Nothing. Nada.
I didn’t have time for music before work and after I got home from work I just wanted to hang out in the living room with my wife. I didn’t have time or energy for anything else.
Day 48 (today) will likely be better, but probably not much better.
I suspect that progress is going to be much slower over the next couple of weeks. I’m going to be working in the office a lot and these days my most musical times of day have been directly before and after work. Those times will be spent driving for the next little while.
On day 46 I managed to get to the office early enough so that I could spend a few minutes noodling bass riffs in GarageBand on my iPhone while sitting in the car in the parking lot. I came up with one song’s worth of stuff. Let’s call it song number 43.
After work I managed to mix one song, bringing my total number of complete songs up to 35. The most interesting, and unusual, thing about this newly completed song is that I don’t hate it. I think I almost actually like it. That feels so weird.
So I am working in the office the rest of this week and most of next week, and this coming weekend has a bunch of things on the agenda already as well. I don’t see a lot of time being available for the 50 songs in 90 days challenge, but I’ll do my best to sneak in progress where I can.
Yesterday was day 45. We have reached the mid-way point of the 50 songs in 90 days challenge. In the handful of times I have completed this particular nut job of a project, I have never been this far along at the half way point. This year has been a little crazy.
What did I do to honor the mid point? Not much. Some good stuff, but just not too much of it. I mixed one song. That puts me at 34 songs complete. If you split the project into three one-month deals you need to divide 50 songs by three in order to set the pace for each month. 50/3=16.67. Round up to the nearest integer puts us at 17 songs each month. That means I have to have 34 songs complete by the end of August… and I am at 34 songs complete on August 17th. That is nuts.
After work I added another song. That’s idea number 41. I had some time so I wandered downstairs to the music nook in the cellar and added guitars to this new song. When that was done I still had some time on my hands so I added another idea. 42. Insert Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy jokes here. 41 has the full structure and the full rhythm section of guitars, fake bass, and fake drums. 42 has the structure worked out, guitars, and fake drums. I still need to add a fake bass part.
So, halfway through the project I have 34 songs complete, four songs ready to mix, three songs ready for lyrics, and one song that is a bass line away from being ready for lyrics. That adds up to 42. That’s the state of the world right now.
I got a nice chunk of work done on day 44. Maybe not quite as much as I had hoped, but good progress none the less.
I started the day with seven songs needing work. Three were ready for vocals and four were ready for lyrics. I ended up working on five of them. First I recorded the three songs worth of vocals. Next I wrote the lyrics and the melodies and recorded the vocals for two others. See my previous post for a hint at maybe why I didn’t get into the sixth or seventh songs (the unofficial term for gastric bypass folks is “the foamies” and I gave it to myself pretty bad because I was less than careful while eating lunch).
Later on I revisited all five of those songs by adding lead guitars to all of them. I now still have two songs waiting for lyrics, but five songs ready to mix and declare officially complete. Like I said, good progress.
If you are a musician working on a home recording project and you are also someone who has had gastric bypass surgery I have a little item of note that I learned today.
Don’t try to eat lunch while putting vocals onto some of your demos. The idea was take a bite, record a verse, take a bite, record a chorus, repeat until both lunch and the demos are done.
Nope. Just pay attention to what you’re eating. If you focus on just one thing instead of both things it will save you time in the end as you won’t have to keep pausing the recording to go to the bathroom and vomit.
For the probably tiny percentage of musicians in the world who have had gastric bypass and also record a lot of home demos… please learn from my experience. I did some suffering today so that you don’t have to suffer tomorrow.
On day 43 I mixed three songs. One, two, and three. None of them are particularly interesting though the third one is the first and so far only 12-bar blues for this year’s 50 songs in 90 Days Challenge. I usually can’t stop myself from doing a few of them.
This brings my completed songs count up to 33. I still have seven more in progress. Three are ready for vocals and four are ready for a melody and some lyrics. We’re not even halfway through the project yet and I already have 66% of the songs completed. What is this crazy mixed up world we’re living in these days?
Day 42 (yesterday) is in the books. What progress did I make? I still had three songs that are ready to mix and I was planning on getting to some of those but I never did. Instead, I put rhythm guitars onto two songs (numbers 37 and 38) before work. After work instead of mixing I added two new songs (numbers 39 and 40) and immediately put rhythm guitars on those as well.
