Tag: Songwriting

NaSoAlMo Day 11 Update

Today is November 11. The day we honor those who fought for our country. For me, it’s also been a NaSoAlMo day. I have all the “songs” I am going to need. Right now the count is at seven songs and 33 minutes. That’ll do. All of the songs have the full arrangement spec’d out, all of the rhythm guitars, bass, and drums finished, and a random keyboard here and there. All that remains is lyrics, melodies, vocals, and lead guitar.

The mess that is the new version of GarageBand has taken 90% of the fun out of this for me. There are little things that are just infuriating. When in measure display mode, you used to be able to click on a beat within a bar and the play head would snap to that spot. Now, it snaps to the spot until you let go of the mouse button, then it moves a fraction of a beat to one side or another. Sometimes it would take four or five clicks to get it into place.

Other changes are gigantic. Where are all the effects? What do you mean I can’t add anything other than compression and EQ? And while we’re on the topic of compression and EQ, where the hell are all of those incredible presets that the old GarageBand had? This alone has pretty much destroyed any chance I had of ever being happy with a recording again.

Anyway. Seven songs. Lots of padding, I’m afraid. None of the songs are under three minutes. Very proggie of me, if I don’t say so myself. I have an idea of how to tie everything together into one big suite. I bought some sound effect tracks from iTunes last night. I think I am going to try and make the full 33 minutes sound like a listener flipping around a radio dial. Silly. Stupid, even. It’s just my sort of stupid silliness though.

19 days to go. Really, I don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of finishing this one on time. I don’t care though.

National Solo Album Month

If you don’t like music, specifically bad music, then I owe you an apology in advance… Because if I can keep motivated, we’re looking at a months worth of bad music on this little page. November is National Solo Album Month, or NaSoAlMo for the cool kids. I’ve tried this many times, but never saw my interest last beyond the first few days. I’m hoping this year will be different. The plan is to do all the same stuff I do for RPM In February, but focus more on acoustic guitar (for rhythm parts at least) and to try and use different drum and bass sounds in GarageBand. I started piecing together an idea tonight. Just like Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock, it’s just a primary rhythm thing… And that is the last time you’ll ever hear me speak of my music in the same breathe as Jimi’s.

Let’s hope I stay motivated. I want to have some kind of creative (noisy) output to offset my slowly losing my mind at work.

Rock on, brothers and sisters.

A New/Old Song Called Thoughts

This was written at the same time as Laughing. The plan was to try writing songs that I could sing while playing the guitar. I think I played my first bedroom recording of this (with me playing my brother’s drums, gasp!) to Mike the bass player but he passed on it. This song should be brand new to everyone else on Earth. I always liked it, but never pushed anyone to play it. I don’t know why. As for the meaning of the lyrics? I have no idea at all.

A New/Old Song Called Laughing

I don’t remember a whole lot about this one. I wrote it along with two others in my bedroom at my parents’ house, probably in 1993 or 94. I know the idea was to write stuff that I might be able to sing and play at the same time. This was played by at least one of the short lived, unnamed bands I was in during the mid 90’s, but never to an audience. As for what the lyrics are about? I haven’t a clue.

Two More Songs

I was hoping there would be three songs to post tonight, but I’m way too tired so you’ll have to settle for two.

These were both started in 2007 when I first tried and failed the RPM challenge. This makes five of those seven songs that have finally been finished. The lyrics to the first one are about nothing, hence the song title. I was trying to make a point in the lyrics to the second song, but I can’t figure out what that point was. Typical.

These two files will eventually be deleted, someday, when I finish recording all of the songs that I consider to be part of my leftover songs project. Once they are all done I’ll move the whole thing over to bandcamp. But I’ll put these here for now.

…Where the 80’s Live Forever!

I consider the first “real” band I ever played in to be Tempest Fero.  Horrible name.  Fun band.  It was Mike on bass, Jeff on drums, Jim on keyboards, and some fat doofus on guitar.

We had a number of “songs” that we’d come up with that were just instrumental riffs that were fun to jam on.  Goldfish, Toilet Water from Hell, Guppies from Mars and Beyond.  Yeah, we were 16 and 17 year old nerds.  I remember toward the end of my junior year in high school we had decided to stop looking for a singer and start just doing it ourselves.  Jim was good.  Jeff was better.  I wasn’t so hot.  Mike only sang when it was funny.  I thought that if we were becoming a real band we should probably write lyrics to our instrumental songs.  My first attempt was really bad, but I fudged it into a melody that went over Goldfish.  Time for a Change was born.  It was the first song I’d ever written or cowritten that was really complete.  My simple melody got trashed in favor of a better one that Jim came up with.  They were sort of similar, but Jim’s blew mine out of the water.

All of that happened about 25 years ago.  Now, after all of this time, I give to you, oh internets, a sloppy little GarageBand demo recording of Time for a Change, 2013.  Gasp in wonder at how lame it is…

But wait, there’s more!

