Okay, I just finished another song. As I was listening back to the final mix I brought up the original alonetone post from 2015 to see what I wrote about it back then. I had completely forgotten about this, but back then I wrote that as I was wrapping it up I realized it was brutally ripped off of a Throwing Muses song. Argh! Now I’ve ripped them off twice and didn’t even realize it either time!
Here’s my song, the thief that I am:
And here’s the song I ripped off:
What an asshole!
Here’s a song, just for you. Did I screw up the mix? There’s a keyboard in there and it just throws off my entire world view.
I really, honestly suck at singing. The more I listen to this the worse it sounds. I like the song a lot, but I just suck at singing.
If I had a dollar for every audio track that went into this song I’d have something like 19 bucks. My brain hurts from mixing this.
Please enjoy my suffering.
Another day, another recording session in the car. I picked off the last three vocal parts for the re-recording thingie. I sang hard enough to give myself a headache again. Weird, my jaw is also feeling sore. I should probably learn to sing correctly no I shouldn’t. All of the vocals are done, and that’s the only project I’m still working on so all of the vocals are done forever… at least until December starts on Tuesday. I’m thinking December music will be one guitar and one pedal. Les Paul and Ryra? I think.
For the re-recording thingie, I still have to do lead guitar for seven songs, and a few songs need to have the midi tracks updated (that means bass, drums, and keyboards though only a couple of songs have keyboards and those are already done). There’s no way in hell I’ll have this batch finished by December 1st, but that’s okay because I never actually gave myself a deadline for these. It’ll be finished soon though.
The question that is spinning around my idiot head is this: Do I sign up for DistroKid, pay the one year fee of $20, and have some of this garbage posted to Spotify for a year? Probably not, but should I? No. But….
Yeah… car music… I had six songs needing vocals and I picked off three of them. It was rough. As in, I need to hire a singer for my crappy recordings. Six feet of social distance isn’t even close to enough when you’re screaming your lungs out. I think I’d need to be listening in Massachusetts while the singer is singing in… Cuba? Something like that.
Re-recording volume 3 is 10 songs. Three are done. Four have vocals and are ready for lead guitar. The other three still need vocals. More car music tomorrow.
I told this morning’s audience that I’d share his/her picture. He/She didn’t seem to into it. He/She just sort of stood there the whole time.
National Solo Album Month is finished, so what did I do? I finished a song for the third batch of re-recordings! I’m just out of control!
When I wrote this song nine years ago it was just an exercise to show the kids how GarageBand worked. I was absolutely shocked when they were not only impressed by the process, but they actually claimed to like the song. There was even a day a week or so after the recording was finished when I caught one of them singing it to themself. Absolutely amazing!
Quarantine Tunes Volume 3 is underway. I know I should be working on National Solo Album Month but I think I’m two timing the music this month. Yippee, right? Dig it.
I’m not a very good guitar player. If you had any doubts, then there’s me coming right out and admitting it.
All of these songs that I am re-recording… Whenever in the past I wrote them and recorded the original demo, I blew through them like they were simple. Now that I’m doing them again, they are suddenly insanely, brutally, unimaginably difficult. I screw up constantly. Like, oh my god, could you please do something right?
I was trying to play arpeggios on one song and I fat fingered them over and over. I finally got through it and moved on to the next song and… more arpeggios. Bite me, past self. Take after take after take of me fat fingering and I finally threw a temper tantrum and ripped off the ends of my finger nails. It actually helped a little.
Seven out of 10 re-recordings are ready for vocals. Eight out of eight (but hopefully 10, eventually) November songs are ready for lyrics. Maybe some car singing in the morning? We’ll see.
Today is Veteran’s day. I am honoring those who served our country by staying home, not contracting/spreading Covid-19, and trying not to bother my wife as she’s stuck working.
I’m using the time to record some guitar. I’ve got two projects underway. The first is NaSoAlMo. I had three songs ready for guitar parts and I cranked them all out. None of them are very good but now that they are done I’m up to eight songs. The rules for the challenge are to have 29 minutes of music. I haven’t timed it out but I think I’ve got enough.
The other music project is round three of re-recordings. I had a couple of songs ready for guitar that will work with the same pedal setup I’m using for the November stuff so I started working on those. The first one is a pretty easy song, but there was one chord that just felt wrong. I had the bass part and a keyboard part already down and they sounded okay, but when I put the guitar on it everything was wrong. I had the whole song down except for two measures with this weird chord I couldn’t figure out. I hadn’t played this song since 2014 and I don’t have any notes and I was stuck.
The previous phrase ended on an F#maj7. The mystery chord? After half an hour of messing with it and getting it wrong? F#min. It sounds pretty cool now.
That’s when the real pain started. I have this song, see… it’s another one that dates back to 2014. At the time I was in the mood to push myself and in this particular song’s case, I ended up with a riff or two that are among the hardest I’ve ever come up with. Yikes. On the 2014 recording, I did one of the sections one measure at a time and then copied and pasted it everywhere. It has a lot of fast picking and skipping strings and jumping around the neck. I was expecting I’d have to do some copying and pasting again, even though my rule for the re-recordings is not to do that.
Well, after 100,000 takes I actually managed to get through the whole eight bars without screwing up. Not only that, but I’ve done it twice! WOOHOO! Unfortunately, by the time I got that far I was toast. My right hand was too tired to play. I still have a chunk of the song to finish but I had to take a break. I ate some lunch, I watched an episode of The Flash. All I have left on that song is to do that one super hard part about six more times. It’s going to take all day, I think.
Okay, break time is over. Bring on the pain.
Inside the Red Head's Head 