205211

week 52: death and destruction

2011-12-30T22:00:00.000-06:00

I told my wife many years ago that I feel kind of sad when I finish a good book. I feel like I've made all these new friends (which isn't easy for me) and in a matter of weeks will never see them again.

Bizarre, I know.

In a way, that's what this feels like - the ending of this project. If you do something long enough, good or bad, it becomes a habit.

I definitely can't keep up the 2011 writing/recording pace, but I will continue to create.

Having that weekly satisfaction of completing a song will be missed. And having the weekly interaction with my Facebook friends when each song is finished will be missed as well.

I started thinking about Week 52 for several weeks now. I wanted to do something "epic" - go out with a bang. As the Holidays arrived and life became more crazy, the desire for "epic" turned to "whatever".

I remember late in my band's life, we learned a valuable lesson about song order for our live shows - namely what song to play first. Our first thought was to hit them hard at the beginning. We soon learned we were never up to the task. Our sets were always better when we didn't force things. We learned to start off with a slower, easier tune, and from there work our way up.

I did not need to force anything for the last week - just let what happens happen. I had an idea of having something lengthy and repetitive, but that was it.

I accomplished the lengthy and repetitive. The "epic" or even "fairly decent" was not as successful. I did not realize until it was too late that the song (for me) was too slow. This seemed to kink up everything.

I had quite a few vocal lines written and recorded throughout the song. Things were coming together for a nice tune, but then it just fell apart Friday morning. Frustrated, I took a break and grabbed some lunch. My frustration was with the vocals. They just seemed to drag - a result of the slow tempo.

After lunch I went back to work. I muted the vocals and pressed play. Instrumental. I like what the vocals were saying, but I did not like how they were saying it. The song without vocals sounded better.

I preceded to fill in some of the gaps left by the vocals and finish the song. It was late before I was finally done. I did not feel that great about it, but it was finished, as well as the 205211 project. I went to bed relieved that the project was completed, but was bummed by how it ended.

After I woke up the next morning, I listened back to the song and really liked how everything was moving along until the last three minutes or so. It sort of lost the momentum that was created in the first five minutes. I had some time, so I decided to breathe some life back into the ending of the song.

I added some more noise, a doubled guitar riff and vocals. I kept the track-by-track fade-outs that the original had. I debated on whether or not to fade the vocals or just let them stay loud in order to be the last thing you hear in the song. I chose to fade, but I'm still thinking the not-fade route may be the better one.

Anyway, I uploaded the "improved" song Saturday morning. Not quite as bummed by the outcome, but wishing I would have ended with something better.

But now I'm done.

Finished.

52 songs written and recorded in 52 weeks.

There are some decent tunes. There are some questionable tunes. For me, each song has something in it that interests me. Some just have more interesting things than others.

There are little things in each song that bother me. I guess I could spend 2012 fixing each song, or just move on. I think I will move on even though reworking some of these songs down the road is still an option.

I think back a year ago at the excitement of taking on this challenge. The first six months were fun, productive, always in a continual mode of creating. Summer hit and everything changed. We had a big trip planned to California. I recorded two songs in one week before we left.

With the kids being home my recording time went from five days to two. I never recovered. I was still creating, but it no longer became a little everyday. It turned into cramming for the big test on Friday night.

To be honest though, I think my best songs came out of the cramming. Interesting. I don't know if this was a result of the pressure or I was becoming a better songwriter.

Also, I'm pretty hard on myself as far as recording quality goes. I don't have the best equipment or the proper know-how on mic placement, drum tuning, etc. I've learned to work with what I have. None of the songs are mastered, so there will always be a sense of lacking even if I was better at recording. But, I think I have improved a bit over the year. The last song is not a good example, but the previous 12-15 weeks I think saw an improvement from the first weeks. I'm encouraged (or delusional).

I've talked about doing a Top 10 and blog about it as the final blog of this project. I still may do it, but at this very moment it seems a bit overwhelming. I think I would enjoy going back over the songs and listening to them again, trying to pick my favorites. But I still think all the imperfections would bother me, and I'm terrible at making decisions. We'll see.

A few other things I'd like to wrap up are the song titles, lyrics and this blog.

I do not like song titles that have nothing to do with the song. I also don't like titles that are too obvious. Coming up with 52 different song titles that fit within my standards proved to be difficult at times, but I prevailed. Some of my favorites are: "hr_minx", "silent vs silence", "off could be on", "theories on cannibalism", "daniel faraday was wrong" and "the fascination with X".

I'm not a lyric kind of guy. I don't really pay much attention to other artists' lyrics. Like I've mentioned in a previous blog, my lyrics have to mean something to me. I don't object to every line rhyming, but I prefer every line not rhyming. I don't like trite, but I don't like too obscure either. I like the majority of the lyrics I've written this year. At times it was difficult - always the last part to work on for the song.

I'm not sure if this blog served its purpose or not. I mainly wanted to take a little snapshot of my life each week and/or the writing and recording process. I did not go too deep in either, which may or may not have hindered the usefulness of the blog. For me, it will be interesting to go back and read the entries to refresh my mind on the happenings in my life during 2011.

The pictures in the blog are pretty meaningless. They are all of things in my recording room. The last few months it became difficult because I was running out of interesting things to take pictures of. This week's picture is of a new booster pedal kit I got for Christmas. I built it on the 26th and used it on some of the guitars for this week's song.

So what about 2012?

I had originally planned four different projects. That's not going to happen. I need a break.

I have learned that I need to have a plan and a completion date. My current plan is to do a covers EP and have it finished before May 1st. I've never covered a song before, so I'm going to do it. I have four of the five songs picked out. It should be fun.

I'm also going to update my recording software and experiment with some other ideas I have to help my recordings. I've held off doing this until now because I did not want something to go terribly wrong and hinder the 205211 project. Now I have the time and the risk factor is low.

I plan on writing and recording some originals as well. I have a couple of directions I'm looking to take this, but it will not happen until late Spring or early Summer.

Seeing that this blog will no longer be updated, you can keep up with what's going on by visiting my Facebook or Band Camp pages. The links are at the top right of this page.

Again, it's been fun and rewarding. It helped this 40 year old, married 15 years, father of two cope with life's aging process. No red sports car or hot 17 year old blonde for me. My wife and kids are thankful. I am too.

I've joked about doing this again in 10 years. The thought of being 50 is quite surreal and a bit depressing. I may need rock-n-roll to get me through again.

Thanks to everyone who has followed along.

Happy New Year.

week 51: the fascination with X

2011-12-23T22:00:00.000-06:00

Christmas week - or the song before Christmas Day.

For the third week in a row I had plans of writing a Christmas themed song again. As we've learned, these songs are Christmasy in lyrics only.

I started early in the week because I knew of the busyness that was before me.

The beat I wrote was faster and more on top of things than the past few weeks. Once the drums were in place, the bass seemed to happen quickly on the verse parts. I was a little unsure of the vibe it created, but I decided to stick with it and really liked it once the guitar parts were written. I worked on a vocal melody for the verses and became satisfied with how things were sounding.

The chorus and ending were a different story. I went through many bass and guitar lines to finally get to what you hear now. There were actually vocals on the choruses, but those were axed before the final mixing took place.

I think the song is different than most of the stuff I've done this year. I guess it is reassuring to know I can still come up with "original" sounds after doing this for a whole year.

I think there are several groupings the 51 songs I written so far could be place in. There's the "trash" grouping that quite a few should be placed. There's a certain vibe that a handful of the songs have that would fit together in a group.

Anyway, with all the writing this year, there is definitely a sound that I could point to that I would feel very comfortable making and developing as "my" sound.

I think I've become a better writer. As mentioned in previous posts, having only a week to finish a song leaves quite a bit of imperfections. But if I had more time with what I have learned this year, I think things would take a major step forward as far as writing is concerned.

Recording quality is another issue. While I think I've improved, there is still a lot to be desired. I'm just unsure if I have the desire to take the steps necessary to really improve the sound of the recordings.

I know this blog has suffered the last several weeks or months, or maybe the whole year. I guess I could have broken each song down to the individual parts - what instrument I played, what amp I played through, what mic I used, what signal chain I used to capture the sound, my thought process as I was writing, etc.

Too tedious.

I think my original goal was to allow a small glimpse into my life as I was writing these songs each week. I've met that goal, as boring and vague as it may be.

I really don't care to document how I got a sound or anything like that. I like to stumble upon what I stumble upon and don't really care about repeating the process for each song as far as sounds are concerned.

To wrap up this week's entry, I can't believe there is only one more week left in 2011 and only one more song to write.

Bittersweet.

week 50: the unknown is known

2011-12-16T22:00:00.000-06:00

Every year for the past 10 or so years I've put together a Christmas card for my family. These are not normal cards. With the help of Photoshop and an unbridled imagination, I've done some interesting things.

We actually have fans that look forward to our card every year. In fact, I have more Christmas card fans than I have music fans.

This year we decided not to do one. A week later we decided to do one. A week later we decided not to do one again. This week we decided to go for it.

Something that I usually start Thanksgiving weekend to mail out by the 10th of December started on Wednesday and started to be mailed out on Friday. I also had a song to write and record this week.

I started the recording before we decided to do a card. I recorded the drums on Tuesday and added a bass lined idea that night.

Wednesday was the decision day to do the card. I did not start recording again until Friday afternoon. The wife was working. The kids were at the grandparent's. It was just me and Julio, and Julio was not cooperating. All he wanted to do was play. I don't think I really started until 8 PM. I was not sure what would happen. I just went for it.

This is one of my favorites.

It's another Christmas tune. I wrote it from the perspective of Mary as if she is able to see the entire life of Jesus while she is holding him for the first time. Something about that moved me. I think that emotional pull translated throughout the song as well.

The drums are doubled with two slightly different parts panned left and right. The bass was written next. It repeats through the whole song.

I wrote several guitar parts, but nothing felt right. I decided to take last week's approach and worked on a vocal melody to go with the bass before I wrote the guitar parts. It worked again this week.

Once the drums, bass and vocals were in place, I just started adding parts here and there. Some of the original guitar lines made their way back into the song.

There's a delayed guitar riff that originally was dry. I liked the part but did not like how it was meshing with the other parts. I used a tape echo plug-in on its default setting that helped the riff fit in perfectly.

I had planned beforehand to write another Christmas themed song. I did not know from what angle I would approach it. The first line I wrote was the first line in the song. For some reason that made me think of Mary sitting in the dark of night wondering what would happen next. I think the lyrics fit perfectly with the vibe of the song.

To be honest, I had no desire to write a song Friday night. There was never a thought of not writing it, but this was one of the first times I thought of a hundred other things I'd rather be doing.

This was about the time last year that I thought about the idea of doing a song-a-week thing. I can't believe it has been a year already. There have been some "struggles" and "what-was-I-thinking" moments, but I'm glad I decided to make 2011 a rockin' 2011.

Two more weeks.

week 49: babylon to infinity

2011-12-09T22:00:00.000-06:00

It's Christmas time.

I'm not feeling it this year and I'm not sure why.

The wife and I have a Christmas playlist that we pop on our iPhones this time of year. I have not added the playlist yet. Maybe that's my problem.

I like the classics as far as Christmas tunes go. Bing Crosby, James Brown, Vince Guaraldi, a little Elvis, etc. I like the recordings to sound "old". I'm not down at all with all this new Christmas music.

I did stumble upon Sufjan Stevens' holiday musings a few years ago. He would write songs for his family and friends and give them as gifts for Christmas. I downloaded most of it while it was free. Now it's grouped as an album called "Songs for Christmas". It is very good, probably my favorite Christmas music - even beating out the classics.

This week I tried my hand and writing a Christmas song. I knew it would never be sung by a choir or blasted through the speakers of some hip store during the holiday season. I knew it would be obscure as far as the Christmas message. And I knew that most people would not include the tune in their festive playlists. I was (and am) fine with all of that. It's got sleigh bells though, so there's still a chance.

The song focuses on the Wise Men looking for the Messiah and the fact that King Herod wanted to kill the baby Jesus - seeing him as a threat to his throne. Not too festive a subject matter, but Christmasy none the less. I did not set out for this to be the focus of the song, but I free-styled the first line "It's everything we want and more". This opened the door for the subject matter. Bizarre I know.

Musically it doesn't stray too far from what I've done all year. I was aiming for something a bit slow and prodding. I think I accomplished that.

Again, started with the drums and added a bass line. The original bass line was cool but a bit too busy. I had difficulty writing a guitar part to go with it. Starting late in the week doesn't help either. When things don't work out there is some panic. Will this be the week that it all ends?

I dealt with the bass thing for a while. I did something different this week that I have not done all year. I just played the bass with the drum track and tried singing something at the same time. I (sort of) quickly came up with a simple bass line and acceptable vocal melody all at the same time. Once those parts were settled, everything else just fell into place.

There's actually a chorus with a vague vocal hook. Strange what Christmas time can do to you.

I've used the sleigh bells on a few songs this year, and there is a story behind why I have them.

Back in the 90s when my band was recording, one of the members worked at a local recording studio. We tracked the drums at the studio and decided to track everything else at our practice space. Somehow the bells made their way to our practice space. I'm not sure if they ever made it on a song, but after the band broke up they made it to my house where they have been for 12 years.

I guess one of us is a thief.

I've had thoughts of taking them back, even though it would be embarrassing. Another plan is to mail them back with an anonymous letter saying "Sorry". Please don't judge.

Anyway, I'm happy with the song. And to me it's a Christmas tune. It will always remind me of this Christmas season trying to finish up this major recording challenge with stolen sleigh bells.

Season's Greetings.

week 48: today is today

2011-12-02T22:00:00.000-06:00

We have a family pet now: an eight-week-old two pound fur-ball named "Julio".

He's been the focus this week.

Last week I wrote a more involved drum beat that I simplified for Week 47. Well, Week 48 is what was left over from Week 47.

I approached this week like I always do. Same process with similar results.

There are some tweaks I would like to do. I'm not sure I will though. The past several songs (or all of them) have some needed tweaks, but as of now I've just left them alone.

I'm a tweaker. Sometimes I improve things and sometimes I destroy. The 205211 should be a snapshot of what I wrote and recorded in a week's time. Perfection is not the week to week goal. There are some time issues with the drums. Some bad hits. Flat vocals. Out-of-sync guitars. Sloppy transitions. Poor choices for overdubs. Questionable songwriting and song structure. Melodies that lack melody.

There are some easy tweaks. At the beginning of the year I was making these changes. Now, I just roll with the imperfections.

My wife doesn't notice the things I notice. I guess most average listeners won't notice. And not to poo-poo on average listeners - they make the world go round.

Anyway...

I like the annoyingly repetitive qualities in this week's tune. I guess it might drive some away, but I'm pulled it.

Drums first as usual and then the bass. I had a problem writing anything guitar-wise that complimented the bass line, so I decided to follow the bass line. For me, it created a cool driving rhythm that I just wanted to repeat and repeat.

The vocal parts are abrupt, but there was no easy way to come out of the repetitive part. I just went with it.

I had a simple song structure in mind with the idea of building it up with noise and other random things. I stuck with my guns. I really did not have a choice. You see, the new family member reeked havoc on my plans spending more time on the song this week.

A puppy is like a newborn. I love my kids, but this week I realized again why I don't want any more. Julio will become a good dog one day. He's a pretty good puppy, but you have to watch him and train him or you'll have things in the house that you don't want in the house. I was not in the training and watching mood this week. I was in the making-music mood.

Back to the song.

I had fun with the end of the song. I just threw whatever at it and let it go on and on (to the break of dawn). The repetitiveness will annoy many, but I've mentioned before that I love it. There's a part of me that thinks I do it because I'm lazy. There may be a little truth to that. In any case, I enjoy what my laziness does to the tunes sometimes.

Lyrically the song is encouraging. I free-styled the first part of the lyrics (check previous posts about this). I wasn't really sure what I was free-styling but I went with it anyway and wrote the rest of the lyrics.

I felt at the time that I was trying to encourage myself. In a way, I was. The weird thing is, I'm not a great encourager. Not that I have a desire to discourage people - I would like to lift others up if they are down. I'm not very good with words. I am socially challenged - an introvert times 10. Excuses.

I seem to enjoy writing more when things are not going well - an artist that thrives on pain. There are a lot of artists that have that claim to fame. I am one of those. Good or bad - that's just the way it is for me right now.

I am blessed. Life is good, but there is always that something that is just not right - whether it's with me or a trial that someone else is experiencing. Words seem to flow better when these "troubles" are on my mind.

After I finished the song, I read an email and immediately realized this song was not for me. I sent the author of the email the lyrics and a link to the song. Even though the music surrounding the lyrics was not ideal for her ears, I think she and her family received the encouragement.

Now on to Week 49. Only four more weeks left. I'm determined to finish strong even though I'm tempted to record a few burps and call it a song.

week 47: limited deniability

2011-11-25T22:30:00.000-06:00

Thanksgiving Week and the kids are out of school.

I had a vague plan to not let this week turn into last week. My efforts were vague as well. While I did not wait until Friday to start the song, I woke up Friday morning with little to show for my efforts during the week.

I had written a more involved drum beat for this week. Due to time constraints again, I simplified it.

This week the song basically held the same feel throughout. There is really no build-up or chill-out parts. It was not planned. It was just the way it came out.

Like last week, the bass line was written with ease. Again like last week, I liked the way it played with the drums, but adding a complimentary guitar part proved difficult. Once something was settled upon, the vocals quickly followed.

I was feeling the vocal melody, but not with the guitars. I put the guitars on hold once again and wrote a keyboard part. There was a thought of making this a guitar-free song, but the parts eventually made their way back in the song.

Nothing real exciting - song included.

I think I'm ready for this to be over.

Again, the whole idea of this was to help me deal with turning 40. I wanted to look back on 2011 and NOT think about my age. I wanted to look back and see that I accomplished something this year. I guess you can say I've accomplished something, but it seems a bit meaningless now.

