chorus.
  • Another instrumental break. Change key and time signature and tempo and jam for a while. Maybe have a guitar and a sax trade off.
  • Another stand alone kind of song section. Slower, quieter, less shouty.
  • Come up with a riff. Something long and drawn out. Maybe a full eight bars without repeating anything. Start quiet and slowly but steadily get louder, just repeating the same phrase. Get louder and heavier and more intense. I’m thinking something like Whaling Song by Procol Harem. Something that just builds on itself over a long stretch of time.
  • Return to the second section. Different key maybe. Not a full repeat, but bring back the same changes and phrases in a new arrangement. Sort of like a coda section.
  • Return to the introduction but not nearly as long.

What do we think, universe? Do I suddenly have a new musical project to sink my untalented musical teeth into?

Will it run for 20 minutes?

We’ll see.

2026 RPM Challenge Day 28/28

Done. Finished. Complete. Success. 15 years in a row, babie. Every year since 2012 has seen me successfully complete the RPM Challenge (and the FAWM too).

The album is called The Great American Road trip because it was mixed during the great american road trip. Duh. The official home is my alonetone page, right here. The unofficial home is on my hearthis.at page which only exists because it plays nicely with wordpress.com.

I ended up with 16 songs and dropped six of them from the final project. My overall reaction to this year’s batch of new songs is… meh. I don’t care. That’s not the point of this thing. They didn’t exist and now they do and that is a good thing, even if the songs themselves are not good things. Dig it?

2026 RPM Challenge Day 27/28

We are home from our week long epic road trip. I was expecting to get home tomorrow but we made it back a little early.

I mixed one song today. I’m not sharing it because it is terrible and I should have left it unfinished. That leaves me with one song left to mix, then I have to pick the running order and make some cover art and then I’m done.

I would do more tonight but I am utterly exhausted and I want to flake a little before I fall asleep.

I’ll wrap all of this stuff up tomorrow.

2026 RPM Challenge Day 26/28

As I sit in a hotel room somewhere between Fredericksburg, VA and Washington, DC I managed to mix one song. That’s it for today. There are still two more to go and I could probably squeeze one more in but I’m really tired and I want to watch Starfleet Academy before I conk out.

I was expecting to hate this song. I am scraping the bottom of the barrel now and I thought this would be unbearably awful. It’s better than I expected though. Let’s say it is bearably awful.

2026 RPM Challenge Day 25/28

The RPM Challenge asks for 10 songs or 35 minutes of music. FAWM asks for 14 songs.

With two songs mixed tonight while sitting in a hotel room near Knoxville, Tennessee I am up to 13 songs finished with three more still left to mix and three days left to finish. I think we’re going to have another success this year, don’t you?

2026 RPM Challenge Day 23/28

The epic road trip took us from Louisville, KY to Nashville, TN and back. My gastric bypass disagreed with lunch and I puked on the side of the highway, route 65 North, somewhere in Kentucky.

I had also hoped to mix three songs but I am exhausted and only managed two. I’m going to bed now even though it’s still laughably early. I’m so old it’s like a joke, man.

2026 RPM Challenge Day 22/28

I woke up this morning in Syracuse, NY and now I am about to go to sleep in Louisville, KY. After about 11 hours driving I have reduced myself to mush, mentally speaking.

I managed to mix a couple of songs though. Three down, 13 to go.

2026 RPM Challenge Day 20 and 21/28

Today is the 21st. I didn’t get a chance to give a summary of yesterday’s progress and now it’s bed time and I guess I’ll just summarize yesterday and today at the same time.

I finished all of the lyrics, all of the vocal tracking, and all of the lead guitars. My wife and I left on our week long road trip a day early but I managed to get everything recorded. Most of my guitar playing sucks, all of my singing sucks, and the songwriting in general sucks, but all of the tracking is done and now I can get down to mixing all 16 songs.

One down, 15 to go….