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Day Eight (Year Two)

Skyped with B. tonight.  She started it all by asking me about one of the chord progressions on the list of things we will need to sort through later in the week.  I was going to explain it to her in writing, but figured it'd be easier to just show her how to play the chord in question.  That started a 3 hour video chat that covered some music stuff, and a lot of other chatter.

One of the first things she asked me was what my goals were for the time we have.  I laid it out very simply.  The goals (from my point of view) are as follows:

1)  Finish off the songs that we are considering for the record.
2)  Square away the tempos of said songs.
3)  Make sure we're confident about the arrangements
4)  Start figuring out track order.

She immediately jumped to a combination of the first item on the list and the last one on the list, and we went through everything.  What was I thinking would make the record, aside from the obvious 5 or 6 that we know for a fact will be there?  So, I ran through it, and came up with 12 songs/ideas that I'd like to see make the final record.  Then, I listed another 9 songs/ideas that I thought could potentially make the list.  After that, I admitted that the number at this point (21) didn't include the ten or so other things I uncovered the other night.  On top of that, she sent me a few bits of lyric, and a chord progression she's had for 3-4 years (I think I might have mentioned its existence in passing a few weeks back).  I have a pretty good feeling that this will also merit serious consideration.  If there's a record in there, we'll find it before the middle of August.

Needless to say, I didn't get any recording done tonight.  As much as that fact sort of bums me out (because it means that neither she, nor I, did any songwriting tonight), it was probably good that we went through what we did.  Every small step feels like big progress.  I know she's still worried we won't get enough done, and I might be too, if I stopped to think about for more than a second.  The bigger worry, as I've said many times, was not having enough songs.  Fairly certain we've got that covered now.  If I'm going to worry about anything between now and the time we are sitting in the same room, it'll be that I'll forget all my notes when I leave for home.

Hoping to get up early enough tomorrow that I can get some of that recording knocked out.  I go in late, so if I do it right I ought to have time.  It'd help if I could actually get some sleep tonight.

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