Maybe my outlook will change in January 2012. I know my family is tired of hearing me say, "I need to work on my song." I have not neglected my family this year. I don't think they would say I have. I guess it's hard for anyone who is not inside my heart to understand what I'm dealing with - even my family.

It's kind of like rooting for your team to win the big game. When they lose you feel terrible about it for a day or two (at least I do). The mistakes and missed opportunities play over and over in your head. The game itself becomes more important than it should be. When your team wins the big game (like Bama did over *burn this weekend), you feel great. But after a few hours of reading news stories and forums where the opposing team's fans are having a meltdown, you understand it's just a game.

I guess you can say my team won the big game this year (ie: me recording a song every week). I guess if I had not attempted this I would probably have a lot of "what if" moments. But I have (or am) accomplishing it - and they're just songs. Who cares.

I care, I think. I need to keep creating in 2012 and beyond. I need to do it to satisfy this itch inside of me, even if it is viewed as meaningless by others and, at times, by me.

I'm thankful for the means and opportunity to do this, but I do need a break.

week 46: adding subtraction

2011-11-18T22:30:00.000-06:00

What a week.

The big folk song/bazaar/silent auction at my kid's school was this week. I was responsible for organizing the silent auction part. My days were spent doing this. My nights were spent doing other things. I did not start writing and recording until Friday.

One song in one day. It was not fun.

The song was finished at 3 AM Saturday morning.

Originally I started with a more diverse drum beat, but because of time constraints and coming to my senses, I dumbed it down. It fits the mold of quite a few songs I have done this year - long repeating parts at the beginning mixed with a completely different outro.

The bass line for the main part was written quickly and with modest satisfaction. The rest of the parts were a struggle. In fact, I think I scrapped the bass line a few times trying to come up with something that would better compliment the lame guitar ideas I had. I eventually settled on the original bass line, wrote some decent guitar parts and became comfortable with a vocal melody.

There was a point in the night (around 11:45 PM), where my wife came up to tell me goodnight. I had hit a wall. I was so tired and so uninspired. I couldn't seem to finish the song. I had nothing for the outro, and the parts I had written for the main section were losing my interest. I told her I'm done. I've been defeated. Theoretically, I could have gone to bed and finished the song on Saturday, but I had no desire to finish the song - ever. A run of 45 weeks is pretty good in my opinion.

She left the room and I stared at the computer for about 30 minutes.

I decided to pick up the bass and start working on the outro again. I focused on making it a simple bass line - generic. Once I settled on something, I picked up a guitar and started noodling around for about 15 minutes when I stumbled upon what you hear now.

I was a bit energized and when back to the main part of the song and started adding noise. I like noise - tasteful and annoying. I liked how the noise spilled into the outro which inspired me to include some keys in that part.

I had a vocal melody but no lyrics. It was after 1 AM at this point. The word "regret" made it into the lyrical flow once again. This has been a recurring theme this year. I can't really say if or what my regrets are. And to be honest, I wouldn't discuss them here anyway. I think it's something I have not totally come to terms with. Anyway...

After I wrote the lyrics for the first vocal part, I decided to use the same lyrics for the second vocal part. I made the second "verse" a bit different from the first by dropping the guitars out. Again, I like how the noise comes into play during this as it makes a nice bridge to the outro.

The final mixing started at 2:30 AM and I was finished and in bed by 3.

After a slightly refreshed outlook on Saturday, I've realized that I really like this song. While I was working on it I really didn't care how it would come out. I just wanted it finished.

Well, it is finished in a pleasing fashion. I was on the verge of quitting but am glad I pushed through. Only six more weeks to go.

By the way, the amp that was cracking the tubes is working like a champ now. I used it this week.

week 45: in a sufficient manner

2011-11-11T22:30:00.000-06:00

I approached this week as I always do.

Listening back to the parts I recorded, I usually get a sense that something's missing before I feel that the song is complete. I, more times than not, find the missing sounds, add them and finish the song.

This week, that missing piece stayed missing. Though, in my view, it's not a terrible song, it just feels like everything is not there.

Back to the amp saga from last week.

The Dueltone was sent to a local guy for repairs. I'm fortunate to have a great tube amp repair guy who is local, affordable and good at what he does. It seems the Dueltone has two metal parts which, when heated, expand and touch each other causing the amp to short. It's basically a flaw in the build as these parts were placed too close to each other. A folded piece of cardboard was all I needed to fix the problem. The Dueltone was my amp of choice this week and performed flawlessly.

The converted PA amp did not acquire such a functioning state. I received the new tubes I ordered. I carefully "loosened" the sockets so that the tube would fit easier. Apparently I did not loosen them enough. The amp worked perfectly for the 5 minutes or so that I played it, but apparently the sockets were still too tight. Once the tube heated up and expanded, the pins met too much resistance and slightly cracked the glass letting all the tube's gases escape making the tube useless.

Once again, I've ordered and received new tubes and more thoroughly loosened the tube sockets. I have not put them in yet for fear of the possibility of throwing more money away. I'll let you know next week what happens.

Back to the song.

It's a song. It fulfills my obligation for Week 45, and that's about it.

I thought there were some interesting things going on. I liked how the drums in the verses were sparse and then very focused and then back to sparse. I liked how this played with the guitars and bass. Even though the choruses are a bit weak, I like the overdubbed snare "rolls" that are panned to the left. My original thought was to have vocals in the chorus as well, but my bass and guitar parts made this difficult. I probably should have re-written these parts, but my inspiration and desires were pretty much lacking.

It is what it is.

On to Week 46.

week 44: carbon redux

2011-11-04T22:30:00.000-05:00

I began the year with four working guitar amp heads: a 60s Hilgen Basso Grande B2503, a Canadian home-built Dueltone (think Fender Champ), a 60s Heathkit solid-state TA-17, a 60s two-channel converted PA-to-guitar amp.

The Heathkit crapped out about three months ago. Unfortunately, in my area solid-state amps are expensive repairs. It's not totally dead, but I have not had the time to attempt to fix it.

This week, the Dueltone and the used-to-be-PA head took a dive.

I have two speaker cabinets that I use - a 2x12 and a 2x10. The 2x12 is a Hilgen cab and matches the Hilgen head. The 2x10 is a converted from a combo amp. I bought it off of eBay years ago for dirt cheap. It was just a wood box that at one point housed an amp and speaker (combo amp). I don't know what company made it, but its price and the finger-jointed corners made it seem ideal to convert to a speaker cabinet. It looked like it had been dragged behind a car for a few days. I had to cut out a back for it as well as a piece of wood to cover up where the amp had gone. I built a frame for two 10" speakers, put in some Weber 10s, stained the wood dark, added grille clothe that matched the Dueltone tweed head. It was a thing of beauty and sounded good too.

As I started on this week's song, I first went with the Hilgen duo. The guitar sounded too full which is an issue at times with the Hilgen. I moved on to the Dueltone and the 2x10 cab. I turned the amp on and no sound came out. After about five minutes of attempted problem-solving, the amp started smoking. I immediately turned it off and unplugged it.

Frustrated but with no time to stop, I plugged the PA tube head in and connected it to the 2x10. It sounded great, but after a few minutes started popping. I looked in the back and noticed one of the power tubes was half-way out of its socket. I unplugged the amp to let the tubes cool down. I tried to re-insert the tube, but it was very tight.

I unscrewed the amp from its metal box so I could get a better look at what was going on. I removed the two power tubes, but accidentally whacked one with the end of a loose guitar cord and cracked it. I set the amp aside, ordered new tubes and used the Hilgen head with the 2x10. Thankfully, it sounded great.

I did not get started this week until Thursday. I had already decided that it was going to be a loop-based drum beat with a repetitive bass line. Once those two things were recorded and properly placed as the back-bone of the song, it was time to add everything else.

The difficulty with these types of songs is that it seems there is no focus. A verse, bridge or chorus is determined by changing up the guitar/vocals rather than having all the instruments change for each section of the song. It's easy to get lost in something repetitive with no idea how to get out.

Basically, what I do is throw a bunch of guitar parts at the song to see what sticks. Not much was sticking this week.

The bass line was already strong, so I overdubbed a couple of distorted bass lines at the beginning of the song to attempt to establish the bass line as the focus of the song. I quickly came up with an acceptable vocal melody to go with the beginning of the song.

I had a few guitar ideas that were okay. What I did not want to happen was to have 10 different guitar riffs flying in and out of the song just because they played well with the bass line. I wanted a bit of reasoning to the madness. I settled on the parts you hear in the song. I thought the first one right after the vocals nicely set up the second main guitar riff which was introduced again at the end of the song. There are a couple of other guitar things going on, but they are mixed low and just there to add a little noise.

Speaking of noise... My kids go to a fantastic school. It is a Charlotte Mason based school (Google is your friend). Every year they have a Folk Song program which includes a silent auction and a bazaar where the children sell their homemade goods to help raise money for the school. Last year the Folk Song theme was The Beatles where they sang Beatles songs in a folk-style. The theme was "A Little Help from My Friends". It was great.

This year they are singing Woody Guthrie songs with an overriding theme of "Keeping It Simple". The postcard for this event was sitting on my recording desk as I chose the path of chaos over simplicity.

When it comes to music, I don't do simple well. There are bands that I love that do "simple" masterfully. I've attempted it in the past but never became comfortable with the outcome. I don't know if I'm trying to hide something like my drive-by recording style which produces predictable but not very ear-pleasing results. Or I might be hiding my lack of talent at playing any instrument. Yeah, I play everything you hear, but I would never bust into a guitar shop testing out a guitar playing my riffs.

I think the truth of the matter is I like noise, a sense of depth, and at times, chaos. I add bits and pieces here and there because I like building a song that way. I am comfortable with the results and comfortable with the realization that it would take a 10-piece band to fully reproduce my recorded songs in a live setting.

I don't add things to cover up a weak vocal line or shoddy recorded guitar parts. I add things because to me, something seems missing (probably due to the weak vocals and shoddy guitars).

This week there was more noise than usually. I experimented with distorted and delayed vocals and space noises I downloaded off the internet. There are even some overdubbed drum parts buried in the noise - just to add a hint of interest.

It's a bit ironic that the vocals repeat "it's all in focus" when I'm not sure there's anything in focus in this song. Just the way I like it.

week 43: try as you might

2011-10-28T23:07:00.000-05:00

I'm not a baseball fan.

I'm not a rapper.

After procrastinating all week, I started piecing together Week 43 on Thursday. And after dinner on Thursday night, I continued my work.

To tell you the truth, I don't have much left as far as will, inspiration and desire to see this 52 week thing through. I felt like Thursday was a piss-poor effort to make this week's tune a reality.

There were some positives, like the "accident" of having the two main drum parts playing at the same time during the beginning of the second chorus. (It sounds almost like I know how to play drums with some cool panning effect going on.) Or using my cheap semi-hollowbody guitar to get some nice distortion riffs on the second chorus as well as the mellow sounding parts at the end of the song.

Discouraged and a bit apathetic after recording for a few hours, I went downstairs and turned on the tv. I noticed that the World Series was in Game 6, bottom of the 9th with the team leading the series up by two runs. I thought, what the heck. I started watching.

I was pulling for St. Louis because when I think of Texas, I think of all those whiney Longhorns fans crying about how if Colt McCoy did not get injured during the 2009 BCS Championship game they would have beat my beloved Tide. Whatever. You can't Uncle Ricco your life away with the mantra of "What If".

Back to the game.

If baseball was half this exciting throughout any part of the ungodly number of games they play during the season, I could possibly see myself becoming a fan if I was single, bored and living with my parents.

The bottom of the 9th through the end of the game was must-see-tv. I'm glad I stayed up and watched it.

Back to the music.

Friday had me at a school function with my kids. No time to work on the song until later that night. But I did enough on Thursday to make Friday work.

The thing that has been slowing me down as of late is the lyrics. I've run out of things to say. It's also odd that I care because I'm not a lyric kind of guy. I don't know the lyrics to half the songs I've been listening to for years. I hear my kids bopping around the house singing the words to songs I have been hearing before they were born. I'm like, "Is that what they're saying". And they're like, "Yep." Thankfully they are kid-friendly words.

I've mentioned my free-style approach to lyrics before. I free-style some words with the record button engaged once I have a melody in mind. This way I have the melody recorded and can go back and work on the lyrics later. Sometimes the free-styling is somewhat useable which makes lyric writing much easier. Most of the time it's just nonsense.

For some reason I can't go with nonsense. The words have to mean something to me. Well, Thursday night I recorded some nonsense, and Friday night I decided to go with the nonsense. It was a bit liberating.

My first song that meant nothing - at least to me.

As I was about to enter a deep sleep early Saturday morning after just completing Week 43 (a tune that has a chance of making my top 10 for 2011), it hit me like a ton of bricks - the meaning to the lyrics.

In a strange way, I felt they described the baseball game I just watched Thursday night. Well, it could apply to any sport really. Heck, it could even apply to some reality singing competition if you're that shallow.

As sports fans, we have our "heroes" that we depend on in the game. But I think deep down we sometimes question their ability, especially when the game is on the line and they haven't lived up to their potential yet in that game. There's a lot of pressure on these athletes to perform at such a high level to not let themselves down, their team down, and us irrational fans down.

I was thinking about the World Series game and all the crowd shots of anxious fans hoping their team could hit a ball they've been hitting all their lives. I wondered if the players were thinking to the fans - don't doubt us.

I'm too lazy to type out the lyrics (link to lyrics), but in that game everyone had each other's attention - fans and players. I'm sure there was a lot of suspicious doubting and prayerful hoping going on during that last hour or so stretch.

The sad thing is that our team winning doesn't really bring us lasting joy. An athlete making his fans happy won't bring him lasting joy either. Sports, while fun if kept in the right perspective, are really meaningless when you weigh everything out at the end of the day. If your brain is somewhat in tune with reality, your team's victory or defeat will not be life changing for you. It shouldn't be at least, unless you bet a lot of money on the game. But that's another topic altogether.

I think the lyrics could easily portray the bantering back and forth in the minds of the fans and players.

A stroke of genius! Ha - not really. But the lyrics have meaning to me now which is ironically meaningless.

week 42: the vastly accelerated

2011-10-23T21:58:00.000-05:00

With drum beat in hand from last week's state of panic, I was sure this week would be a breeze. But not getting started until Thursday afternoon brought some turbulence to the anticipated smooth sailing.

Because of the drum's simple and repetitive nature, I only recorded a small portion of them and looped them.

I wanted there to be some sort of intro, so I changed up the beat a little at the beginning.

I worked on the main part of the song first. I had trouble with the bass due to my approaching it like I have on all the previous songs. I decided to simplify it and make it a bit sparse. This totally changed the direction I was envisioning for the song.

Week 41 is not in 4/4 time. The beginning is 3/4 and the long main part is 3/4 and 4/4. I'm not a music major, so this description may be way off. Nonetheless, the song is in an odd time signature.

Back in the band days we experimented with odd time signatures all the time. Nothing real technical, but odd just the same. These songs usually came out more aggressive. I was thinking these aggressive results would manifest this week. The opposite occurred.

Once I had the bass secured, the two main guitar parts followed quickly. The song appeared very laid back and "pretty". I had a difficult time with writing a vocal melody to compliment what had been written guitar-wise. To avoid another instrumental, I decided to work on what was originally going to be just an intro and see if I could apply vocals there.

I wrote a different bass line for the beginning and the guitar parts and vocal melody followed quickly. I extended the intro to make room for vocals and a decent transition into the main part of the song. I probably spent a majority of my time on this part. My idea for the main part to follow was just to be long and repetitive.

Once I was satisfied with the beginning, I set my attention to the main part to add some interest to it. I added keys, sleigh bells, ride cymbal, more guitars and even vocals.

It was fun. In my opinion, it seemed like anything I experimented with worked.

I felt like this week I did some things differently than I have all year. The song structure is new for me. I think this is my longest song to date. I used my Hilgen amp for the first time in several months. I used this filter plugin in Logic that I have not used before.

I "program" my drum beat with a drum machine app on my computer. I play along with this to record drums. This week I used the drum machine beat along with the recording of me playing. The drum machine beat is panned to the right and is processed through the previously mentioned filter plugin. I added some echo delay as well. The drums by themselves seemed to be dragging. The filtered beat seemed to pick things up. I kept the drum machine through the long/main part as well, but without the filter.

I was pretty stoked about the song once it was finished. My wife said it was good, but not one of my best ones. That sort of rubbed me the wrong way at first. Not that I think Week 41 is the best thing I've done. I just thought it had this build up and drama I thought would draw her in.

Through these 41 weeks I've had a couple of songs that I felt were pretty good. The response from others supported my feelings. I've had some others that I felt were top notch as well, but did not receive the confirmation to match my enthusiasm. I've also had some duds in my opinion that others thought were great. You just never know.

Like I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I plan on putting together my top 10 and my reasoning behind my picks. I'm sure mine will differ from yours and my wife's.

To Week 42 and beyond.

week 41: stare right through

2011-10-23T11:34:00.000-05:00

This week I needed a break. I did not want to record at all. I felt uninspired and lacked desire. But it's too late to quit now.

On a sad note, it was a bit of a shocker to hear about the death of Steve Jobs. I've been with Apple since 1995, before Jobs came back and introduce the iMac. I bought into the Apple way of life when others were saying it was on the decline and my not make it. It made it and has greatly helped me do what I'm doing now. Thank you Mr. Jobs.

Before the news broke about Jobs death, I was already distracted by Apple's new iOS5 for the iPhone. This even pushed me to make the plunge to upgrading my laptop's software to Lion 10.7. Through my research I knew Logic Express 8 was likely not to play nice with 10.7. It was probably not a good idea to upgrade during this point in my life, but I like having the latest and was ready to jump on board to iCloud. I was also fully prepared to run down to my local Apple Store and buy Logic Express 9 if I encountered any problems.

