RasterWeb!
It’s February 28th, 2009 and I just completed the final mixdown (I hope!) of my album for the RPM Challenge.
I’ve been at the board for over 5 hours, after working all day, and I’m tired, and I hope it sounds good…
Next, some sleep, and then to do the album artwork in the morning…
We are half way there… and when I say “half way” I’m referring to the fact that the month is half over as well as the fact that I’ve got half of my material recorded.
Though “half done” may not exactly be the right thing to say. While I do have 22 minutes of music recorded and roughly mixed, I still have not added vocals, and I’m sick right now, so I can’t record vocals.
It’s been a challenge this year, that’s for sure, as it should be. Last year I didn’t really have a plan other than “record 10 songs” which I did, but this year I had larger ambitions, which included doing some of the drums (did a little of that) but also sequencing my own beats (didn’t do that yet) but I also had in mind a concept album, which tells a story… I’m still not sure how that will turn out. Overall, I’m happy with the sound I am getting, and learning a lot more about engineering using Logic, which was a major goal this time.
I still have two weeks, and in that time I need to produce another 13 minutes of music, as well as design and produce the album art. I have a few ideas for the artwork, but I haven’t nailed anything down yet. I am pretty excited to see what people think of this release, as it’s a departure from the other things I’ve recorded lately. I honestly don’t expect most of the people I know to like it, but that has much to do with the style and genre of the music I’m creating, and I’m fine with that.
All said and done, I’m glad I’m doing this again. It really is a good challenge to get your mind (and fingers) working towards creating music. I can’t wait for it to be done though…
Yup, I am all set to record another album… In the 28 days of February 2009 I will record an entire album consisting of either 10 songs or 35 minutes of material for the RPM Challenge 2009.
I’ve been thinking about what I want to do, but I don’t think I’m going to reveal anything until the album is completely done. Perhaps some snippets of songs, but I don’t plan on doing what I did last year. I basically started the process of writing and recording all at once, and finished each song within a few hours, and then uploaded it, calling it “done!” which turned into a really weird collection of songs… which is, you know, an album, but this time I am more interested in a cohesive piece of work.
I’m going to borrow a guitar (most likely from Milton Zorro of Trademark fame) as mine is just too much a total piece of crap that can’t be tuned properly. My bass sounds good, so that’s fine… as for drums, I actually do have my drums set up in the recording booth at work, but they need some loving (new heads, tuning) and they aren’t mic’d so I might not use them at all. I may end up using existing drum loops again. (Drums are always the hardest part!) I’ll be trying a Firewire audio interface to see if it works well for guitar and bass input, where last year I used the cheap “USB Guitar Plug” so hopefully things will sound a bit cleaner.
Ultimately I want to produce an album that I really like. If no one else likes it, that’s cool… Oh, it will also be released under a Creative Commons license, like most of my music, photos, and video…
Check back in February for updates, or in March for the conclusion. Rock on…
(Oh yeah, Matt Gauger is the guy who told me about RPM last year, but he didn’t get to participate. I’m really hoping he can do it this year.)
This is a video I made for the song Empty Pockets, which I recorded back in February 2008 for the RPM Challenge.
(Originally uploaded to blip.tv)
I did it. I completed the 2008 RPM Challenge. I created an entire album in one month. 10 songs, written, recorded, and released in February 2008. And I had fun doing it!
But it wasn’t all fun. It was hard at times, and there was frustration, and while I always knew I could easily record 10 songs, I wasn’t entirely sure the quality would be where I wanted it.
First, the frustration. I use a USB adapter to plug my guitar and bass into my Mac. GarageBand recognizes it. Usually. In the first or second day into the process, GarageBand went nuts and stopped working. I spent like 3 hours fixing it, including a re-install, and creating a new user and copying files between accounts. Eventually it all worked, but through the month GarageBand dumped on me a few other times in various ways. It’s frustrating when your equipment won’t even work right.
Then there was the creative frustration. Last year when I started recording on my own, I would just plug in the guitar when I felt like it and bang something out. For this album, there was the pressure of must record a song on an almost daily basis. Luckily since I only needed 10 songs in 29 days, I didn’t have to record every single day, I skipped some, like the day I worked for 14 hours, or the Sunday I did a video shoot on location for 12 hours. Yeah, it was a busy month.
Typically it would take me about 3 hours to do a song. When I say “3 hours” that is me sitting down with the instruments, playing a bit, recording, and then assembling the song. I didn’t write anything ahead of time, it was all done as I was recording. I don’t know how many people do it this way, but it worked for me. In the future I’d like to spend a lot more time on songs. Mainly because I think I can make them better. So even though I had 29 days to do this, I probably spent less than 30 hours total actually recording music.
Speaking of quality… am I happy with the quality of the album? Yes and no. There are some songs I actually really like. But then, there are bits and pieces I know I could have done much better, and some songs I really don’t like at all now. I think spending more than a few hours in the evening on a song would be worthwhile to get a better perspective on it.
I followed the same workflow I usually do with songs, once I record them and mix them (and yeah, I need to improve my audio engineering skills) I bounce to an MP3 and upload it right away. This is good because I get it out there immediately, but bad because I should spend more time tweaking the little things until is it just right. Release Early isn’t always the best idea. Also, I put everything up on Ourmedia and the Internet Archive right away, which again, is good and bad. SpinXpress totally broke for me at one point and I could not upload anything. I then started putting everything on blip.tv as well for good measure. Next time I might wait until I am actually happy with a song before I upload to a permanent place the the archive.
Even the whole packaging and cover art, I liked, but was not 100% pleased with. I had other ideas of how it would look, but I hit a time crunch, and finished it up on February 29th, just in time. The photos were taken by me in January. I really wanted to do a shoot in February, and I had a great idea, but could not execute it in time. I just thought it would be cool if the photos as well as the songs, were all produced in the month of February.
There was only one song I recorded in Logic. I was hoping to do more, but again, time constraints prevented it. Not a huge deal I guess. Oh, as far as collaboration, I wanted to do more… I did get to work with Emma and Maddy a little bit, but no one else really. Next year, Milt and I might work together though. And drum sequencing is not easy! I have no problem playing guitar and bass, but I can’t really record my own drums easily with the recording equipment I have, and I have not found good, cheap, drum sequencing software yet.
Wow, this post is way longer than I expected, so I’ll cut it here, but not before giving you direct download links to all the songs:
All of these songs are released under a Creative Commons Attribution License, which means you can use them in many ways without even asking me, as long as you credit me as the creator. If you need some other license, let me know.
Enjoy! And let me know what you think…