I now have three songs ready to mix, three ready for vocals, and four waiting on lyrics and melodies. What will I work on for day number 43 (today)? Who knows. At this rate I’ll probably just add more songs. Why not, right? I have 30 songs finished and 10 more in progress. We’re rolling along nicely.
41 days into this… we’re almost at the half way point which means the summer is almost over and that is utterly depressing. Here in New England summer ends on Labor Day and winter starts the next day. Like I said: Depressing.
I mentioned in yesterday’s recap that I expected day 41 to involve mixing and it sure did. I started mixing one song about 15 seconds after I posted yesterday’s recap post… almost like I knew what was coming. I finished that song before work.
After work I should have started mixing another song but instead I added another song to the queue. Song number 37 for those keeping count. When that was done I added song number 38. Both have the fake MIDI bass and drums and the full song structure and are ready for rhythm guitars. After that I started mixing another song, and after that I mixed a third song. My total number of finished songs is now up to 30. The project is 60% complete.
The current state of the project is 30 songs complete (as just mentioned two sentences ago), three songs ready to mix, three songs ready for vocals, and two songs ready for rhythm guitars. Doing the math… yup, that is 38 songs. I’m feeling pretty good about things right now. Obviously anything could happen to derail the whole project, but as of this moment in time? I’m optimistic for success.
I went a little berserk on day 40.
I’m not supposed to exercise following the tooth extraction fiasco so when I woke up I immediately started recording vocal tracks. Why not, right? I had nine songs in progress and all of them were ready for vocals. I didn’t expect to get to all of them, but I wanted to get a chunk of it done. I did not expect that singing would cause pain at one of the tooth extraction points (mostly the socket that used to hold the lower left wisdom tooth) but it did. I pushed through it though and managed to crank out six of the nine songs. Six! Crazy!
But wait, there’s more!
Last night after dinner my wife had to work for a while so I was left to my own devices. I was planning to spend a little time before work one day 41 adding lead guitars to some of newly recorded vocal songs but instead I went down cellar to the music nook and started adding lead guitars last night. I once again plowed through all six songs. Six! Crazy! My finger tips were a raw, horrid, mess by the time I was done, but I got through all of the songs that were ready for leads.
I guess now day 41 is going to be a day to do some mixing. We’ll see.
After not doing any work on the 50 songs in 90 days challenge on day 38, I went a little nuts on day 39.
My normal daily routine includes 45-50 minutes of exercise first thing in the morning. The discharge paperwork I took home from Monday’s tooth extractions suggested that exercise would be bad because an increase in heart rate and blood pressure could pop the clot out of the now-empty tooth socket. That’s pretty much the last thing I want, so I am skipping exercise for a few days.
In its place? Music. I started with writing some lyrics. I had one song that was already partially written that I needed to finish. I didn’t want to forget about it so I did it first. After that, I put rhythm guitar tracks onto two songs. They were the only things ready for guitars at that point, but after finishing the second song I was in the mood to keep going, so I started a new song idea. Song number 36. In past 50/90 challenges I have allowed myself to do one 12-bar blues riff each month. I did not do one in July, but song number 36 gives me one for August. I recorded the guitars and the MIDI drums (using GarageBand’s Drummer function, which is probably cheating but I really don’t care and I use it for all of these dumb songs). At that point I had to start my work day so I was done with guitars.
I was not done with music progress though. After work I continued to go a little nuts. First, I added a MIDI bass part to song number 36. After that, I figured I had the GarageBand file open and all so why not just stick with it and write a melody and lyrics? Done. I’m not sure, but I think at that point it brought me up to four or five songs that had lyrics and melodies written and were ready for vocals. I also had four or five songs that were still waiting for lyrics and melodies. I probably could have stopped there for the night but my wife was working late and my step daughter was at her dad’s house so I was sitting in the living room alone… and I wrote lyrics and melodies for all of the remaining songs. All of them.
When I finally called it a night the 50 songs in 90 days challenge status report showed 27 songs complete and nine songs ready for vocals.
I am feeling a little dizzy thinking about it all… though really that could just be my blood sugar being really low on account of my few days with a mostly liquid diet. Not sure. I think it is amazement at my musical progress though. I think.
Spoiler alert for day 40: vocal tracking.
Inside the Red Head's Head 