A credit to Apple, 10.7.2 works like a charm. Logic and all my plugins function flawlessly. Photoshop and my budget software work without a hitch. It was a risk to upgrade, but at times I'm a risk taker.

On to this week's recording. I stayed with the same process that I've used all year. I really felt like I had something good going on as I was writing the parts.

Once everything was being put together and almost completed, I realized I had some major junk on my hands.

Unfortunately I waited until Thursday to start working on the song. So on Friday, when it hit the fan, I started to pannick.

Nothing sounded right. The bass did not work with the guitars, but the bass worked well with the drums. The vocal melody was boring. There was no room to wow the masses again with my sweet keyboard sounds.

I muted parts and attempted to re-write parts. Nothing was working.

Friday afternoon, right before it was time to leave to pick up the kids from school, I decided to start all over. I wrote a new drum beat and was going to have a marathon recording session when I got back home.

On the way to the school, the wife called and said she could pick them up. I told her my dilemma, that I felt like I was trying to polish a turd. I forgot we had a birthday party to go to that night. She told me I just needed to polish the turd.

As I turned around to head back home, I decided to work with what I had.

I listend back and things did not sound as bad as I was thinking. The only problem was that my attempts at muting and re-writing some of the parts caused some of the already recorded parts to mysteriously disappear. I had to re-record a couple of lines of guitar. Thankfully my amp and preamps still had the same settings from the original recording.

Before the party I had everything ready to go except for vocals and a few tweaks. We would be home from the party around 9 PM wich would give me plenty of time to finish the song.

By 9:30 PM I'm back in my room ready to make my tweaks. I felt these tweaks really helped the song. I added some keys to the bridge part before the end of the song. I made the cymbal crashes in the bridge sit better in the mix. Before I left for the party I had added some loud distorted guitars to the second verse. I tweaked those a bit.

With everything sort of in its place, it was time to write the lyrics and record vocals. I did not start recording vocals until about midnight. The lyric writing process was maddening. Once the vocals were recorded it seemed to take forever to make them sound right with the song. I opted for loud and heavily distorted. I was tired and did not care anymore.

As I was bouncing the tracks down for the final mix, I realized I did not like the vocals at all. The melody was so ingrained in my head that I knew it would be difficult to come up with a different melody. It was 1 AM at this point and I was way tired.

As I listened back to the song for the 100th time with the vocals muted, I realized I had a decent instrumental. Problem solved. I did have a moment of thinking I needed to break up the monotony of the verses since they no longer had vocals to add interest.

But, monotony is the new black.

Due to the previously mentioned software upgrades, iTunes took forever to load the now-instrumental onto my iPhone for me to listen to in my car to a/b the mix. At 2 AM in the morning the mix sounded fine. There were a couple of things I did end up changing.

Just before I would crash my bed, I listened to the song again through Facebook's player to make sure everything was okay. The little guitar solo part after the first verse blared out the left guitar track. There was a lot of automation on this song. For some reason, the automation got a bit out of whack. It was an easy fix, but prevented me from getting in bed before 2:30 AM.

After this week I think I'm ready for a break. The good thing is I already have the drums written for next week.

To reward or punish those who are faithful followers of this blog, I was going to share the "stare right through" (sing-a-long edition) with all its lameness. I un-muted the vocal tracks and decided against the upload. You should thank me.

week 40: cartel cred

2011-10-07T17:20:00.000-05:00

The home stretch.

Only 12 more songs/weeks to go.

Like I mentioned last week, I have some mixed emotions. You do something long enough and it becomes a major part of you. I can't keep up this pace. I think my family is tired of hearing me say, "I need to work on my song."

I am determined to keep creating. I have to. It is what I was made to do.

Looking back over the last three groupings of songs for the 20[52]11 project, (in my opinion) the last grouping (20[52]11:3) includes some of my better tunes. When this is all said and done, I will probably put together a Top 10 list and album grouping that will sum up what I think were my best tunes. I think a lot of the songs from the past 13 weeks will be on that list.

This week included some of my best drumming to date. Again, that's not saying much, but the parts were a major challenge to me, especially the end.

No keyboards on this turn. Believe me when I say I tried to fit them in, but they did not work.

Overall I felt the song was a total ripoff of one of my favorite bands, but I decided to go with it. When I asked the wife what it sounded like, she did not say the name of the band I was supposedly ripping off. She did name another band, though. I'm not really sure what she was hearing.

I view this as a good thing - failing to attempt to sound like one of my favorite bands. During the writing process, it gives me something to shoot for knowing I will never attempt it. Groundbreaking? Yeah, whatever.

Anyway, this tune was more guitar driven than the past few weeks. I like how the soft vocals sit in the mix. It created (in my opinion) a cool vibe.

Back to the drums. I've been using the same pair of Pro-Mark Hot Rod sticks since the beginning of the year. I use these so the drums aren't too loud where the neighbors can hear them. To me, they sound good on the recordings. I especially like the way they dull the hats and ride.

Well, they started falling apart in March. They are pretty much unusable for recording (too quiet). I use them for writing though.

I bought a pair of Pro-Mark Lightening Rod sticks to replace them. They are a little heavier and have lasted much longer. They started majorly shredding apart this week.

I had to use my regular drum sticks for recording this week. They feel weird in my hands while playing because they allow more vibration when I hit the drums. They are also way louder. Despite the slight setback, I pressed on.

There was less editing the drums this time. My hits were more "on". Maybe the sticks were the reason. I don't know because I'm not a drummer. It would be interesting to know if other drummers have found that Hot Rod style sticks cause them to hit late. I doubt it. More than likely I was just having a "good" drum day.

Last November my pal Brad tuned my drums and put a couple of used heads on the drums that were in bad shape. I have not tuned them or had them tuned since. I've also only replace the strings on my guitars once. The strings on the bass guitar have been on there for around three years.

Before we were married, my wife left a message on my answering machine about how she just changed the sheets on her bed at college for the first time all semester. The strange thing was the semester was ending in a few days. That answering machine recording made it on Lugsole's first cassette EP as a song intro.

I probably need to do some instrument maintenace/upkeep, but what's the point this late in the game.

On to Week 41.

week 39: pockets full of gold

2011-09-30T22:00:00.000-05:00

Cooler weather. College football.

It put me in the mood for something a bit more laid back this week.

I reverted to my repeating-drum-beat coupled with a repeating-bass-line formula. It was not as laid back as I was aiming for, but it worked out in the end.

I decided to loop and double the drums. I only recorded about 40 seconds of the beat and looped the rest. I set up a different mic in a different location and repeated the 40 seconds of recording. I panned the two drum parts to the left and right.

I usually record the bass using the A string only. I like the way it sounds and the way it sits in the mix - and it's easier for my lack-of-bass-playing skills. This week I wrote the bass line using the E string. I split the signal between direct and a miked guitar amp and recorded the split together just to mix things up a bit.

I had this idea of building the song up and then letting it die back down. The build up took a direct hit when I decided to introduce the vocals and guitars a lot early than I was planning. I just liked the way it sounded.

I usually start the writing process of a song after the drums have been recorded. And to speed things along, I record the bass and guitar direct (just for writing purposes). The bass is almost always recorded direct, but once I have the part written I will re-record it with a better take and correct levels.

The opposite is true for guitars. I almost always record them through a guitar amp. Like I mentioned before, I record the guitars direct at first for writing purposes. Though the sounds I get at this point are okay, I am able to improve on the sound by recording the final guitars through a miked guitar amp.

This week I used the direct guitar recordings. The sounds I was getting from my amp were just not cutting it. Logic has a decent software guitar amp simulator. I've used it here and there throughout 2011, but this is the first week I only used direct guitar recordings.

Riveting, I know.

To take this in a completely opposite direction, I think I've settled on what I will do as an encore to the 20[52]11 project for next year. It won't be a mind-blowing encore, but an encore (plan) nonetheless.

There will be four projects released about every three months, and I want to implement a drum machine into my recording process. I have my eye on an Akai MPC1000. Let's be honest, there is nothing real special about my drumming now. It's very drum-machine-like in nature. I think with the Akai I can sample my own sounds and duplicate and better the drum sounds and beats I'm doing now.

One of my favorite bands is Black Moth Super Rainbow. Tobacco is the genius behind there sound. On their earlier stuff and on Tobacco's solo stuff he uses a drum machine. I love his drum beats and sounds. I probably won't have his skills, but I think I can do something interesting with it. I need to save my pennies.

Back to the projects.

One project is going to be all instrumentals. One is going to be all electronic (well, no guitars). Another is going to be five or six songs that all blend into each other to essentially create one 30 minute song. The other is going to be a minimalist rock project.

The planning is still in the early stages, but at least I have a plan.

It will be weird not releasing something new every week. The end is in sight for 2011. I have mixed feelings about the end of this challenge. I feel like a good friend is about to leave and go far away.

I guess there is the small chance I will continue this and do 52 songs a week for 2012.

Whatever.

week 38: continental shift

2011-09-23T22:00:00.000-05:00

Fall weather is slowly starting to appear here in the South. Instead of highs in the mid 90s, we are reaching the low 80s.

This was the first week in a long while that I did not almost have a heatstroke a/b-ing my mixes in my vehicle parked in my (at times) oven-like garage.

This is also the first week of the 2011-12 college football season that my Crimson Tide has a legitimate test against the Razorbacks.

I started recording earlier this week, but I found myself taking longer than usual breaks reading too many Bama football related message boards. It proved to be only a slight distraction. I was able to put the finishing touches on Week 38 early Friday night.

This week ended up being a more poppy tune than I was anticipating (well, poppy for me).

As I'm recording the drums, I sometimes envision where the song is headed and am able to navigate it sonically to where my mind is. Not this week - which is not a bad thing.

99% of the time I hear something aggressive in my head. I'm not sure if that's just hearing the drums without any other parts written or I have a lot of 40 year old built-up angst.

There could be a bit of angst, but it comes out completely different than it did 10 to 12 years ago.

A lot of times I envision more yell/scream type vocals, but my vocal delivery as of late has been anything but aggressive.

During my band days I used to yell and scream a lot. Even when I sang I belted it out loudly. I developed a loud vocal delivery. Part of this was due to poor monitor mixes on stage, so I had to be loud to hear myself.

This vocal loudness carried over to recording as well... eventually. Early on when the band recorded, my vocals were "soft". People would even comment that I sounded different on tape than I did live. This bothered me because I wanted to be consistent. I began singing more aggressively while recording. This, mixed with poor monitor mixes on stage and my introduction to Unwound, opened the door to my "loud/aggresive" vocals.

But as 2011 has progressed, my heavy vocals have digressed. I've been experimenting with singing softer. For me, it's been interesting to hear what's been coming out.

Some odds and ends...

I feel like I'm repeating things such as song structures, guitar rifts, drum beats, etc. I'm basically using the same amp with the same settings. Heck, everything over the last few months has been recorded the same. I guess after 38 weeks of this, things will reappear and I will drift more and more towards laziness.

For instance, the chorus on this week's tune has the dueling sort-of-angular guitars that I've used a few times before to break up a song to make it more interesting. Usually these parts do not include vocals. That was my original intent for this week.

To break the monotony, I challenged myself to apply a vocal line to the chorus parts. With only 14 more songs to go, maybe I will challenge myself to finish strong.

Not only do I feel like the songs are starting to repeat, this blog is as well.

Boring.

You know the routine: started with drums, added bass, added guitar, added keys and then vocals. Nothing really changed in regards to writing a recording Week 38.

week 37: hr_minx

2011-09-16T23:30:00.000-05:00

All is not right with the world. You'd have to have your head in the sand not to notice this.

(I thought this was a blog about my 2011 recording project.)

It is.

I've never really been inspired by tragedy or hardships musically. The inspiration has always been heard lyrically.

I'm never one to try and match the lyrical content of a song with its musical mood.

I tend to be attracted more to a poppy-pop tune with tragic lyrics than a poppy-pop tune with lyrics of someone dancing in the sun. The opposite is true as well.

This is probably the third of fourth time I've mentioned this situation that is going on with those near and dear to me. In the blog post for Week 18 I wrote:

"Another situation that is messing me up is this dude (who shall remain nameless) who is screwing up his family (which I am a part of) because of his selfishness and inability to keep his microscopic parts in his pants. It's been emotionally and physically draining on all involved, but especially the wife and kids that are feeling the brunt of this loser's stupid/idiotic decisions."

Not much has changed with this situation.

The hardest part for me (and I have it easy compared to those directly involved) is to remain silent. Anything I would say would only be beneficial to me. You know the saying, "If you can't saying anything nice, don't say anything at all."

I've chosen to voice my feelings through some of the tunes for this 2011 music project. I'd say out of the 37 songs so far, 10 to 12 have touched on this particular subject. I expect a few more will follow.

Probably nothing I write will come across the ears and eyes of those directly impacted or the ones doing the impacting. I think it's for the best. But as I write, I do imagine the unnamed person of interest is standing right in front of me listening to everything I have to say. Again, beneficial to me but probably not to anyone involved.

And why I am writing about the lyrical content of a song is a bit of mystery to me. As a listener of music I rarely listen to or comprehend what the artist is saying lyrically. It's not that important to me. The feel of the song is what pulls me in. I guess if I'm paying attention, lyrics can help or hurt the songs pull. One of my favorite bands is Deefhoof. So that should explain a lot.

Thirty-seven weeks into this experiment and there are some songs that I really like, some that are okay and would benefit from more time and focus, and some that "is what they is". Week 37 falls into the "really like" category for me.

I started on Tuesday and set out to challenge myself by writing a faster tempoed song. Bass, guitar, synth and vocals have no problem speeding things up. Drums, on the other hand, have problems at any tempo.

I struggled with the drums during the vocal/verse parts. It was one of those situations where if you are not thinking about what you are doing you do it well. But when your mind starts analyzing your actions your actions begin to fall apart. My brain went into overdrive when the record button was pressed.

Thirty minutes of frustration and I finally had something to work with.

Writing a bass line for the verse and chorus happened quickly. The bridge proved to be a little more troublesome.

Originally I had planned to come back to the chorus/intro part at the end of the song. I recorded the drums to do that. But once I established a bass line for the bridge, I decided to carry that line through the end of the song. I think it adds more interest.

Guitars were a struggle as well. I had difficulty writing a couple of parts that would carry the song. I opted for the "whatever" approach and placed different guitar riffs throughout the song in hopes that the bass and drums would be enough to establish some sort of continuity. I think it works.

My synth sound and style of play has become a staple on some of the 205211 tunes as of late. It's predictable but seems right for some reason. And on some songs it more noticeable than on others.

I usually run the infamous Yahama Portasound PSS-120 through my Hot Cake overdrive pedal into my hand-built EA Tremelo pedal out to a guitar amp. I use the Electric Guitar setting on the synth. This is how I obtain that glorious synth-y sound you have grown to love as well.

I'm not sure if I've found my sound or am stuck in a rut or have run out of creative ideas, but when that lame kiddie/thrift-store Yamaha synth sound is absent, things just don't feel right.

This is very similar to my doubling the vocals.

I've never liked my voice out front and raw. I used to bury it in the mix. Now it seems it is more out front - but doubled. I'm addicted to this as well. Therapy?

Well, it's on to Week 38 where you can expect more doubled vocals, random guitar wankery and possible lyrics about the previously mentioned lost soul.

week 36: static face

2011-09-09T23:56:00.000-05:00

10 years ago...

It was a trying time for our country. I'm no expert on the subject nor do I have a unique angle to approach a discussion of 9/11. I just remember the fear and uncertainty.

I was 30 years old.

I just "released" my first post-Lugsole music project - "the (51) torpedoes" under the name Societá Anonima (eventually changed to Tournament Knights). You can read and hear more about it >>>here<<<.

Musically, it was an exciting time. To this day I am very proud of "the (51) torpedoes". My pal/ex-bandmate Brad Davis and myself put a lot of work into that 5 song EP. It was really the last project that I collaborated with someone else on. The positive effects of our partnership can definitely be heard.

We recorded on a Akai DPS12 with just a couple mics and lot of creative freedom. I had the guitar parts for each of the songs written. We would meet up in our old practice room. I would play the parts for Brad and he would come up with some beats. We recorded the drums first and then the guitars. From that point on it was a free-for-all.

There are a lot of analog synth parts on that EP - a few written and played by me, but most written and played by Brad.

We did not limit ourselves at all. We added parts on top of parts. We had 12 tracks to work with. I thought that would be plenty, but we ended up adding guitar, synth and vocal parts on the same track because we were running out of space. After a while it got confusing.

At that time ProTools had a free 8-track recording software download. I had to dump each track separately from the Akai into my Power Mac 7500. I don't remember how we went from 12 tracks to 8, but we did it somehow.

We mixed and "mastered" it ourselves. I put together the homemade cd packaging and sent it off to a lot of places for review.

At that time (2001), putting your tunes on the web for others to download was not that feasible. So punk rock packaging and cd-rs were the outlet of choice.

The feedback we received was all very positive. All the reviews were "glowing". I was encouraged and motivated to continue. Lugsole was a distant memory.

Time has a way of doing strange things and taking odd turns. Brad and I worked together a little on the next EP >>>"silence then the attack"<<<, but his band Plate Six was becoming more active and my family was growing again. The second EP was not released until 2003. While still a respectable work by my standards, it fell short of the musical goodness of the first EP. I think Brad's lack of involvement had a lot to do with that.

From 2003 until now, it's basically been just me. I'm a bit of a loner and an introvert, so it hasn't been all bad. After the second EP I decided to just record and release songs as I finished them - no more EPs. Putting songs on the web for the public to download became easier, so this was the direction I went. Unfortunately I became lazy, uninspired and discouraged.

The two projects on the Tournament Knights website titled >>>"the future of punk rock"<<< and >>>"questions with obvious answers"<<< are just a hodge podge of songs I recorded from 2004 to 2008. For simplicity, I just grouped them together as two EPs. There is really no continuity with either EP.

