International

Concept

Album

Month

The past few years I've signed up for InCoAlMo and started off ok but lost steam before completing anything.  So this year I'm going to run with that as a concept to begin with.

I'm not trying to make a complete album, I'm going to make half an album.  Of half songs.  That are half-baked.  And half of them are halfway done in the litter from previous years, so I'm halfway there.

(If you're keeping track of the math, that means I'm already like 1/64th done!  Woo!)

I slammed most of the actual recording together in the last 3 days.  I've been messing with these tracks all month, and several others too, but they were even less developed.

Things that keep tripping me up:
* lyrics are hard.  Yeah, lyrics aren't even really required, but they form a frame for how the song works, even if there aren't any recorded.
* counting is hard.  When I was actually recording, there were many times when I just somehow ended up off by a measure.  Or two.  WTF man.
* Mixing is hard.  Doing the mixdown on these on my R8 I thought the master level was ok, but then listening to them on my computer they were like, mouse level sound.  Fortunately slapping the "amplify" effect on them worked well enough, but I'm sure that horrifies the sound engineers in the group.
* Mixing is hard, again.  Maybe I should just go with "less is more".  In particular, the track "Worse Songs" - I wanted there to be more there, but it's just mud.  I'm going to have to go back and listen to it more closely, maybe my guitar is out of tune from the keys just a teensy bit.
* I can't sing.  'Nuff said.

There are some glimmers of music in here, but really the only thing this album has going for it is that it exists.  Which is something.

Protest songs.

There's a lot of stuff going on right now, most of it bad.  It's enough to inspire one to write music about it.

These ain't no Arlo Guthrie folk rock protest songs;  I'm thinking loud, noisy, angry, heavy, screaming protests.  Somewhat inspired by Queensryche's "Revolution Calling" but I can't get that big of a sound.  We'll see.

I'm also going to be on holiday for 2 weeks of the month where I won't have an instrument to play.  So we'll see how that affects things too.

Rock on!!