"Muse" - ings on Rock & Life

And here we go again!  Back at step 1 for the third song of the Start Experiment.  All week long I've been going back and forth about what the third idea was that I was going to finish off, and when it all came down to it, I surprised myself by going back a ways into the vault and pulling out a chorus idea that I've loved for a few years now.  It never really had anything to go with it before tonight, when I finally sat down and finished off at least a rough draft of the rest of the progression.  I'm optimistic that it will hold up in the morning, but some of the transitions seemed a bit rough around the edges.  I'm pretty sure that I've also got the tempo close to right, as well, so that spells a full win for Day 1 of song #3. In looking back on the last 17 days of work, being a rusty songwriter, the hardest tool to sharpen is the transitions between sections.  They're getting easier again, but it has taken some efforting. Probably the coolest part abo...

Going into tonight, the last night of the second song cycle, I was hoping to get a few things figured out: 1) I wanted to map out the whole song, if only to figure out where the electric and the bass got out of sync in the last 15 seconds of the song. 2) I wanted to get the electric part right all the way through and 3) I wanted to at least play around with dropping in the acoustic part. Here's how it all went down: I got the song completely blocked out, and in so doing quickly diagnosed the issues in the last chorus and the outro.  It shouldn't be weird how much easier it becomes to work through something when every chord change is there in front of you, but somehow it always takes me a bit by surprise.  That said, I think getting the electric part took me two takes. I started in on the acoustic part, just intending to record the intro and the first verse.  More to get a feel for the sound and the strumming pattern than anything else.  I'm close on the...

Today was great!  I made some major progress toward finishing the second song of my EP today. According to the schedule I wrote out when all of this began, tonight was supposed to be the night I recorded vocals.  Considering my equipment failures of the last few days, however, I pretty much knew that wasn't going to happen.  Here's what did: 1)  After not being able to get the bass part right the last few days, tonight was the night I nailed it.  Felt really good to finally get that recorded. 2)  With the rhythm section firmly in place, I was confronted with the prospect of two guitar parts.  Ever one for cutting corners (not a good habit, I know, but one that is fading as this project continues), I skipped over the acoustic part and gave the electric a shot.  Well, I got the tone right, and in the process I figured out what the instrumentation needs to be where the guitars are concerned.  The first time through, I hit the electric part...

So, today was... odd. I made recording progress in the morning.  Got a scratch acoustic guitar part down for this week's song.  I can tell that I'm getting readjusted to the recording process, though, because it felt really strange to put that down without having a bass part laid down first. Then, with that taken care of, I packed up my Strat and headed into Sioux City to see about getting it repaired.  I don't know if it was because I told the guy that I was in the middle of recording this week, but he looked at my guitar right away.  I told him that I suspected the problem was in the jack where the instrument cable connects to the guitar, so he took the plate off, and immediately said, "oh, I can see where that would be a problem." Apparently there are two wires that serve to connect that jack to the rest of the electronics.  In my Strat, one of the wires is red, and the other is white.  I peeked at what he was looking at, and the white wire had com...

Today started out great, and has crashed and burned tonight.  Here's why: 1)  I got the drums fixed after work today, so that was a win.  Changing all of the fills from 1 measure to 2 measures really seemed to slow things down, if that's possible.  It made the track a lot clearer, and put into place exactly where the changes are between verses and choruses. 2)  I got the bass part perfected and written out, but not quite recorded, if only because my fingers betrayed me when it came time to lay the track down.  Still, I was feeling great about my progress.  I took a dinner break and watched a bit of TV with the Mrs., and then, when she headed off to bed, I headed back into recording mode.  And then disaster struck... When I went back to keep working on my song, my electric guitar wouldn't work.  The jack where the cable goes in still clacks loudly, and the line on the recording gear still hums, but I tried it in my amp and with my record...

Today was strange. Next on my list of daily recording tasks was laying down the bass line.  I thought I at least had a solid idea of where that was headed going into the day, but as I sat down to record tonight, nothing really seemed to click in conjunction with the drums. "No problem," I thought, "I'll just record the acoustic part first, and then go back and lay down the bass tomorrow."  A good plan, except that it didn't work. The real issue, I discovered, is in the way the drums are laid out right now.  I've got fills that segue between the intro and the verse, and then the verses and the choruses, but somehow the fills aren't uniform.  It seems like a few of them are a single measure long, and the rest of them are two measures long.  With no continuity on that front, it was hard for me to time things right.  The solution is obvious, thank god, and that is to go back through the drums with a fine toothed comb and make sure that all of the f...

Day One, Year Four.  Man, oh man, does that look weird .  Can't believe that I've been doing this for four years now. What's interesting to me is that, all these years (and a few swift kicks in the ass) later, I'm finally starting to see exactly what it's going to take for me to get where I want to be as a musician.  I'm sure that, if you went back to the first week of posts for each new year, somewhere in there would be a similar statement.  The differences this year are the Start Experiment, the knowledge that I've got someone in my life who supports and encourages my music, and if we're being totally honest, the fact that, inside of a month, I'll have a space solely dedicated to the learning and pursuit of music. Okay, on to the Start stuff. 1)  After I posted last night, it bothered me so much that I hadn't found that backing track for "That'll Be The Day," that I turned on a bunch of lights in the living room (where I was...