I miss writing and recording songs for a project to be released as a project. I miss working with someone besides myself as well. I will release a couple of different projects in 2012. You can count on that. As far as working with someone else, I'm not sure. It's tough finding someone who is as passionate about it as I am. Time is an issue as well. We are all busy.

I think I've proven that I'm willing to work on and complete a task - make it a priority. It will be difficult to find someone with that same willingness. More than likely I'll do it alone again or have someone just play the drums (my weakest link).

That brings us to Week 36.

This week brought on storms and power outages and a million other meaningless time-consuming tasks that prevented me from recording. I am happy a tree did not fall on my house, so I'm not really complaining.

I recorded drums on Wednesday with some sense of what direction the song was heading. Thursday night I started writing and recording the main parts to go with the drums. I'm not sure if it was late or I was just delusional, but I was comfortable with what I was hearing.

Late Friday afternoon I came to my senses and realized the song was heading for Crapville. I erased everything but the drums and decided to start over. My long lost friend Writer's Block knocked on my studio door, came in and chatted a while.

I was tired. I needed to start preparing dinner for the family. I had no desire or energy to overcome my writing dilema. This would have been a good time to have had a musical partner.

After dinner I wrote a bass line that went well with the drums that were already recorded, but this was only for the first part. I added some keys to the first part, but soon grew to hate them. I wrote another part and decided to go with it. I tried adding some guitar to the intro, but everything sounded like poo.

I moved on to the verses and took the simple approach with the bass. I came up with a little guitar riff and decided that the vocals would follow the guitar. I then made my way to the bridge and quickly added another bass line. Guitar parts were difficult for the bridge, so I focused my attention back to the verses with my trusty little Yamaha synth.

I had already recorded a scratch vocal for the first verse and "masterfully" wrote a synth line to complement it. Things were moving along. I had the idea of muting the guitar in the verse and adding another synth line. The synth/bass/vocals on the verses had sort of an awkwardness that I really liked. Time to move on to the other parts because time was running out.

I recorded keys through the whole song. I finally wrote some decent guitar parts (playing through my awesome built-by-me tremolo pedal) to go with the bridge and the other sections that needed some spice.

Lyrics were a struggle, but I'm happy with what was penned.

After listening back numerous times, tweaking, overdubbing and adjusting levels, the song finally started to make sense (to me). The wife and kids came back from their after-dinner excursion with a package of chewy Sprees for me. The quick little sugar rush pushed me through the final tweaks and mixdown.

I hate that this is turning into a Friday night cram session. My intentions were to record a little each day. It seems now I'm so burned-out from Friday that it takes me three or four days to get back into the swing of things.

Only 16 more songs to go.

week 35: paradoxology (mvt. 1 & 2)

2011-09-02T23:11:00.001-05:00

My daughter believes in fairies.

I turned 40 this week.

I probably should just stop right here because I have no idea where this is headed.

(The two relate somehow, I think.)

With uncertainty, I'll continue.

My daughter is 11. She is beautiful. Her brain works in unusual ways. She has an extremely high IQ. She looks at the world through very unique eyes.

She builds fairy houses.

This architectural phenomenon started last year at school. She and a few of her younger friends claim they have seen fairies.

I told her fairies were not real. What was I thinking?

The miniature houses are now appearing around our house. They are very intricate - built out of leaves, sticks, rocks, grass, flowers, etc. They don't fall down or crumble when it rains. She checks on them every day after school.

I still don't believe in fairies. I'm terrible, I know. I believe in my daughter though. She will go on to do great (and I'm sure very creative and unique) things with her life. I don't doubt that at all.

I'm sure there are some biblical and theological reasonings against the existence of fairies. I don't see the harm in it right now. While all the other 11 and 12 year old girls are becoming boy crazy and being overly influenced by pop culture, my daughter is coming up with better ways to build a fairy house. To her, boys are icky and Bieber Fever is a disease she avoids at all cost. Who am I to complain?

When I was her age I wanted to be a rock star. That's about as crazy as the existence of fairies, or so I was told.

Now that I am 40, I don't necessarily want to be a rock star, but I'm not ready to let go of the dream or the desire to create music. I'm also not ready to start "creating" music for the middle-aged.

I don't know what the majority of 40-somethings are thinking or dreaming about these days. I can almost guarantee you they are not thinking and dreaming about what I am. Does that make me better than the others? No. In fact, I'm more inclined to believe that I should grow up and start thinking/dreaming like an adult.

Eventually, my daughter will grow out of her fairy belief - I think. The weird thing is my parents thought I would stop the rock-n-roll nonsense years ago as well. And even though the fairy-rock (that sounds weird) comparisons are a bit stretched, I don't want to squelch my kid's dreams - even if I think they are crazy.

Now, I will say, if my daughter is still building fairy houses at age 40, we might have some issues. But the reality is, my daughter may (and probably will) want to pursue something out of the norm as she grows older. I want to be her biggest supporter, encouraging her along the way as she lives out what God has intended for her.

I refuse to talk about my dreams with others my age. I don't see the point. Most think I'm crazy. And if they do actually listen to the music, they will think I suck. So what's the point.

Anyway, maybe I should have ended the blog earlier. But the truth is, my daughter builds fairy houses and I am 40 years old.

Well, this week I started working on the song on Tuesday, but I hardly wrote or recorded anything on Wednesday or Thursday. I did most of the work on Friday.

Friday was my birthday.

There was a thought of writing something "special" for this milestone in my life. I went back and forth with what I wanted to say with the mood and lyrics of the song. Everything seemed to go in the direction of a tragedy.

I may be 40, but I'm not dead. I'm in good health. I run three times a week, which is something I did not do 15 years ago. Yeah, my hair is thinning. I've got a little extra baggage (reason for running). But I look like I'm 30 and feel like I'm 18. So what's the tragedy?

I scrapped the milestone themed song and decided to go with whatever revealed itself.

I've had a couple of songs this year that sort of fall into the same mold as this week: what appears to be two separate songs joined together by ride cymbal tapping. I think what may distinguish this week's song from the others is the mood of the two parts. Musically, this week seems to go from sorrow to joy. Lyrically, there is no real change in the "mood" of the song.

Week 35 did not turn out like I had originally imagined. Same formula though - drums then bass then everything else. I was attempting to go for something else with the vibe of the two parts.

I'm not really a Sheryl Crow fan, but I do like and listen to "The Globe Sessions" album. Guilty pleasure. There is a song on that album called "Am I Getting Through" that starts off slow and a bit heavy. With about a minute left in the song it kicks in to this rocking part - almost like a completely different song was fused into the original. I always thought the rocking part could have been turned into another complete song later on. I guess you'd have to listen to the song to know what I'm talking about.

Anyway, that's what I was going for. Confused?

The second part of Week 35 is a faster tempo than the first part. It was a bit tricky to connect the two. The noise and feedback at the end of the first part helped introduce the faster bass line that led into the second part.

At some point on Friday, I strongly considered just including part one and maybe using part two as another song later on in the year. I just was not feeling the two parts together. Not sure if I'm totally down with it now as I type.

It is what it is.

I think overall the title of the song, the structure of the song, the lyrics of the song, this stage of my life and even fairy houses all came together to create something very interesting.

Interesting to me, at least.

week 34: fake ears

2011-08-26T22:26:00.004-05:00

It was the first week of school for my offspring, and all my plans of having more un-rushed time to record were thwarted.

This by far has been my busiest week of 2011. Well, I really can't say that, but it was the week that I experienced more interference with my ability to write and record.

I did a little on Wednesday and very little on Thursday. That left Friday to do the majority of the work, and I did not get started until 9:30 PM.

Remember that riff I wrote about last week?

Well, I decided to use it this week. Actually, over the course of the last seven days, I added other parts to the original riff (which is the first part of this weeks song).

I had this idea of writing a song that had many parts that sort of winded their way to a main part. Week 34 is the outcome. With my lack of time though, this was not the best week to attempt this.

Each part has a different drum beat which is something a bit new for me. This took up a lot more time recording. Luckily I had the guitar parts already written and ready to go. Writing drums and bass for each part was the challenge. This is backwards from the way I've written most of the 205211 songs.

I added some synth and fake midi strings for some interest. Once I got rolling, everything seemed to come together quickly (I still did not get to bed until 3 AM Saturday morning).

Unlike last week, the now infamous acoustic guitar riff decided to play nice with my drum and bass ideas this week. I even incorporated the same beat from last week into a measure or two of this week's tune (acoustic riff with no drums --> to steady drums --> to last week's drum beat).

I went back a forth with the idea of making this an instrumental. I decided to tweak the ending to make room for vocals because this song sounds good being played on an acoustic guitar.

Let me explain.

About nine months ago, I was contacted by Mr. Ryan Russell to do a Nervous Energies session. (You can check out more about Nervous Energies >>> here <<<). Ryan (www.ryanrussell.net) is a successful rock photographer among other things. Basically with NE, he video records bands playing their song acoustically.

I agreed to do it, but I told him I would need some time to get things together. I knew I had this 205211 project coming up. I was sure some acoustic worthy tunes would emerge.

Overall, my writing style is not very conducive to my tunes being played acoustically - especially one acoustic. I tend to write multiple vague parts that help build the melody of the song. If you take one of those parts out of the song and play it by itself, it doesn't make too much sense. So, I am limited as to what I can play by myself on an acoustic guitar.

With this weeks song, I think I have three or four songs that could possibly be performed for a Nervous Energies session. I will take the next few weeks to practice and tweak these songs for a solo acoustic performance.

I'm not sure how a 40 year old has-been will mesh with all the 20-something hipsters that have already recorded for Ryan. It could be disastrous or it could be cool. Of course, it may never happen. We shall see.

On a side note, my favorite tube amp is starting to act strange. I won't bore you with the details, but I think it may be tube related. If it does crap out and I have to take it out of service, it will be the second amp that has failed me this year.

Again, I'm hoping that the next few weeks will allow me a few more moments to write and record, to practice for a possible Nervous Energies sessions as well as diagnose and fix some of my equipement.

On to Week 35.

week 33: face of the earth

2011-08-19T21:37:00.004-05:00

Summer vacation for the kids is over. I think they are more excited than I am.

I'm looking forward to a little more time to write and record. The Thursday/Friday night cram sessions are burning me out.

I had this little riff I wrote on my acoustic guitar. It was to be the song for this week.

I set out to write a loop based drum part that would repeat through the whole song. I was going to make it simple so I could overdub another slightly different drum part to be played side by side.

This simple part went fit perfect with the guitar riff.

I wrote several bass lines to go with the riff, but was not real excited about anything that was written. I decided to go with the "better" line and preceded to record it with the drums.

I then added the guitar riff.

The song was sucking big time.

The riff sounded cool by itself on the acoustic but lost all it good vibes when partnered with drums a bass.

I decided to keep the drums and bass that were already recorded. I was running out of time, so I just started adding layers of sound with my trusty thrift store synth, some midi keys and overdriven guitars. The whole idea to begin with was to make the song repetitive and drawn out. That original idea was altered a bit, but still accomplished what I was going for.

The song sort of slowly builds up until the vocals come in. I like how everything dropped out and then the vocals appear. That sparked an idea to build the song back up after the vocals were happening.

And that is what you hear now.

I've mentioned before that I've been using only one mic to record the drums. It's a ribbon mic placed behind and to the right of the drum set. I just like the way it sounds here.

I don't usually crash a lot on the cymbals. Some songs have more than others. There is really no rhyme or reason. This week I used the crash to sort of break things up. Unfortunately it did not come out sounding very appealing.

I'm sure the brittle shrieking has a lot to do with my technique as well as the condition of the crash. I'm also assuming my one mic placement is a culprit as well. I did not have time to re-record the drum parts, so I used a lot of automation to lower the volume of the crash hits to make them more "appealing".

A few random thoughts (in addition to the random thoughts you just read)...

Overall I really like the song.

As with every song so far, there are some things that bother me. But when you are writing and recording one song a week, you sometimes (or all the time) just have to go with it with all its imperfections.

Essentially theses are just demos. Unmastered. Unrehearsed. Unapologetically raw.

Not so much with this song, but I'm seeing (hearing) different sounds, techniques and structures repeat from week to week. I'm not saying that I've defined my sound, because I'm not really sure what the definition would be. But when push come to shove and the pressures on, I have things that I go to musically on a regular basis.

Until next week, that is all.

week 32: the danger of sight

2011-08-12T23:56:00.004-05:00

Only 20 more songs left. That number still seems a bit overwhelming. I feel like I'm running out of creativity and desire. Maybe that will spark something more interesting.

I only have one more week of the little ones being home for Summer vacation. They are ready for school. I have been a bore to them as of late.

The Fall/Winter will have me back on a more normal schedule as far as recording goes. Hopefully no more Thursday-late Friday night cram sessions.

Even though there is a lot still to do before the end of 2011, I've started thinking about 2012. I've got to have some plan or gimmick to motivate and challenge me. If I don't, I'll sink back to doing nothing.

One idea (which would require the help of someone who can really play drums) is to buy a cheap cassette four-track recorder and record songs on that. One track for drums. One track for guitar. One track for bass. One track for vocals. No overdubs. Again, record AND MIX everything on the four-track and then bounce it to the computer. I would only use the computer for "mastering".

This would not be a song-a-week type of deal. Maybe release a five song EP every three months. It would also make me dependent on someone else, which could be a risk.

If that doesn't work out, I have some other ideas brewing in my head.

Overall, I think I'm motivate to keep writing and recording after 2011. The "rush" of completing a song every week will probably be missed, but I don't think I can continue to keep up the pace I'm working at now. I don't think my wife would aprove of another song-a-week next year either.

Nothing really exciting happend this week. I actually started on Wednesday which is a change from the last two months.

I wrote and recorded the drums first (shocker).

Because of some not-so-good-news, I felt the need to write something a little more "aggressive". I had hopes of going more "full-on" than the song actually ended up. I guess I'm becoming a wuss in my old age.

Back on topic... I wrote the guitar part next. I thought that would give me a chance at a more "driving" sound. The drums were not overly rocking, but the guitars seemed to give them the kick in the pants they needed.

Bass and keys followed.

There is a part in the middle where the bass drops out and the crazy guitar wanking continues with just the drums. I had to copy, cut and piece the drums together for that part because it was created after I had already recorded the drums and had the song structure worked out.

I was going to have a more yell/scream vocal delivery, but it was late Thursday night and the short people were already asleep. In order not to forget the "melody" that was in my head, I decided to record the vocals, but in a more whisper/yell style as to not wake up the offspring. I liked the way the whisper/yell delivery sounded, so I decided to go with it rather than attempt to reclaim the power vocals of my youth.

Mixing was fairly easy.

I forgot to mention that the past few weeks I've only used one mic to record the drums. I usually use two or three, but I'm getting lazy.

I like roomy drum sounds. I also like a fuller snare sound. While I've been successful with the former, the latter has suffered. In the past I've tried close-micing the snare and other tricks, but nothing has worked. And because of my lack of snare/tom/kick isolation and my set-up-a-mic-wherever technique, I really can't pinpoint the snare and its issues.

That's probably the least of my concerns as far as better sounding recordings.

Lo-Fi: not because I think it's cool, but it's the only thing I know how to do. With all this practice you would think things would start to sound better.

week 31: vin-tage

2011-08-05T23:40:00.004-05:00

Lots of reflection and contemplating this week. I have less than one month left of being "young".

I was never a normal 20-something. I lived a polar-opposite life to what most 30-something married-with-children males lived. I plan on travelling a different path for my 40s as well... I think and I hope.

It seems that all of this "thinking" really influenced what I wrote for Week 31 - musically and especially lyrically.

Unlike last week, the drums change around a bit. I wrote several sparse beats and pieced them together not really knowing where I was heading.

Again, unlike last week, the bass line repeats through whole song. I'm happy this worked out because I was really uninspired to write or record anything this week.

I struggled with the guitars. I like what I settled on for the verses, but the other parts seem a bit blah.

There is a keyboard line that runs through the whole song. It changes by going up an octave during the vocal parts.

Vocally I stepped back to my more monotone delivery style. It seemed to fit the mood and feel of the song.

This week the wife and I watched a strange little comedy called "Chaos Theory".

Synopsis: When his wife decides to set the clock back a mere 10 minutes, efficiency expert Frank Allen finds his life spinning dangerously out of control.

It's odd that a 10 minute change of schedule could have caused such a change in Frank's life, but it did. Not that the 10 minutes should have mattered, but he placed so much importance on his to-do lists and schedules that he let the 10 minutes matter. The did not matter to anyone else.

40 is just a number. A big ugly number, but still just a number. Who really cares how old I am? If you do I'll smack you over the head with my cane.

I can bitch and moan about turning that dreaded age, but I have no plans of not pursuing my dreams. I'm not going to put my guitars away until my son or daughter wants to start a band. I'm not going to stop creating and coming up with other gimmicks to inspire me to write and record in 2012. If the opportunity ever arises for me to rock the stage again, I'm not going to turn it down because I'm old enough to be a dad to 90% of the crowd.

I am the future of punk rock.

On a side note: I really need to start working on next week's recording before Thursday night. I'm getting too old for these cram sessions.

week 30: daniel faraday was wrong

2011-07-24T23:44:00.001-05:00

Six or seven months ago I got the bright idea to start watching the "Lost" series on Netflix. The wife joined along. We watched the final episode this week.

I'm confused, mad and a bit saddened.

I'm confused about Season 6. Why go this route? It seems as if Abrams lost interest.

I'm mad that we in a sense wasted hours of our life to have it end the way it ended. I guess you could say that if it ended in a more not-so-lame-way that we would still have wasted hours of our life. Oh well.

I'm a bit saddened because I feel as if I've had to say good-bye to some friends. I got sucked-in in a major way. I even thought of taking the family to Australia just so we would have to fly from Australia back to America in the hopes of... Never mind.

So Week 30 is my tribute to "Lost".

This week I said farewell to Jack and the crew and also worked my butt off to have our house ready to put on the market. We've decided to move. When our house will sell and where we will end up is still a mystery, but we're going to give it a shot.