I had to dig through a box full of old cassette tapes to find the arrangement and the lyrics, but I eventually found a tape that was in awful shape, with the worst wow and flutter in the history of magnetism.  It also didn’t have Mike playing bass. That made me sad.  Still, there were four other songs on the tape.  One of them was a song that Mike and I wrote in his basement while playing with his 4-track recorder.  This was probably either late ’88 or early ’89.  I really can’t recall.  Jeff took over the melody this time and made my simple, feeble attempt a billion times better.

The lyrics came from two places. I bought a copy of Steve Hackett’s Till We Have Faces album and the opening track was called Duel.  It was based on a Spielberg movie of the same name about a commuter who is stalked by a psycho driving a truck.  That idea, combined with nearly getting in a head on collision while driving home from work late one night made up the basis of what was sadly probably my best lyric effort with Tempest Fero.  Not to imply my lyrics ever got much better, but this was the best I had come up with at the time.  Jeff had started writing lyrics for T.F. too and his squashed mine like the proverbial grape.  Anyway, in the hopes of not making Time for a Change feel all lonely and stuff, I also made a new GarageBand demo of One on One Duel…

Enjoy these two flashbacks to Rob’s early days of writing music, way back in the 80’s!

Prime Meridian Revisited

Former Genesis lead guitarist Steve Hackett has twice released albums called Genesis Revisited which include newly recorded versions of old Genesis songs.  I figure if it’s good enough for Steve then it’s good enough for me.

I have two newly recorded Prime Meridian songs that I could use for Prime Meridian Revisited, if I ever wanted to do one of those, you know?

Dead Sheep is my white suburban pretentious college student attempt at analyzing the inner city gang situation of the early 90’s.  I wholeheartedly apologize for my younger self.  Really.

Overexposed was co-written by me and Mike the Bass Player.  The lyrics are about how freakin’ sick we all were of seeing OJ Simpson’s face on the television.  I still wanna puke a little just thinking of all the media coverage.

Maybe I’ll start on a Tempest Fero Revisited too.  That’ll be good for a laugh.

Music and Pain

I’m sure after a month of constant RPM posts you are all going to be thrilled to hear this…

I have set up an official recording to-do,list for the near future. I still have four unfinished songs from 2007. One has gotten as far as having the rhythm guitars finished. The other three have bass and drums done. There are three unfinished songs from 2008 that I haven’t touched since then. They are on the agenda too. In the last week I have started recording two mid-90’s songs and am ready to start recording the vocals. There is one remaining song from this past November’s NaSoAlMo that is also ready for vocals. There is a song that was meant to be a songfight.org submission but was never finished. There is a little dueling acoustic guitar thing that it did off the top of my head one day a few months ago. That one might actually be finished. Finally there are two songs that go way, way back, one as far as 1987, that I put on the agenda last year but never touched. Those are what I plan to record over the coming months.

There is talk on the RPM forum of doing a mini-project over the summer. I hope to do that as well. I want to keep recording and playing and writing. I don’t want to find myself looking at a fast approaching February 2014 without having done anything over the prior months. I want to get better, not stay stagnant.

Of course, playing guitar is easier when you can use your left arm. Last fall, when I raked the yard for the first time I had major pain in my left arm for a week afterward. I could barely lift my arm at all. When I raked the second time, same thing. This winter I had the same reaction to shoveling the first time. Friday I did some shoveling. Not a lot, but some. I was fine all day Saturday and figured I’d gotten off lucky. Then today I tried to get something off a high shelf. Holy crap did it hurt. I can barely lift my left arm at all, and when I try the pain is huge. I am wondering if I slept on it last night to make it worse. I did play the guitar a little today without any trouble, so I’m not worried, but damn does it hurt!

We will see how it feels tomorrow.

Now What

I probably wrote this exact same post last March, but it needs to be stated again.

I have finished the RPM Challenge and FAWM. I’m very proud of my goofy self, despite the fact that the music I made isn’t very good. I wrote and recorded 14 songs in less than 28 days. It feels like a nice accomplishment.

Now what?

Last year I made a list of a big batch of unfinished songs I’d started in 2007 and 2008, as well as a few newer songs that needed to either be re-recorded or re-written and decided that I’d pick them off one at a time over the course of March and April or so in order to keep the happy RPM vibe alive for a while.

I finished recording 2/6 remaining 2007 left overs, and started tracking the other four, which are all at various stages of incompletion. I re-recorded one song, and re-wrote another. In November I started writing two new songs and have finished one of them.

For 2013 I have two little ideas on what to do next. One is to continue picking off the unfinished songs. There are eight of them, including the one from this past November. I also recently found a cd full of random songs I had written and played along with Mike and Maria back in the late 90’s. some of those songs might deserve a long awaited recording. I’ve picked two to start with, maybe three… or four.

So that’s the plan going forward. Finish more of the left overs, record some more ancient artifacts, and once in a while actually write something from scratch.

Lets see how long it takes me to run out of steam this year.