Skip to main content

Day Two Hundred Sixteen (Year Four)

So, I had just settled in with my coffee this morning, and was surfing the internet a bit, getting myself psyched up to go into the studio and start recording, had actually just said to myself "so, if everything breaks right today, I could get most of this done," when I got called in to fill a shift for a sick co-worker.  On one hand, I was happy for the extra hours... but on the other hand, I had guitars to record today, by God, and I was fast running out of days in the month.  I did the responsible thing, of course, and covered the shift, but doing so put me at a disadvantage when it came to hours in the day for recording.

That said, I got into the studio tonight after work, and roughed out guitar parts for 4 out of the 11 songs.  I had to make a few concessions in order to get as far as I did (the biggest one being that, for now, I would shoot for rough drafts as opposed to a polished, finished product), but I had gotten to the point where I just needed to see some sort of progress tonight.

So, no, the parts aren't perfect, but they have given me a rough outline of what the songs are going to sound like when they are polished up, and you know what?  For the most part, I like what I hear.  A lot.  There are a few spots where a better transition will be necessary, a few spots where a shorter verse would be a good thing, but even getting 4 demoed out, I'm starting to hear a cohesion to the tracks.  Maybe I'm not crazy to think that these ideas will fit together.

With three days left in the month, I've got 7 songs left to rough out.  I know I can get it done.  And, quite honestly, I don't care what it takes, it will be done by 11:59 PM Friday night.  Today going the way it did just means that March will be spent getting finished instrumental tracks nailed down and working on lyrics, that's all.

All of this means that I didn't get around to the listening I was hoping to use as a break between recording either, but that will happen soon enough.

Getting through another 4 songs tomorrow is probably more than I can hope for, but it would be fantastic.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day Two Hundred Twenty Seven (Year Two)

So, the new Springsteen disc is amazing.  There's enough of a mixture of his upbeat rockers, his ballads, and his message songs to make this his best record since The Rising .  And speaking of that record... Buying The Boss the day it comes out always takes me back to a specific moment in life.  It was July 30th, 2002, the year after 9/11, the year after someone on the streets of New York told Springsteen "we need you now."  I had driven to Oshkosh, WI to visit some friends, when I remembered that Springsteen's disc was scheduled to come out that day.  I drove downtown to The Exclusive Company, but had to park a few blocks back.  At the time, there wasn't much going on downtown, but when I got out of the car, I could hear this music coming from up the block somewhere.  The closer I got to Exclusive, the more it began to dawn on me, they had set up a giant set of speakers in their upstairs windows, and were blasting the new album out into the streets....
Post a Comment
Read more

Day Two Hundred Twenty Six (Year Four)

So I dove back into 100 Riffs tonight, going into it with the hope that the hand written tabs I did last night would help me unlock the issue I was having transitioning from the first half of the riff to the second half.  It worked.  With both halves clearly written in front of me, I was able to work through the transition that had been tripping me up when the screen cut off was happening on SoundSlice.  That's going to be a nice thing to have in my bag of tricks for the times when I get stumped figuring these things out. I played a little bit of acoustic tonight as well, trying to be better about finding the balance between both instruments.  Late 90's-early 2000's rock has come up a lot in conversations at work of late, so in that spirit, I picked a song from that time period out of my set list notebook ("Your Winter" by Sister Hazel), and took a quick look at it.  Admittedly, it's a song I had mostly learned a long time ago, so the essential parts of it w...
Post a Comment
Read more

Day Two Hundred Thirteen (Year Five)

Finally!  A really good day.  And one that I really needed after the frustration with the rest of the weekend. I took a step back from a few things today, and got what I hope will be a bit of clarity in the process.  Instead of worrying about the progress I really haven't been making on the EP, I told myself that I needed to be happy with the few bits of lyric I stumbled across today, and that maybe I needed to focus my attention elsewhere, at least for today. I had picked up a really cool book on music theory as it applies to guitar last Tuesday when I was out and about, and having spent a little bit of time paging through it over the last few days, I focused in on it tonight and started reading, taking notes, and reinforcing some things.  It felt like progress.  It was great. When I had worked through some of that, I moved on to the whole "100 Riffs" thing, and got myself moving on that again.  It's astounding how much I can get inside my own head a...
Post a Comment
Read more