That said, I did not start working on Week 30 until 8 PM Thursday night. I had no ideas, nothing written or even thought out. If Hugo can live on a hot island without fast food and not lose a pound, I can write and record a song with little to no time.

I set up one mic for the drums and proceded to pound out a beat. I stumbled upon a simple arrangement and decided to repeat it over and over again. I did not loop the beat. I actually played it the whole way through. I moved the one mic to another postion in the room and recorded the beat again. The foundation of the song was complete.

Even though the beat repeats, I wanted to "cover up" the repetitiveness by writing multiple guitar/bass parts that would give the song a non-repetitive feel. Mission accomplished.

I started working on the bass line next. I quickly wrote something that went great with the beat I had recorded. I did not want this bass line repeating all the way through the song, so I wrote two other parts to attempt the break the song up.

The two interweaving guitar parts at the beginning were a thing of luck and (in my opinion) a thing of beauty. I originally had these parts playing until the middle (not-yet-known-to-be) heavy part, but when I started working on the vocals I thought it would sound more interesting if the guitar would drop out in the middle of the vocal line. It also served as making the heavy part appear more heavy.

I added a subtle keyboard part where the guitars dropped out for some interest. The keys re-entered the song during the ending.

I was unsure of the heavy part at first. It sounded a bit done before. But it grew on me once the vocals were added.

I've gone back and forth on the mix of the heavy part. I like the vocals distorted and buried, but I also like them a little less distorted and out front a little more. I like where the guitars sit in the mix on this part, but I also like them lounder where they drown out the drums. I was rushed, so I settled for what you may or may not hear now. A remix may be in order.

The outro of the tune is classic me.

The guitar solo at the end was recorded direct because it was 12:30 AM Saturday morning and I did not want to wake the kiddies. I think it sounds okay.

As I was writing and putting together the song "Lost" and Kate were not really on my mind. Even as I started writing the lyrics, I was not thinking of a "tribute". As I was racking my brain for lyrical ideas, I decided to take a break and work on a song title that may or may not inspire. Faraday came to mind and the vacated story line of why Aaron and Walt were special. I ran with Faraday and never looked back.

I need to start Week 31 before Thursday night.

week 29: splinter

2011-07-22T21:26:00.001-05:00

This was a short week.

Not that it really matters.

It seems that I have turned this recording project into a weekly cramming-for-mid-term-exam. The past month or so I have not started on the week's tune until Thursday. Overall I'm achieving the goal of one-song-a-week, but my intention was to be in a creative state of mind more than two days a week.

The fam and I headed out-of-town on Wednesday for a five day excursion. I had Saturday through Tuesday to write and record Week 29 but waited until Monday afternoon.

Now I'll bore you with the writing/recording process. Drums. Bass. Keys. Guitar. Vocals. I wrote four separate beats that worked well together. For the heck of it, I made beat one repeat longer than the other two. I used this as the intro. I alternated beats two and three and used the fourth beat as the outro.

Bass guitar was written/recorded next for all the parts. At this point I still had no idea where the song was headed. I struggled with adding guitar parts, so I moved on to adding some keys. To me, the intro and the verses started to come to life - without guitar.

I ended up doubling the bass guitar - one recorded direct and one played/recorded through my amp. I did add a little guitar riff during the intro, but the rest of the song only has bass guitar and keys.

On a side note: the intro and repetition.

I love the intro. I had a thought of just letting this repeat for about four minutes and then fade out - song finished.

Like I've mentioned in earlier blogs, I've been listening to a lot of repetitive instrumental music. I think it has influenced my writing as of late. The repetition may drive some people crazy, but I enjoy getting lost in a repetitive soundscape.

As you already know, I decided to keep the other parts, add vocals and make it more of a "standard" tune.

The drums stick out more on this song than they have on any of the others. It was not intentional. I was not trying to showcase my phenomenal playing (*sarcasm*). I think the lack of guitar frequencies allowed the drums to pop out. My playing is far from perfect and the sounds are far from perfect (even though I like them), but I think the louder-than-usual beats work.

I usually don't point out the lyrics, but this song carries a theme I've been in and out of over the past several months. While Week 29 focuses on a husband/wife drifting apart, the idea of how you look and react to a situation applies to my life in so many ways.

Your belief system and/or world outlook effects every area of your life and how you view and react to the things going on around you. While I feel my belief system is very strong and solid and my world outlook is healthy, I'm in disarray. Things have not worked out exactly like I thought they would for me and so many others around me.

The Bible says to trust God. He is the beginning and the end. So many characters in the Bible struggled with what I'm dealing with. The ones that trusted God - He proved faithful. The ones that did not trust - He provided grace.

God told Moses He was I AM. Moses struggled with the meaning of that but soon learned what it meant as he chose to trust and follow God's leading. Again, God proved faithful.

God has always proven Himself faithful in my life. It's still hard to trust though, especially when nothing makes sense. I'm thankful for His grace.

week 28: sleepy pillz

2011-07-15T23:15:00.051-05:00

After last week's who-cares, non-motivated, what-does-it-really-matter thought process, not much has changed this week.

It's not really just about the music.

I think it's an overall life funk.

And I have a good life.

My family and I are in a state of transition. Changes are coming. We're not really sure what they are yet and where they will lead us. We just know they are coming.

As far as music goes, nothing was out of the ordinary this week. For the third or fourth week in a row, I started the writing and recording process on Thursday. I started with the drums and added everything else like I've done the past 27 weeks.

I really like the song. A bit robot-rock in nature. I think the vocal melody is strong. It reminds me of something I've heard before. I've probably ripped somebody off, but isn't all rock-n-roll a rip-off of something else?

The song just fell together with ease.

Again, I looped the drums a little and squashed the crap out of them. The bass lines were simple to write and fun to play.

I struggled with the main guitar on the first verse. It just seemed too generic and took the song in a direction I did not want it to go. But once I added the synth, second guitar and vocals, you can barely hear the main guitar - which I guess no longer makes it the main guitar.

I went back and forth on the vocals in the bridge towards the end of the song. They sort of break up the part, but the melody seemed a little weak. I decided to keep them, and have since grown to like them.

Lyrically I was not feeling anything. I took the John Lennon approach and just started playing with words. I quickly realized that I have no business or talent to be playing with words. But out of that failed experiment I think I penned something that has some meaning to me at least.

I've sort of settled into a recording pattern as of late. I've been using the same mic set-up on the drums. I've alternated guitars and guitar amps from song to song, but I've been using similar mic placement on the amps. I have go-to pre-amps and plug-ins. I actually stand in the same place every week to record vocals. I guess I'm either stuck in a rut or have found what works for me.

The recordings sound good enough to me. They're not great - just good enough. You can listen to my tunes without the desire to jab an ice pick into your ear canal - I think.

Songs are translating better from my mixing monitors to my car and home stereos. The addition of the sub has helped me.

Overall I've become a bit better at recording and songwriting. I guess both of those are subjective depending on what you like. I tend to be attracted to more lo-fi recordings. I don't like anything that sounds polished - top 40. This includes both recording quality and songwriting. Would I include my tunes with some of my favorite bands? Not at this time. I still have a long way to go as far as recording techniques and knowledge go.

I have not arrived. Not sure if I ever will. But I am having fun (for the most part).

What a boring blog entry.

week 27: black as day

2011-07-08T23:04:00.050-05:00

For those interested, I added a bit more recording information to the blog for Week 26.

Also, the picture for each week's blog is something in my recording room. It's becoming a bit more difficult to photo something interesting that somewhat relates to the blog.

This week is no exception.

What you are seeing is the neck plate on my 1982 ST62-65 Fender JV Strat. (You can check out www.21frets.com for more info on early 80s JV Strats.) I have two early 80s JV Strats and love them both.

I bought my first JV(ST62-85) in 1999 having no idea what a 1982 - Made in Japan - 1962 reissue Fender Strat was all about. I just liked the way it felt and the way it sounded. In 2007 I was bored with life and decided to do a little research on my axe.

The 21Frets site mentioned above answered all my questions and started a small obsession with JV Strats. I picked up another one on the cheap off of eBay in 2007.

You can visit http://www.21frets.com/cgi-bin/forum/Blah.pl?m-1193767917/ and http://www.21frets.com/cgi-bin/forum/Blah.pl?m-1196202947/ for more info on my JV adventures. The black guitar now has a dark tortoiseshell pick guard. The white guitar has the stickers removed, new electronics and matching white pickup covers and knobs.

And now... Week 27.

The second half of the 20[52]11 project has begun. To be honest, this is the first week I felt like stopping. I had no desire to set up mics, attempt to play drums, fix drum attempts in computer, come up with a bunch of noise and add generic vocals on top. No desire at all.

Thursday soon became the day of the week and I had nothing written or recorded. Of course, Thursday was the starting day for last week as well, and that ended okay. But this week seemed different. I did not care.

I took my stinky attitude up to my "studio" and decided to work on Week 27. I had a little guitar riff I was playing on my acoustic earlier and chose to make that the basis of the song.

Drums were next. I needed something simple that I could loop. My playing ability and simple beats do not work. If I have more fills and action, my timing is a lot better. If the beat is more straight forward, my timing is terrible.

I'm not ashamed that I fix (majorly fix) my drums in the computer. Having my own drum kit and a computer has allowed me to do all the recording this year on my own. I haven't had to depend on anyone which has its good points and bad.

Anyway, with the drums recorded, looped and edited to length, I recorded the main guitar part. I already had a bass line in mind and recorded it as well. On to vocals.

I think I've mentioned before that when working on a vocal melody, I freestyle the lyrics. Sometimes strange and bizarre words come out of my mouth, but sometimes working lyrics come out.

I settled on the sad melody that you now hear in the song. The freestyle lyric that I was using to work on the melody was "hearts unbroken - will they ever mend." I liked the line and the play on words. And as bizarre and theologically wrong as it may have sounded, it made sense to me.

I remember reading a story about a girl who did not feel pain. It seems cool at first. But she could have hundreds of fire ant biting here leg and she would never know she was in danger. She could lean up against a hot BBQ grill or touch a hot baking pan and severely burn her skin without knowing.

The feeling of no pain is great, but the damage you would cause to your body is not so great. Pain is a warning, a needed warning.

Sometimes you need pain to let you know that you're alive. Sometimes you need pain to help you take your eyes off yourself and focus them on the hurts and needs of others.

Anyway, I went with the lyric. It seemed to go well with my current mood.

I won't bore you with the writing of the rest of the song. I just started adding parts here and there to make things more interesting.

I like the buildup after the vocals. I also like the repetition. I'm a big fan of repetition in music, but no so much in life.

I guess this week I have felt like I'm stuck in a vicious cycle. Not much, as far as the process goes, changes week to week with creating tunes for the project. But once I get in to the thick of the writing and recording, I'm fine. I usually get excited about the finished outcome.

This week was no exception. On to Week 28.

week 26: fire starter

2011-07-01T22:47:00.004-05:00

In about two months I will turn 40. Right now, my outlook on that is WTF??!!?!!?

I've written and recorded 26 songs so far this year. And in my opinion, I've put together some pretty good tunes. I'm still an undiscovered, obscure and rarely appreciated artist. Changing those facts was never a motive behind 20[52]11.

Since I'm at the halfway point with this endeavor and possibly my life, it's time to reflect.

My passion for rock-n-roll began my third grade year of school - 1978 I think. My parents were separated and I vividly remember listening to Queen's "The Game" all the time at my mom's apartment. I would shut my room door and pretend I was in a rock band performing "Another One Bites the Dust". The crowds loved me.

The pretending continued until 1994 when my first (and only) serious band began practicing and playing shows. That lasted until 1999 - 21 years after I picked up my first air guitar.

For the last 12 years I've reverted back behind my closed "bedroom" door, playing a bit of "real" guitar while the record button is engaged. The thoughts of rocking a crowd are still in my mind, even at 39 years of age.

What is wrong with me?

My circle of "friends" has changed over the past 12 years as well. Having kids and getting older seems to have that effect. Instead of hanging out with thrift store fashion shoppers, playing music and avoiding the normal things of life at all cost, I'm "hanging" out with lawyers, doctors and successful business men who I have little in common with.

I would not give up my wife-and-kids life for anything, but I still have a major longing to rock.

So, at almost 40, I feel that any chance I have of ever rocking again is slim to none. That's not a happy thought. Are there any other 40 something husbands/fathers out there that feel the need to rock? I doubt it, but I'm still hoping.

Whoa is me.

This week's song came together rather nicely, I must admit. I like "Part 1". I like the break in the middle, and I really like how "Part 2" enters the song. The overall vibe of the song is just appealing to me.

There was a point Thursday afternoon that I about threw in the towel, but stuff just started to fall in to place like it always seems to do.

As with most weeks, the drums started things off. I wrote two different repetitive drum beats and decided to join them together with a couple of measures of tapping on the ride cymbal. I then picked up the bass guitar and nothing happened. Well, things happened, but just a bunch of lame bass lines. I finally wrote something decent for part one which sparked a quick idea for part two as well.

Completing the foundation for the the two parts took longer than I anticipated. I was running out of time and out of desire. The main guitar line for the second part of the song happened next with little pain. I felt like with vocals that part of the song would be finished.

On part 1, I jump from one spot to the next, trying out anything that made noise. The guitar line where the vocals come in was written first. The other sounds of part 1 eventually happened, but how they happened is a blur. I do know the little solo at the end of part 1 is played on a bass guitar.

I'm not too down with the intro of the song. The synth part seems a bit blah. That would have been something I would have worked longer on if I had had more time.

The vocals and lyrics came about in a quick and easy fashion. I decided a little guitar riff and the end of the songs was needed for the finishing touch.

While I was concentrating of the two main parts, the middle ride taps were left all alone. Frustrated, I tried several wankey guitar bits, but they all reminded me of wankey guitar bits. As Friday night was soon to be Saturday morning, the thought of just leaving it as-is was becoming a grand thought.

I started to hear voices in the back of my mind.

It has been done before. I listen to a few bands (Macha in particular) that have incorporated crowd noises into their songs. But I was desperate.

I was thinking "space" themed chatter would be cool. A quick search on Google came up with plenty of "Houston we have a problem" and "one small step" recordings. I needed something more generic. I did a search for "bar crowd noises" and discovered what you hear during the break of the song. Perfect.

And after 26 weeks of doing this, I've learned there is no formula. It's a state of mind.

Once I allow myself to create and have fun creating, age and social standing and all the other cares of this world don't seem to matter. It's a great place to be and it happens every single week.

I know I was created by God to create music. It's as simple as that. As a Christian (lost about half of you right there), I believe He put this in me to bring Him glory (now the rest of you are gone). I've lost sight of this in the past. And at 39 it doesn't make a lot of sense, but I know it's the truth. Faith, I guess.

I'm not the most talented musician. I'm not writing the next great rock masterpiece. Some will view this as garbage and a total waste of time, but I don't care. I'm creating again. I'm developing a discipline that will hopefully be a part of my life from here on out - wherever out may lead or end.

week 25: wide is the path

2011-06-24T23:08:00.003-05:00

Back from California.

Tired. Worn out. Suitcases full of dirty clothes. No desire or energy to rock-n-roll.

We were suppose to be back home at 5:30 PM on Wednesday. The potties on our plane from Oakland to Houston stopped working. I was willing to hold mine - but no. We had to stop in Phoenix to get the stink holes fixed which caused us to miss our next flight and not get home until 11:15 PM.

Thursday was not fun.

I was determined to do laundry, cut the grass, write music, keep kiddies entertained, go to the grocery store, cook dinner and encourage a depressed wife that had to return to work. I failed to accomplish most of this.

I did record drums during the day on Thursday. Late Thursday night I created about a million guitar and bass parts that sounded like the poo stuck in the plane's potties.

Friday, with piles of clean and dirty laundry, things started to come together as they always seem to do.

I had two different bass lines that I really liked. The one that did not make it on the song was my favorite, but it did not play well with any guitar parts I would write. I settled for bass line #2.

I wrote several guitar parts that worked with bass line #2, each creating a different vibe for the song. I went with two of them and panned them left and right. Depending on which side was louder greatly affected the vibe of the song. I committed to the levels, but as the mixing process went on, my commitment changed.

Vocals were a major pain. I was on the verge of my third instrumental when I started singing the melody you here now.

I did not have a lot of time to work on the structure of the song. I just went with what I was most familiar with.

Intro. Verse. Bridge. Verse. Outro.

I don't seem to stray too much from this. Sometimes there is a chorus with vocals thrown in. Other times there is a repeating theme (like last week) with different things added for interest.

I don't really study song structures. I've always tried to avoid the V-C-V-C-B-C pop song thing. I need to explore different formulas. Maybe next week.

week 24: snake bite

2011-06-17T23:47:00.001-05:00

California is a beautiful state. My family and I are thoroughly enjoying our time here hanging out with Jake, Amy, Devon and crew.

I was a little concerned earlier in the year about this vacation and how I would continue the writing and recording project while being away.

The answer: record two songs the week before we leave.

I guess this could be considered cheating, but writing two complete songs in four days while preparing for a two week excursion overrides any thoughts of taking the easy way out.

I did have an idea of trying to record something while in California. It's a good thing I did not do that. We have been going nonstop.

The break has been nice. I have not thought about music, my drumming woes, turning 40, Southern humidity, the downfall of mankind. Well, I have thought about the downfall of mankind - there are some freaky people out here.

Last week's tune was a lot of fun to work on which made having to write this week's song fun as well. I was on a roll with a lot of good vibes that carried over to Week 24.

After a few hours of work, the song was finished.

I really like the sound of the bass, drums and vocals carrying the song at the beginning and having the guitars come in later. It's sparse (for me), and I had no desire to complicate it like I usually do.

The drums were easy. I "excel" at semi-busy repetitive beats. I played the whole song through - no loops. I overdubbed a snare/hat as well as slightly mixed in the drum machine beat I was playing to.

