Musical Meanderings

I need to get back to work on music.  I haven’t been able to find even a minute or two here and there.  I must, I must, I must.

I just tried to log onto Soundcloud to listen to the last 2007 song that needs to be tracked and I can’t log in.  I have two accounts, I tried them both on two different browsers each and nothing.

Even Soundcloud is conspiring to keep me from recording.

Yes, yes, I know I haven’t done anything in ages. I just got back from a major West coast vacation and I’ve been more interested in sifting through the thousands of photographs. Maybe if I get the house to myself tomorrow (and my sore throat feels better) I might crank out a bad vocal or two.

Okay, so I didn’t get anything finished this weekend.  I did do some work though.  Just a little.

I now have four songs in progress, the last four left over from 2007.  Two have drums/bass/rhythm guitar finished.  Another has drums/bass finished with about 40% of the rhythm guitars done.  The fourth is still on the iPad, but it has drums/bass/chello complete.  Chello?  The most recent update to Garageband for iPad includes strings.  On some level I knew that strings did not tune to E/A/G/B, but it still threw me for a loop when the low E string wasn’t an E, it was a C.  Oh well.

I might have a chance to make a little more progress tonight, but the NHL playoffs might get in the way.  Go Bruins!

Okay, so it’s not a lot in the results category, but two more songs have been kicked off. I now have three of the final four 2007 left overs in progress. All three have bass and drums down, courtesy of the iPad, and one also has rhythm guitar, courtesy of the Mac mini.

I may be able to squeeze in some vocal time this weekend, but I am catching a cold today and it may not be physically possible to sing. We’ll see. I would definitely like to have another song or two up on alonetone before I go back to work on Monday.

In other news, I finally had a chance to talk to Mike the Bass Player about my quitting the band. I was greatly relieved when he said he was never mad at me. He’s my oldest friend and I would hate to have him pissed off. They are auditioning a new guitar player tomorrow, and then another next week. I hope one of them works out. I want the band to continue. I want to go see them when they gig.

I was full of steam in the first week after RPM finished, and then all the motivation vanished. I did a little bit of work today. The fourth of the seven 2007 left overs now has all the basic tracks done. Bass, drums, and doubled rhythm guitars. Maybe it’ll be finished this week. We will see. No pressure.

Yesterday was Eric Clapton’s 67th birthday. I now have an overwhelming need to record a cover of Tales of Brave Ulysses.

So, yeah… the back burner project has stalled completely.  I’m not going to stop working on it, but I might work on something else in conjunction with it.

I have this sickening urge to write and record a 5 or 6 song EP length kinda thing using nothing by Garageband on my iPhone.  Basically the same thing I did for RPM but with a much smaller touch screen.

Whadayathink?

I need to get motivated again. I haven’t done anything in about a week. No back burner progress, no songfight ideas. Even the calluses on my finger tips are starting to peel off a little.

Motivate me!

I am hoping to post something at songfight.org this week.  Maybe.  I don’t know.

I have two ideas in progress.  One is a painful attempt at funkiness.  I was trying to come up with something with a tempo so fast I would hardly be able to keep up.  I tried playing the bass part into Garageband at a significantly reduced tempo and… well… it sounded like a white guy trying to be funky and failing.  It also sounded like fun, and now it’s on it’s way to being a song.  The other idea was to try and use multiple time signatures (7/8 being one of them, of course) in one Garageband project.  It works, even if it does throw off the measure counts.  That idea could become a finished song too. 

Which will get the songfight phrase added to the lyrics though, is still up for debate.

We’ll see.  It might be neither of them.

I just submitted three songs to Ramen Music.  Ramen is a great online music magazine.  You should check it out and maybe even subscribe.  They take submissions from independent musicians and run them through a jury of 13 people and pick X number of tracks per issue.

If you’re a musician you should definitely submit.  You won’t even have to worry about competition from me because my songs suck.  I don’t even know why I wasted their time.  I’m regretting it already.

Still, if you’ve got songs you think are worth hearing then give them a shot.  If you don’t but love new music you should also give them a shot.

For the second night in a row I plugged the bass and drum parts from a 2007 left over song into GarageBand on my iPad with the intention of porting it over to the Mac to finish off. It worked today, but it will take a few days at least to polish off the rest of this one, what with the work week and all. By the time I get back to my guitar I might have basics for everything done on the iPad.

Maybe.