I wrote the bass line before I even thought about the drums or anything else. It reminds me of one of my favorite bands 'th Faith Healers. With the drums added, it was almost a blatant ripoff. Thankfully (or un-thankfully) the vocals and guitar erased the thought of it being a long lost track from "Imaginary Friends".

So, Friday night of Week 23 arrived. I posted that week's song and loaded Week 24 on to the laptop in order to upload it the following Friday in Cali.

Friday night of week 24 - I'm about to fall asleep in a hotel in San Francisco when I realize I have not uploaded this week's song. I also realize I do not have WiFi - well, free WiFi. I posted the tune on Saturday once the web was free again.

We have about five more days to travel on the Left Coast. I will only have two days to write, record and finish Week 25 once I'm back home in the Dirty South. Yee-Haw.

week 23: perils of summer

2011-06-10T23:48:00.007-05:00

Recently, my life has been consumed by a tragic event that is unfolding in the lives of a family that I know very well.

I've mentioned this devastation in an earlier blog, so I want rehash it here. But…

I have wanted to say and do so much to the villainous villain in this situation.

Amazingly I have remained silent, but it's been more difficult to keep my mouth shut with all the new crap I hear on a weekly basis.

I vent my anger, disappointment and sorrow through many of the songs I have written for the 205211 project. It's helping me cope and is keeping from saying or doing anything I may or may not regret later.

This week was no exception.

Due to a 12 day excursion to Northern California next week, I had to write two songs this week. I started Sunday and wrapped everything up on Thursday afternoon. I even finished remixing all the bass-lacking tunes. A busy but productive week.

Week 23 was written on the guitar first - a rare feat for me lately. Drums were difficult as usually, but everything else fell into place with little effort. I have a tendency of vastly changing a guitar-first written tune from its original intentions, but not this time. Due to time constraints and actually liking what I started with, the tune remained pretty much the same from beginning to end.

Bands are usually described by what other bands they sound like. It's like a vicious cycle. More times than not the music a band listens to the most makes its way into their own music. For some reason, I always thought I was immune to this. Not that I was writing something so original and groundbreaking, but it seemed that whatever I was being compared to I did not listen to.

I joke that my tunes sound like a failed attempt to sound like my influences. There is some truth to the joke.

This week something in the song overwhelmingly reminded me of an influence. I decided to embrace the similarities instead of attempting to hide them. I won't mention who it is, but I think this 90s band and current solo artist's influences are pretty obvious in this week's tune. Or maybe not.

High-ho silver, ride.

week 22: of days like this

2011-06-03T23:48:00.000-05:00

The week started out like any other and ended the same. Another song.

I've become intensely frustrated with playing the drums. I feel like I come up with some decent ideas, but I fail to execute them properly. My timing is terrible. I lean heavily on editing the tempo, hits and mis-hits in Logic. It's tedious and burning me out, but I'm still up for the challenge.

This week I came up with a couple of simple beats with the idea of recording small bits and looping them. It did not work out as planned, and again, was tedious.

Once I got the drums somewhat situated, I added a simple bass line for the first part. I quickly came up with a guitar part as well, but playing it correctly proved a bit trying. After about 20 minutes or so I had it all worked out.

I had trouble with the chorus - mainly coming up with something bass/guitar wise that would compliment the verse. I finally settled on something and preceded to record the bass and guitar parts for the entire song.

Vocals - lyrically and melodically - were more difficult than usually this week. Everything I tried sounded like poo. As this week's time was ticking away, I "stumbled" upon what you hear now. The verse is very monotonous, but in my opinion works extremely well. Ditto on the chorus.

A side note on the lyric writing process... I usually walk up to the mic and start singing whatever just to get a melody figured out. Quite a few times during this project, the words that come out end up staying in some form or fashion - like this weeks "remind me of how I'm suppose to feel" and the following "remind me" repeats. It seems that the words I use to find a melody fit the best with the melody. Some weeks the freestyle words work and other weeks they are an embarrassment.

Overall, even with all the burnout and tedious tasks, I am pleased with the outcome. I think it's one of the better songs I have done so far.

week 21: chances are

2011-05-27T23:03:00.006-05:00

You should disregard everything I mentioned in last week's blog.

#1: I should listen to my own stuff a little more after I finish recording it and placing it on the interwebs.

If you've been following along on the Tournament Knights facebook fan page, you know what I'm about to type.

I use a first generation iPod Nano to test (a/b) my mixes on other speakers (mainly my car stereo system). This is easier and quicker than using my iPhone.

Anyway... It seems the Nano had the Bass Booster function turned on.

I bought a subwoofer to go with my mixing monitors a few weeks ago to help with the low end. I listened to other music by real bands that I was familiar with to attempt to set the sub up properly. I thought I had been successful except that my mixes were extremely bass heavy when listening to them on other speakers through the Nano.

So, the sub was not really working out for me.

Earlier last week one of my tunes filled the sonic airwaves in my auto as I was cruising down the road. I listen to music through my iPhone in my car. The tune sounded thin. I know road noise can quickly cancel out the bass frequencies, but the lack of low end was due to more than just road noise.

When I got home I had a few minutes to investigate the problem. To make a long story short, that's when I discovered the engagement of the Bass Booster.

Everything made sense now. The Nano was producing more bass than I was mixing, which at first caused my mixes to be boomy. And then, after adjusting the bass, caused the mixes to be thin.

How long had this been going on? After doing a quick listen, I think it all started around Week 9 or 10. What to do now?

I decided to start remixing from Week 14 to the present. I have completed that phase of the bass fiasco. The earlier weeks will be taken care of next week.

What does it matter? I don't know. It's not like I'm some famous artist who has thousands of people downloading his latest creations each week. Those that listen to my tunes are (as far as I can tell) small in number. If I do happen to lure in a new listener, I want to hit them with my best shot. My recordings are already weak. Why make them weaker with a lack of low end?

I am one of those that believes the quality of the song writing is more important than the quality of the recording. There are a lot of bands and songs that I like that lack the recording quality to compete with today's mainstream, polished, big studio, crammed through a hit machine, mind-numbing garbage that penetrates the ears of so many. I'll have to also say that there are a lot bands I like that have fantastic songs and fantastic recordings. Not sure what point I'm trying to make, but...

If a song grabs me, it's not because of how it was recorded per se, but because of how it was written.

Can recording quality interfere with the written quality of the song? My answer would be yes. Can a high quality recording elevate a poorly written song. Probably. Have I just contradicted myself?

I view myself more as a writer than a recording engineer. My goal for recording is to take what I have written and turn it into something that can be listened to by others. Do I want to get better at recording? I do. I also want to improve my writing as well.

I think I walk a fine line in that what I write is not understood by a large mass of listeners. I guess that could mean that I suck, but suckage is in the ears of the beholder. I don't think I suck to everyone. Those on the fence could be swayed to one side or the other by how easy or difficult it is to listen to my tunes - based on the recording quality.

blah blah blah

My sub makes sense now.

#2: Last weeks blog ramblings centered around how "melodic" my vocals have become - well to me at least. Not this week.

I purposely decided to kick it old school and bring back the yelling and monotone speak/sing. It was fun, refreshing and didn't hurt my throat at all.

I feel like this week captured one of my better drumming performances. The song, as far as drums and bass, gelled together quickly. That was a good thing sense I spent most of the week dealing with the bass issues of previous songs.

The other parts of the song were a struggle. Late Friday afternoon turned into late Friday night, and I was just throwing anything I could come up with at the song to see what would stick.

This was one of those weeks I wish I had more time for the writing process. I like the final outcome, but there are some parts and decisions I've gone back and forth on in my head.

The predominant keys at the first, middle and last of the song were a last minute addition. I struggled with the intro and outro of the song and could not come up with anything that I liked. I stumbled upon the keyboard line and went with it.

Including the keys in the middle of the song was one of those decisions that I've gone back and forth on since finishing the song. I originally liked the idea and sound of just having the bass and drums through that part until the chorus kicked in for the last time, but the keys sounded really cool during that part as well. I decided to include them in the middle with the thinking that it tied the song together a bit more.

To wrap it all up... I think the remixing of the songs has helped them. They sound fuller to me and better represent what I was trying to achieve recording wise. I know it's a pain to those that follow my process week to week. I'm not sure if any of you have bothered to download the new mixes, and to some extent that doesn't bother me.

Again, not to sound all high and mighty, but the 205211 thing as well as this blog are for me. I'm having a great time. I'm creating again. In a strange way I feel more alive.

On to Week 22 (and remixing a few of the previous weeks).

week 20: he said she said

2011-05-20T21:53:00.004-05:00

I don't really listen to my own stuff that often. With the 20[52]11 project, things go so quickly that I forget what the songs sound like each week.

Before 2011, writing and recording a song was usually a two to four month ordeal. By the end, I knew the song inside and out to the point of almost hating it.

It would usually take a good month or so before I could listen to it without criticizing it to death. After six months, the song would make it in my regular rotation without being skipped.

My listening habits usually consist of riding in an automobile. I have a fantastic home stereo system that makes everything sound good, but I usually don't make the time to plop down on the couch and listen to tunes.

Unless I've just purchased a new release from one of my favorite bands or am in the mood for something specific, my iPhone's iTunes is usually set on "shuffle". It's like my own personal radio station without all the Lady Gag-a-Maggot or Katy Poop-face garbage.

The other day one of my older tunes from 2006 blasted across the speakers. I immediately took notice of how my vocals have changed over the years (or over this year).

Early on, like back in the 90s, I started out with the soft shoegazey vocal delivery to float atop the mass of power chords and noise.

I guess around 1996 or 97 I was introduced to Unwound and my vocals changed forever. I wanted to be Justin Trosper - talky/monotone type vocals with angst and screaming.

During the band days, I had to be able to sing, play the guitar and make a fool of myself on stage all at the same time. I was limited with what I could do vocally.

In 2000 when I started writing and recording my "solo" tunes, I kept the monotone/aggressive tone, but being able to play and sing at the same time was not as important. After I finished "the (51) torpedoes" in 2001, an opportunity was handed to me to play a major show with the tunes on the just-finished EP. I panicked because there were major parts throughout the release where I could not sing the vocal line while playing the specific guitar part.

In a turn of events, the opportunity to play no longer presented itself. From then on I've made sure I can play and sing simultaneously - just in case.

From 2000 to 2010 my vocals did not change much. The screaming had pretty much disappeared. Not because of lack on angst, but because it hurt to do it. Old age or lack of practice I guess.

That brings us to the now and Week 20.

I think my vocal approach has changed a lot just within this year. I don't have time week-to-week to make sure a song fits a certain imaginary mold inside my head. I just roll with what I got, good or bad. The monotone thing has faded a bit. It's being replaced by melody (well, melody to me).

Again, during 2000-2010, vocals would usually follow the guitar line (a "trick" I picked up from early Blonde Redhead songs). Now, writing vocal parts are done last with little to no regard of my ability to sing and play at the same time.

I think the rapid pace of writing a song each week has stretched my vocal creativity. Would Justin approve of my direction as of late? I don't know. Again, good or bad, I think I've expanded in a way I would not have had I not taken on this project.

If the opportunity ever arises for me to perform with a band again, there are ways to make what I've created so far translate to the stage.

This week started out like any other - drums first and bass/guitar/vocals next. The drums were exceptionally troublesome this time though.

As I've stated in earlier entries, I write the drum beat with the help of a software-based drum machine. Once I have things worked out, I blast the drum machine beat through headphones and record the drums while I play along with the beat.

As I'm playing along, I can usually tell where I mess up; but the one area I do not notice until listening back is the sloppy play of the bass drum. Every week I have to fix my lazy foot by slicing and dicing the beat in Logic. This week, with a slow beat, things were extremely bad.

I guess with practice I will get better, but I don't have time to practice. I'm even starting to think that the software drum machine I use laggs in spots which adds to my bass drum demise.

What I would give for an Akai MPC-2000. I used to have one (people in-the-know are not allowed to laugh). I love the beats of Tobacco of Black Moth Super Rainbow and Tobacco fame. Not that I'm a beat maker, but I think I could make something work. I mean, let's be honest - my drums sound like glorified drum machine beats anyway.

Anyway, I just need to stay away from slow straight beats until my right foot starts cooperating with my other limbs.

Overall, I think I'm happy with Week 20. I had to tweak it to death, but I think I've masked the tempo-killing imperfections enough to allow these to go unnoticed to the average listener.

Not sure how the beginning and end of this blog entry tie together...

***UPDATE***

A couple of things...

I should listen to my tunes more often. It seems the iPod Nano I was using to test my mixes had the Bass Booster turned on which inadvertently caused me to mix the bass levels low. I know Weeks 14-20 were affected. Not sure if any earlier ones were.

I noticed the lack of bass because I was cruising in my vehicle and Week 14 came on through my iPhone and sounded rather thin. I know road noise can cancel out the low end, so when I got home I did some further research and discovered the problem.

Weeks 14 and 17 have been updated. I will critically listen to the rest and see if they warrant a remix.

I'm anal and things like this bother me. I know people have already downloaded the songs and have little to no desire to download the updates again. But... I have noted all updates on the tournamentknights.com site. Download the updates if you so desire.

Also, follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/tknightsrock and like me on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Tournament-Knights/97447962648.

week 19: the appearance of light

2011-05-13T23:12:00.003-05:00

I remember how it all began.

I had just bought a Tascam cassette 4-track recorder and convinced a couple of dudes to help me record my songs.

Six years later, we played our last show as a band.

Times seemed simple then - as far as recording went. You were limited to four tracks (unless you bounced) and limited on how many retakes you could do before the tape started to deteriorate.

Fun times.

I can't imagine trying to do this project on a 4-track cassette recorder. It would totally change the way I work. Also, everyone would hear in greater detail how lousy I am at playing drums. No computer to attempt to fix my bad timing.

I am tossing around a few ideas for a recording gimmick next year. One of those ideas is to buy a 4-track and limit myself to four tracks. Mix everything in the 4-track and master on the computer. I would have to get someone else to play drums. It would not be an every week deal. Maybe once a month. Still in the thinking stage.

This week started off early and well - until Thursday. I pretty much had the song written by Wednesday. I had some scratch parts recorded and was working on some vocals until I realized the song was utter garbage - more so than the other songs I've allowed to see the light of day.

So, on Thursday I was in pannick mode. I decided to just record a simple beat that repeated for about three minutes.

In my desperate state of mind, I decided to record the drums with my iPhone using the FourTrack app. Without thinking, I set up a click track (I can't play drums to a click track), plugged in some headphones, sat at the drums, pressed record and started playing. I played until I really messed up. I return-to-zeroed the app, armed track two, pressed record and recorded the beat again.

So, the drums on Week 19 are taken from my iPhone (except for the overdubbed drums at the end).

It's the trendy thing for bands to record on their iPhone. Why not. It's kind of fun. It was a lot easier than setting up mics and getting levels on my preamps. It even sounds okay, but I like lo-fi trashy sounds.

I preceded to write/record a bass line and twiddled around with some guitar parts. Instead of picking one guitar part, I decided to use them all. I just kept adding them in different stages as the song progressed. Once the part entered the game, it did not exit until the end of the song. Hence the mass of chaos at the end.

There was really no room or time for vocals. Instant instrumental.

week 18: miles and miles of sand

2011-05-06T22:49:00.003-05:00

18 down and 34 to go.

I feel extremely confident I will accomplish writing and recording 52 songs in 52 weeks for 2011. My only concern is during the Summer months when I will not have nearly the "free" time that I have now. Also, in a month we are heading to San Francisco to visit my brother-in-law and sister-in-law. We will be gone for 10 days. I need to come up with a plan fast.

The recovery/clean-up effort is still in full-swing here in Alabama due to the 100+ tornadoes that ravaged our landscape on April 27. The thought process for many of us here is "what can I do?" and "when can I do it?". When you finally do something, the devastation is so great, it feels like you've done very little. But, there are so many who are doing "very little" that a whole lot is getting accomplished. Strange how it works like that.

That's been on my mind this week. I even had the opportunity to go in to a neighborhood that was totally wiped out and hand out food to the utility workers, National Guard, police and residents in the area.

You know, a bit of guilt sets in when I think of how blessed I am that my family and home were not touched at all. I know that's a wrong way of looking at things. Unfortunately, a bit of guilt kicks in on the other side with the thinking that I'm so blessed, why am I not doing more.

This crap's been ping-ponging in my head all week.

Another situation that is messing me up is this dude (who shall remain nameless) who is screwing up his family (which I am a part of) because of his selfishness and inability to keep his microscopic parts in his pants. It's been emotionally and physically draining on all involved, but especially the wife and kids that are feeling the brunt of this loser's stupid/idiotic decisions. Weeks 15-17 have dealt directly with this.

I may have crossed the line with this info being revealed on a blog, but no one reads this and I really don't care.

Music has always been a type of therapy for me - a way for me to release what I'm feeling in a creative/obscure way. I've seen this with the family situation. Don't expect some "We Are the World" lameness from me due to the tornadoes.

But, the combination of these two things has sucked the creative juices right out of me. Don't feel sorry for me. I'm in no way looking for sympathy. Again, I'm blessed beyond what I deserve. If you pray, pray for those involved in the devastations mentioned above.

Week 18 started like most weeks - recording drums. I came up with two completely different beats and decided to smash them together to see what would happen.

I'm not sure what happened (or was happening), but it was too late Thursday afternoon to chunk the whole song and start over. I had to go with what I had.

Individually, I really liked each part. Making the them play nice was more difficult.

It hit me Friday morning that Week 18 reminded me of Unwound's "The World is Flat" in a foggy (anything to make me feel better) sort of way. Not necessarily with the vocals/guitar/bass/drums, but in the feel of the song - maybe. Anything I write that even ever-so-slightly reminds me or anyone else of Unwound is a win for me.

(On a side note... anyone familiar with Unwound will immediately tell me this song sounds nothing like them. Please keep those thoughts to yourself.)

I trudged on ahead and confronted the task of coming up with a vocal melody and lyrics. (On another side note, lyrics have been easy this year. I could not really tell you what my criteria for "good" lyrics is, but everything that I've penned so far has past my unable-to-clarify test.)

Not this week.

Well, they past the test, but were very difficult to write. The hokey meter was seeing red a good bit of the time.

Mixing was easier than it has been in a while. What I seemed to be spending more time on was editing the parts to make them appear to flow together. I ended up adding a few tracks of direct guitars processed by Logic's guitar amp simulator to add the finishing touches.

Anyway, Week 18 is in the books. On to Week 19...

week 17: padre del año

2011-04-29T23:19:00.015-05:00

This has been a rough week.

I am thankful for my family and the things that make my life easy.

Recently, many in my state lost everything. The only inconvenience I had to deal with this week was a few hours of no power.

Again, I'm thankful but saddened.

Saturday, my son and I helped at a resource distribution center near one of the devastated areas. Though it really wasn't a tremendous sacrifice on my part, every bit helps. It's amazing to see the outpouring of compassion. Truly amazing.

Doing the 205211 project this week seemed so meaningless. I put Week 17 together Thursday and Friday.

Besides the storms, there are quite a few other destructive events going on around me. I think this added to the dark feel of the song.

I'm thankful for the ability to write and record, and for the outlet it gives me to express myself.

For those interested, here are a couple of links to sites that offer many ways to help the victims here in Alabama.

::: Alabama Tornado Relief (link #1) :::

::: Alabama Tornado Relief (link #2) :::

week 16: theories on cannibalism

2011-04-22T23:33:00.001-05:00

One of my favorite bands is Spoon. I like Britt Daniel's take on pop music. I read somewhere that they record a lot of parts for a song and skillfully strip away the excess to create the perfectly sparse pop song. I've learned over the years that this is more difficult than it appears. I think the key to this is having good sounding parts.

I tend to do the opposite. I usually start off with something simple and begin adding layers of noise. Not saying either way is right or wrong - just a different approach. I sometimes long to be able to write simple and sparse, but I'm too comfortable and a bit stuck in my current writing process. I tend to think my lack of recording quality ushers in the additional tracks of sound. Or maybe I just like chaos.

This week started out simple enough. I had a chord progression that I wrote on my acoustic. I was going to partner that with a repetitive drum machine beat. My goal was simplicity.

The beat came together quickly, but I soon decided to ditch the acoustic guitar and plug the Strats in. Even though the original chord progression is not evident (well, the progression is evident - just not the chords), the play between the bass and the multiple guitar parts carries the same feel, but in a noisier and more interesting way.

A lot of the drop-outs and drop-ins of certain parts all happened by accident. I was writing on the fly, adding parts here and there, and had grand plans of building up the song to a high level of sonic destruction. As I was listening back to the song looking for another opportunity to place another "groundbreaking" guitar riff, the appeal of the up/down or in/out flow of the song quickly ended my six string daggers.

But I couldn't leave well enough alone. There seemed to be something missing in the area of the drums. On Friday afternoon, I placed one mike in the middle of the room and quickly came up with a simple beat with limited change ups and recorded it with hopes that it would play nice with the drum machine beat. I think it worked out perfectly. The only downside is that this weeks song begins exactly like Week 14. Oh well... blame it on my ability to only play one fill and using that same fill over and over and over.

Even before I began Week 16, I had a lyric going through my head that I was determined to make a part of this week's tune. "All of the fools say, 'If it feels right, how can it be wrong.'" Needless to say, that line carries a major role in the song.

Not to pat myself on my back, but I really like this song.

On a side note, I put new strings on one of my Strats. I think the previous strings had been on there for about four years. I had the new strings for about four years as well. Not sure about string shelf life. I prefer dull strings anyway. I also used a Shure SM58 on vocals. I guess I prefer dull vocals as well.

week 15: sucker punched

2011-04-15T23:31:00.009-05:00

Just like last week, the writing process was difficult again this week. Maybe I'm losing my touch. Like last week, I got a decent drum beat fairly quickly, but adding the rest of the parts proved difficult.

I've been highly distracted - more than usual. My mind is in about a million different places.

Friday nights feel like a major accomplishment. The next thing I know it's Monday, and another song is due in a few days.

Only 37 more weeks/songs to go. Yippee.

This week I bought a matching subwoofer to go with my KRKs. This was a cheaper solution to part of my monitor issues. It helped with the lows. The mids are still a crap shoot.

I think a bit of discouragement has set in. Before I started 205211 my wife and I were having a discussion about fame and fortune and the fact that my music will never achieve any of those. I know that last sentence sounds bad. My wife was not suggesting that my tunes are a pile of dung. I was just making a point to her that I never started doing this form of art for profit or recognition. Maybe that's an excuse used by less talented people to justify their lack of talent. I don't know. I do know there are some bands I listen to that I think are brilliant but for the most part are unheard.

I guess what I'm saying is I don't use American Idol or the Billboard Top 40 as a measuring stick for what is good or where I need to be musically. How well would Satomi of the band Deefhoof do on American Idol? I would rather listen to her do her thing than anyone that has ever graced the stage of AI. And I would argue that AI could never produce the creativity or talent of a Deerhoof. But, to each his own.

I have not found my "own" yet (or they haven't found me).

Deep down I don't think it bothers me that the songs for 205211 are not being downloaded or played that frequently. I never started this for my "fans" or "followers". I don't have those. I would dare say that 99% of my facebook friends are in the majority as far as their musical consumption.

I'm learning that writing a recording a new song every week (no matter how good or bad) is hard work. And what's the reward? Is there a reward?

The original intent for 205211 was a drastic motivation to get my tail in gear to start making music again. That has happened - and as I type, read and edit this post I'm becoming more and more comfortable and at peace with that.

I'm starting to sound like one of those bands that have to tell their audience to start clapping to the beat of their song. You know, "Come on everybody! Put your hands together and make some noise!" I always hated that. Maybe the reason they're not clapping and making noise is because you suck.

I'm not looking for a handout here. So the three of you that read this blog, please don't start showering me with praise.

I have a friend (my #1 fan) who recently quit facebook. I think it only lasted a day, but still... We were discussing how everyone is screaming and shouting and saying, "Look at me! Look at me!" The problem is everyone is doing this and no one is paying attention to anyone else. I'm guilty of this.

There a people who post links to their tunes on Tape Op. I don't check them out, but I want everyone to check out my stuff.

I'm starting to ramble and this is going nowhere.

I'm determined to finish 205211. In fact, I have another musical motivational gimmick (mmg) in the works for next year. I'm having a blast (for the most part) and creating music again.

I think I may be avoiding a mid-life crisis as well. No cute young blonde and a red sports car for me. Just give me a pair of $900 studio monitors so I can hear some midrange!!!!!

week 14: explode exploding

2011-04-08T23:47:00.002-05:00

I've had the crud this week and received (what seems like) a plethora of bad news. With that said, this was the first week that I did not feel like working on 205211 - at all. It's probably been the most difficult week as far as writing is concerned.

Usually the songs (melody, beat, guitar chops, etc.) come pretty quickly and with ease. Week 14 felt like a bad case of constipation. The title of the song has nothing to do with this analogy.

Things started falling in to place on Thursday. I was struggling with a vocal melody. While in the shower getting all fresh and clean before I went to pick up the kiddies from school, I came up with the most "awesomest" melody. Instead of running upstairs to quickly record a scratch vocal so I would not forget it, I chose to eat a quick sandwich and head off to carpool. I forgot the melody.

What ended up in the song may or may not be the original melody. If you think it is awesome, then I remembered my showering masterpiece. If it seems average and a bit uninspiring (how I feel about it), then I forgot and settled for something else.

On a side note, I've been struggling with my monitors. I've had these KRK rp5s for a few years now and feel like I know them pretty well. In the past I would mix on them and A/B the mixes in my VW Jetta. The Jetta had a Monsoon factory stereo which made everything sound terrible. I viewed my car as NS10s on wheels. If I could get a mix to sound half-way decent in the Jetta, it would sound sort of OK anywhere. I basically learned my monitors with the Jetta's help.

I no longer have the Jetta. It's been replaced by a Nissan Pathfinder with a Bose system - not much better than the Monsoon. In general, most tunes I listen to sound pretty good in the gas guzzler. Getting my mixes on the KRKs to translate well in the Pathfinder has been tricky. The lows and mids are an issue.

I'm sure the KRKs are scooped in the mids and have little to no bass, but... blah blah blah

To make a long story short... I want new monitors, but I don't really have $900 to step up from what I have now. My room is well treated with bass traps and a well layed out mixing position.

I removed the cloud above my mixing desk about a year ago because we were trying to sell the house. This week I put the cloud back up and also bought six sheets of rockwool to add some more traps/absorption. Not sure if it has helped, but it probably did not hurt.

On to Week 15...

week 13: off could be on

2011-04-01T23:43:00.005-05:00

I am officially a quarter of the way done with this 20[52]11 challenge. The first 13 weeks have been fun. I get a bit overwhelmed thinking about having 39 more songs to write and record. One week at a time.

This has been a pretty uneventful week. My main reason for this blog is to help me remember what went on each week as far as writing and recording is concerned. I'll usually throw in a personal tidbit just to make it a bit more entertaining. I have nothing this week.

I used the Kay again for the main guitar tracks. I compressed the living daylights out of the tracks to add some interest.

I write the drum parts using a primitive software drum machine program named Doggiebox. I map out the beats in the software then play along on the drums. I contemplated just using the Doggiebox beat for drums, but decided to record real drums. I panned the software beat to the left and smashed it to oblivion. My attempt at drumming is panned hard right.

I used my old Yamaha Portasoud PSS-120 for the bass/synth sounds. This was a thrift store find many years ago. I added a line-out to it so I could record it direct or through amps. I've tried using it on several of the past songs, but it never worked. This week it did.

I'm having sinus issues and don't feel like doing anything. Week 14 will be a pain, but I will overcome.

week 12: raise your daggers

2011-03-25T18:32:00.000-05:00

This was a short week for me as far as writing and recording.

On Monday it was still up in the air if I was going on a camping trip Thursday through Saturday. Tuesday night I knew for sure I was going.

I spent Wednesday night attending my son's Lacrosse game, packing and finishing up Week 12. I finished around 12:30 am Thursday morning and went to bed.

I listened again to the final mix Thursday morning and decided to go ahead and post it.

On the way to the campground, I listened again to the mix and decided I hated it. I remixed it on Sunday and posted a new version. (This is riveting information, isn't it?)

A few years ago someone leaked some Led Zeppelin drum outtakes. These were made available for anyone who wished to download them. I participated. The outtakes are fun to listen to. John Bonham grunts and snarls as he beats the living daylights out of the drums. I took one of the outtakes, cut it up and looped it. The results are the drums for Week 12.

I had trouble writing something for the beat. Everything I played sounded just like Jimmy Page (not really). Late Monday night I settled on a guitar part, but it was too late to record because the kids were asleep. I decided to use my battery powered mini Fender Twin. I miced it up and went to town. I had plans to rerecord the parts, but decided to keep them. They are the main rhythm guitars in the song. The leads were recorded using big boy guitar amps.

As I mentioned earlier, I remixed the song Sunday night. I also wrote and recorded a new bass line as well as a new vocal melody. I am happier now with the results.

I'm almost a fourth of the way through. Overall I'm pleased with the songs but a bit frustrated with the recording quality. Everything is rushed and, unfortunately, I don't realize how bad something sounds until it is too late to re-record. My monitoring is a weak link as far as hearing and understanding what the bass is doing. Running back and forth from my desk to my car to a/b mixes is getting old. I may need to break down and by a sub to go with the monitors. Again, riveting - I know...

week 11: scar removal

2011-03-18T23:57:00.004-05:00

As I mentioned last week, this week was Spring Break for the kids. I viewed it as a practice run for the Summer when the young ones would be home all day. It worked out okay. In fact, I was more focused during the times I was writing and recording while the kids were entertaining themselves.

On a side note...

My kids think that anytime the "studio" door is shut and they hear music it's because I am recording. That's a good thing except when they sneak in unheard while my head is lodged between my monitors intensely listening to a mix. I'll stop the playback, lean back in my chair and get the $%&@ scared out of me because there is now an undetected figure standing right behind me. I'm sure I've lost a few years off my life this week.

I tried the [Glyn Johns] technique for recording drums for Week 11. With better mics and a better room, I would have been thrilled with the outcome. But I'm limited as far as mics, room and crappy sounding drums. I have my eye on a couple of mics and am in desperate need of new drum heads. My lack of money will keep things the way they are for a while. The Glyn Johns technique (or variations of it) will be my go to setup for now on.

One of my favorite amps is dying - a solid-state Heathkit TA-17. I bought it off eBay years ago and made the mistake of plugging it in to a speaker cabinet with blown speakers. The amp did not like this and started smoking. There's a great tube amp tech here in town - reasonably priced and does excellent work. He does not work on non-tube amps. He recommended a guy, but warned me that he is expensive. He was expensive, but he got my amp back up and running. I've enjoyed playing through it. I use it for bass and guitar on a lot of stuff, but now the built-in vibrato is "bleeding" through the amp. Whether I'm using the bass side or guitar side, I'm getting a throbbing noise through the speakers. It usually starts happening after about 20 minutes or so of the amp being on. Annoying. I'm not sure if I'll attempt to fix it myself or return it to eBay as is.

When I first got in to playing rock'n'roll, the Shure SM-57 was the mic of choice for so many things live and recording. Myself, as well as others have grown weary of its sound. A few years ago I read an article in Tape Op Magazine about removing the transformer in the mic to "better" the sound. I did the mod and have used the mic on bass guitar as well as kick drum because of the way it handles the low frequencies now. This week I decided to mic the guitar amp. I'm not sure if it was how I had the overdrive set up or what I was playing, but I really liked the outcome. I will probably go to this mic for guitar again in the future.

I'm realizing that musically I'm beginning to repeat myself. I do a lot of the same things (picking style) on guitar from song to song. The predictability of the drums (my lame fills) are a byproduct of my inability to play them. I guess I could say it's my "style", which is fine, but I would like to expand what I write as the year goes on. I'm finding that I really don't have the time to practice/push myself with the drums. I think I still could come up with some more interesting beats. We'll see.

Next week will be a short week. I will not be able to record on Thursday or Friday, so expect and new song by late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning.

week 10: clarity on a daily basis

2011-03-11T10:17:00.001-06:00

This week was a lesson in time management. I realized I have no concept of managing my time.

I am a stay-at-home-dad. My kids are school-aged. With those facts alone, most think I have all the time in the world. Well, I don't.

I've been doing this dad@home thing a little over a decade now. I do it all and have done it all (I think). Keaton's "Mr. Mom" (while humorous) is slightly offensive. I would match my skills up against any suburban Soccer Mom.

The verdict is still out on how my major role in raising our kids has affected their lives. I am definitely not the poster child for stay-at-home-dads. I've seen a few documentaries/news stories on Mr. Moms. They creeped me out a little.

Anyway, back to time-management. I figured out back in December that I could feasibly have 15 hours of "free time" a week to put together a song for the 20[52]11 project. That's 3 hours a day, Monday through Friday. That was calculating carpool, straightening up the house, etc. Other things like laundry, grocery shopping, cleaning bathrooms, etc. would eat away some of that "free time". The plan was to do all the writing and recording while the kids and wife were away.

Those calculations so far have been way off. There are a lot of things that I did not consider - one being my amazing ability to get distracted from the task at hand.

Take this week for instance - I decided to update the look of tournamentknights.com and this blog. I discovered that the banner on Band Camp (where my site is located) can be customized with image maps (adding links to parts of an image). This news gave me the idea of making the main site and blog have a more uniform look. The blog was an iWeb site. I have a love/hate relationship with iWeb. Through countless trials and tribulations, tweak after countless tweak, I decided to make the jump to blogger.com. This whole fiasco ate up three days. I did not start recording until Thursday.

Week 10 is a song I had previously started working on about 3 to 4 years ago. It was based off a drum loop I downloaded off a message board somewhere. I thought the song had a great vibe and wanted to re-record it and finish it. Somewhere along the way, the song lost its vibe.

On the verses, I attempted to mimic the drum loop with my limited drumming skills. Like last week, I recorded the snare/kick/toms separate from the cymbals. I also recorded each section separately and pieced everything together in Logic. I played along with a drum machine beat and had to go back and line up the hits with the software beat because I was all over the place. The drums have a bit of a robotic feel to them.

I went back and forth with guitar parts and sounds trying to capture what I started years ago. I failed, so I took the song in a bit of a different direction. The drums dropping out on the first chorus happend by accident. The chorus drum tracks were muted. I was listening back to the song from the beginning. When the chorus arrived, the drums disappeared. It threw me off for a minute, but I decided I liked the affect. That led to me pulling the right channel guitar out of verse 2 and adding the synth part.

I battled with the intro for a while. The main guitars at the beginning came about from me just fooling around trying to find something interesting. I like what I heard and decided to implement the riffs in the bridge as well.

Originally, there were no vocals for the chorus. I noticed I had some written but had not recorded them. I changed up the words and decided to add vocals. At the last minute, I changed up the melody a little but forgot to mute/engage the appropriate tracks for the change. I originally posted the song with the old vocals. Anyway...

I would have liked more time this week, but I had to make due.

And speaking of time, I am in no way complaining about my life or setup. I am blessed to have the opportunity to be a major part of my kids lives. Music comes second to my family. I am thankful for my family and their support of my 2011 musical journey.

Week 11 is Spring Break. It will be a practice run for the Summer when the kids are home all day. I don't have a plan yet.

week 09: anthems of space

2011-03-04T18:34:00.003-06:00

I bought a “new” guitar this week - a 40s or 50s Kay archtop acoustic. I’ve always wanted an archtop. I’ve never played one before. A lot of people describe the sound as throaty or more even in sound with a bit of a bite. Anyway, I will have to agree with those descriptions. Overall the guitar is in good shape. It will need a re-fret in the near future, but it is very playable as is.

So, with the new guitar I decided Week 09 would be acoustic in nature. I am not a singer/songwriter type. I can’t put a guitar in my hand and start singing story-like tunes while I strum a handful of chords - mesmerizing a crowd of coffee sippers.

I have nothing against singer/songwriters. They are talented and have a craft that is foreign to me. When I sit down with an acoustic, it comes out all wrong (or right). I tend to avoid normal chords and do a lot of “picking”. I think several people, when they heard about my attempt at this project, were thinking 52 acoustic/vocal oriented songs about my life struggles. I have a feeling it has been nine weeks of disappointment for them.

Back on topic... Playing around with the archtop I came up with a little riff that turned into Week 09. It’s not normal for me to write the guitar part first for a song, but Week 09 is one of those rare occasions. I’ve recorded acoustic guitar in the past, but I only think it made it on to one song years ago - and only as an effect. I gravitate towards noise and harmonics. I guess there is a bit of that in an acoustic guitar, but I prefer pickups, cables, tube amps and heavy speaker cabinets.

As the recording progressed, I noticed a lot of missing frequencies that usually covered up or complimented other parts of the song. Behind the acoustic, I recorded my old Japanese semi-hollowbody that I finally got up and running. I recorded it direct and added a little fuzz to it in Logic. It seemed to help, but things were still sounding weird.

I usually play/record bass using my finger(s) on the A string through an amp plus a direct line. I mix the two tracks together. This week I used a pick, played exclusively on the E string and only recorded the bass once - direct. This, mixed with the lack of noisy guitars and drums sounding like someone beating on sheet metal made for and interesting mix.

On a side note (during the two chorus parts), it sounds like a small string section. I think it’s the way the acoustic and direct electric guitar frequencies are playing with each other. I guess you can call it one of those “magic” moments. Anyway, I think it’s neat.

I’m overall happy with the way the song turned out. I need to expand my acoustic playing/writing as the year goes on. Though I have no desire to be a singer/songwriter (not my cup of tea), there are elements of that genre/style that could be beneficial to me as a musician.

week 08: the way of the reason

2011-02-25T23:52:00.001-06:00

Well, I did it. I “re-mastered” Weeks 01 through 07. I was okay with some of the songs sounding bright and open and others sounding dirty and muted, but the inconsistencies in overall volume/loudness from track to track was driving me mad.

In the music industry a war has been raging for quite a few years - the loudness war. If you listen to some of your favorite albums from the 80s/90s and compare them to some of your favorite albums now, you will notice something major - the newer tunes are much “louder”. Not sure when it started or who started it, but everybody wants to be heard loudly. I think cd changers and now mp3 players have fueled the war. You don’t want your song quieter than the next song on your #1 fans iPod playlist. Mastering engineers across the globe are being forced to destroy album after album with overused compressors/limiters so their clients can feel better about themselves their tunes are the loudest. I even own a few albums that are difficult to listen to because of the over-compressing all for the sake of loudness.

The sad thing is that I’ve been sucked into this. A good band with a good recording had a better chance to overcome sonic failure compared to an okay musician spitting out lo-fi tunes in his bedroom. I relate to the latter. And when you overuse dangerous plugins on you master channel in an attempt to enhance your lo-finess - disaster awaits.

I don’t think my original seven masters were overly destroyed by my errant ways, and I’m not really sure my new mixes have avoided the digital harshness of improper use of compression. I think overall the new mixes sound a bit better to me.

I’m learning, or trying to learn about gain staging, tracking at proper volumes, etc. to improve my mixes. I think I learned a little this week. I discovered Voxengo’s Elephant plugin which helped my learning and my mixes.

So re-download the tunes if you’d like.

Week 08 was crazy with all the re-mastering. I decided to finish a song I started about 2 years ago. I wrote it around a drum loop I downloaded off Tape Op Message Board years ago. (I think it was Tape Op and I have no idea who posted the beat - if it’s you, let me know.) Anyway, I had the idea to re-record the drums, guitars, vocals, etc. and finally finish the song. I kept comparing what I was recording to what I started recording 2 years ago, especially the guitar tones. I quickly learned that I could not play the drum loop, so I came up with a different beat and preceded to add the guitars. I played through every amp, pedal and guitar that I own trying to get close to the original sound. After hours and hours of trying, I realized I recorded the guitars direct in Garageband. Not that the guitars have such a groundbreaking sound, but I just got used to the sound that I couldn’t come up with anything better.

Anyway, on Thursday I decided to keep the original drum loop and guitars/keys. I rearranged the song a little (cut/paste/loop), added some vocals and guitar wankery. Before I knew it, it was done.

week 07: the day we march

2011-02-18T23:05:00.000-06:00

It’s been a crappy week, but I finished the song.

I should be asleep right now, but I’m not. And I really can’t say why this week has been so lame. In some respects, it was very similar to last week in that I had no desire to write or record anything. I thought Week 06 came out okay despite my lack of interest. This week, not as well.

I remember talking to someone years ago about the art of writing an instrumental. It really is a skill. You take the vocals out of a song that has vocals, and more likely than not that song will suffer. An instrumental, on the other hand, creates something satisfying without the need for vocals.

I guess you can say Week 07 is an instrumental. I sort of backed into it because I could not come up with any decent vocal melodies. Add to the fact that I didn’t start recording until Wednesday, and this is what you get. In a last minute effort to make the song not so monotonous and a little more interesting, I kept adding guitar parts. It’s a bit of a jumbled mess, but I think it works.

I’m keen to details and a control freak. Week 07 challenged those traits. I realized on Monday that from week to week the songs are not consistent as far as levels and mixes. It would be impossible for me to have 52 songs that all sounded like they belonged on the same album. But in the back of my mind I hear a voice telling me to give it a shot. I’m trying to ignore that voice and to keep pressing forward. I also understand that with 52 weeks of writing/recording, every song won’t be a “masterpiece”. 2011 is turning into the year of therapy.

On a side note, Logic crashed while I was mixing. It somehow damaged parts of the song files, so I had to settle with a less than desirable mix that I put together before the crash. It is what it is.

week 06: celebrity ragz

2011-02-11T23:10:00.001-06:00

I came into Week 06 with nothing - no desire, no ideas and no time.

During the years 1994 to 1999, I was in a band called Lugsole*. I have a lot of good memories from those days. We practiced all the time and played out a ton as well.

Writing new material seemed to happen at a steady pace.

Our best bet on having a new song was if someone would come to practice with a part or several parts. We would collectively beat the idea to death until we had a song.

The worst of times were when we decided at practice to write a new song without anyone having any ideas or inspirations. These were usually a torturous couple of hours that brought on feelings of hate and destruction and musings of burning all our gear in a huge bonfire. I was clearing out a spot in the backyard for such a bonfire earlier in the week.

Even though I did not feel like it, on Sunday I came up with a decent drum beat, bass and guitar lines. I recorded snippets of these parts on my iPhone so I would not forget them on Monday. On Monday, I worked out the drums and recorded them with some success. On Tuesday, I realized I recorded them at too fast a tempo to go the with bass and guitar parts I had. Failure. I did not have time or the motivation to rerecord the drums. I was determined to make what I recorded work. Thursday came, and I had nothing. Burn.

On the way to pick up my kids from school I decided to listen to a band called Experimental Aircraft. I guess you would classify them as shoegaze. They’re an active band but have a sound reminiscent of 90s shoegaze.

Lugsole started out as sort of a shoegaze/noise pop band. Thinking about that made me think of how those days seemed so simple and carefree - rocking out with our fellow shoegaze/noise pop bands 9 Volt Velvet, Nectarine, Dazzle, Valerie #4. I decided in the carpool line to embrace my past and bring the noise to Week 06, and that’s what I did.

Though I did not finish until 1:30 Saturday morning, I had a lot of fun putting the song together on Thursday and Friday. I even came pretty close to ripping off an iconic Tooth and Nail Records band in the process. Okay, it’s probably a total ripoff, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

*You can check out most of Lugsole’s recordings [here].

week 05: x divided by y

2011-02-04T23:44:00.000-06:00

Well, I headed to the ENT on Monday. The doc said everything looked fine. He even did some audio testing. My hearing is normal. He said I have some sinus drainage which could increase the tinnitus, or it may be I’m just focusing on it more now.

I’m not a doctor, but I think I’m not used to all the noise and critical listening I’ve been exposed to the last few weeks. I also have not been getting a lot of sleep - staying up too late. I’m wearing earplugs now while playing drums and guitar, just to be safe. I also downloaded a SPL meter for my iPhone and am going to monitor my listening/mixing levels - again, just to be safe.

I usually start writing/recording Sunday afternoon or Monday. This week I started Tuesday to give my ears some rest. I did not finish Week 05 until 12:10 am, Saturday - about 10 minutes late. I had trouble with the mix (more than I usually do) and the writing and recording just took forever. I even had thoughts of remixing the song at a later date, but that would really defeat the purpose of this experiment/project. One week. One song. Move on.

I introduced two Korg USB Nano Kontrols to my setup. These are small MIDI “mixing boards”. They are great for not having to move faders and knobs with the mouse in Logic. Once set up, they control the faders, pan knobs and mute/solo buttons in Logic’s mixing window. I built a little “dock” for them. I think they are going to make my work easier.

Except... Logic crashes from time to time. I save all the time as I’m working, so it has never been a problem - just annoying. But when Logic crashes, it loses the MIDI assignments you programmed. Well, each Nano Kontrol takes about 5 to 10 minutes to program. And this week, Logic decided to crash more times than usual. What a pain. I got smart and backed up Logic’s preferences. So when it crashes now, I just copy over the backed up prefs - and life is good.

I’ve never written/recorded anything before like Week 05. Very different for me vocally as well as guitar (mainly on the verses). I decided to go with it regardless of my lack of confidence in it. I figure in a span of 52 weeks/songs, stuff is going to happen that has never happened before. Fifty-two weeks of the same song/sound would be boring and disappointing.

Even so, I do feel like I’m in a bit of a rut with my writing. I’ve attempted a couple of acoustic songs, but I just didn’t feel it. I tend to be attracted to noise and busyness when I write. I need to challenge myself with something simple and sparse. I’m sure it will happen before 2012.

week 04: communication of future

2011-01-28T23:58:00.001-06:00

For Christmas my son got a cool Syma S107 RC helicopter. You charge it by plugging it in to the USB port on your computer. It seemed harmless until, one day, it killed one of the two USB ports on the MBP. I sort of need both ports for recording.

Thankfully I purchased AppleCare. On top of that, my father-in-law owns a local independent Apple Reseller store. And on top of that, my dad is over the service department in said store.

I called my dad and brought the laptop in for him to investigate. I needed a new logic board (hooray for AppleCare). He ordered the part, and it arrived the next day. It took my dad an hour to install it. I was back in business.

I had an idea for Week 04 that I will probably use several more times throughout the year - a repeating drum beat with a repeating bass line. The trick (or maybe not) is to add guitar and vocals that make the drum/bass repeating not seem so repeating. Mission accomplished - I think.

Again, for the drums, I sat down on the throne and came up with a beat. I tapped out the parts in Logic so I could play along in a “steady” time. I tried just a click track, but I failed. I also improvised a few bars of drumming which were added towards the end of the song where you hear those crazy sounding stereo fills.

Vocals were difficult this week. I have a very strong voice and sing best when I sing loud. The melody I kept hearing on this song was quiet. I don’t have perfect pitch (don’t really care to), but I have far from perfect pitch when I sing soft. I feel like it took a 100 takes just to get what I got. Everything seemed to be in place for an easy mix on Friday.

I developed tinnitus back in my band days - too cool for earplugs. It’s not bad and has never really bothered me. I usually only hear it at night and don’t really think about it. Earlier in the week I saw a post on the Tape Op Message Board about tinnitus, and my ears seemed to have started ringing louder since then. In fact, Thursday night is seemed deafening. My wife claimed it was playing the drums without earplugs. I did play them a lot this week - more than usual, but I’m not a loud player. I even use some Pro-Mark Hot Rod drumsticks so as to not disturb the neighbors. My kids playing the Wii are louder than my drumming. I don’t blast the guitar amps or my monitors either. Is it just psychological?

Friday my ears were hurting. I’ve been dealing with some minor sinus issues, so I was thinking that may be part of the problem. Mixing was not fun as my ears did not want to be bothered by any noise. I’ll probably head to the ENT next week to see what’s going on.

week 03: brake dust

2011-01-21T23:43:00.000-06:00

I enjoy building and fixing things. As a musician, there are a ton of DIY projects and mods to do on guitars, mics, preamps, effects pedals, etc. I have several unfinished projects. Doing something musical everyday has encouraged me to finish these projects.

I bought a cheap old Japanese semi-hollowbody guitar off eBay about a year ago. It sounds terrible in a good way. It has some knob/wiring issues that I’ve put off addressing. This week I gutted the guitar and attempted to fix these problems.

Putting the electronics back into a semi-hollowbody guitar is a pain. It took much longer than I anticipated.

I was planning to use the guitar on Week 03, so I was up very late Monday night repairing and re-gutting. I plugged the guitar in an amp and the noise immediately let me know I have some grounding issues. Oh well, maybe another day.

As I’ve mentioned before, I am not a drummer (or a luthier). I’m extremely limited in what I can do on drums. Simple beats and generic fills. Week 03 is a perfect example. I had a beat idea and recorded a little bit of it. I then recorded some bass and guitar and was really happy with what I was hearing. I decided to record the bass and one guitar track to a click and add drums later. I quickly learned cannot play drums along with music, yet. Lazy kick foot and continuous timing issues. Also, the beat ended up being a bit too complex for my abilities. Start over.

I came up with a very simple beat and tapped it out using Logic’s MIDI drums. I played along with the MIDI drums until I felt comfortable and preceded to record them in the same manner. I added all the other instruments/parts and the song was done, and it was only Thursday. Everything just fell into place. Friday I would mix and be done with time to spare.

I tend to overuse compression, but sometimes it adds magic. In the intro of the choruses I’m banging away on the ride cymbal. When the drums kick in on the second part of the chorus, I love how the compression drops the ride volume down, even though I’m still pounding away. Anyways...

Though the final drum beat was not as cool as the original, the simplicity and sparseness of the final beat makes the song - in my opinion.

week 02: silent vs silence

2011-01-14T22:17:00.002-06:00

Week 02 was not as fun as Week 01. I started to analyze things a lot more - nit-picking and wasting precious time. I am a very detail oriented person with a tinge of obsessive compulsive tendencies, mainly in the area of making decisions.

I knew going in to this that time was going to be a factor. I could not allow myself to get caught up in over-analyzing frequencies, attempting to fix minute timing issues, listening too hard to every pitch of the vocals, etc.

Pick a mic, pick a preamp, play something and go with it. It’s not like I know what I’m doing anyway as far as recording goes.

What I didn’t mention in the last blog entry is the timeframe I’ve given myself to write/record each song - one week from Saturday @ 12:00 am to Friday @ 11:59 pm. So Thursday, as the song was finally coming together, I sort of fell out of “like” with it. But, there was no time to scrap it and start over. Make it work.

As with most of my better writing over the last few years, I start with the drums and write around the beat. I know this is backwards, but it is how I think I work best. Drums. Bass. Guitar. Vocals. The last song that I wrote the guitar part first was in 2007: [specific to the exclusive]. The song that started this crazy form of backwards writing was [the justice mix] in 2005.

Back to Week 02... I came up with the drum parts first and was pleasantly surprised with my seemingly improving playing ability. The bass line for the verse/bridge/ending was written quickly and pleasingly. Again, I was feeling good. But writer’s block settled in, and I was ready to scrap the whole thing - the whole year thing. I was done and defeated after only 13 days.

I sort of had the chorus/vocal parts worked out and was a bit into what was happening, but the other parts were not coming together. The chorus/vocal part is heavy, and I was trying to force this heaviness on the rest of the song. It was not working.

Time for a different approach - chill out the other parts and make the song overly dynamic. I was convinced and preceded to finish Week 02 with all of its oddness and abrupt rudeness.

week 01: be kind

2011-01-08T00:41:00.002-06:00

Not sure when the thought/idea to take on this year long project materialized - late December 2010 I think. It was probably during a brief unpleasant thought about the fact that I will be turning 40 in 2011. I don’t really care for the number 40, or the age. I needed something to make 2011 stand out instead of the monumental crossing over that one does when they enter their 40s.

So, for every week of 2011, I will attempt to write and record a new song. Many have done things like this before, so this is not an original idea. Those that have accomplished this feat all agree that it is a very worthwhile endeavor, but it is also difficult.

I may or may not get other musicians involved with this. The thought of doing everything myself is appealing, but...

I’m not a drummer. In November 2010 I bought a cheap set of no-name Japanese drums off eBay to have another instrument to introduce to my kids as well as myself. Guitar is my main device. I can hold my own on bass and can make something decent out of a keyboard. I never really sat behind a drum set in order not to embarrass myself. With a little bit of practice though, I think I’ve managed to develop a small drumming ability (enough right now for me to play them on this project).

Since 2000, I’ve been recording myself with a Mac and a wide assortment of cheap mics and preamps. I’ve bought and sold stuff through the years and have acquired a decent project studio. My goal has always been to make the music I write listenable. One of the fringe benefits of a year long recording project is that I get to use all my tools which have been collecting dust for the past several years.

Week 01 was fun - simple as that. Yeah, that’s me on drums. I recorded them first without a song idea in mind. It was a beat I had been playing around with for a couple of weeks, so I decided to set up a couple of mics and record it. No click track, no real planning - I kept the second take. I added bass next, then guitar. A vocal idea came next. For some reason I had the phrase “kill the sequel” in my head, so I went with that. I added some fake MIDI organ sounds to fill in the gaps. Overall, I’m fairly happy with the outcome.