Disappear Here...the next month is going to be slammin'!
Hello, children. :)
To any of you who may have wondered in here from any social network this blog links to, you may have noticed that my participation in many of these online locals has diminished somewhat in the past few days. No, I’m not bored with the occasionally scattered conversation. What’s going on is that, aside from work getting a little busy these days, is that this year’s RPM Challenge is starting up in a few days and I’m heading into it this year like Lance Armstrong on a training binge.
For those of you who followed me from my TROB blog, you’ll note the pain and suffering I went through writing songs, singing and mixing into the wee hours with the last CD. After all, I found out about this challenge at the last minute and rushed into it. Wrote the songs as I recorded. Spent several sleepless nights mixing the thing, getting really sick, as a result. It turned out to be worth it. Passersby reviews have mostly been positive. I entered some of the songs in songwriting competitions on Sonicbids, and, for the most part, they did rather well (yes, I consider getting an Honorable Mention doing rather well). In hindsight, I should have promoted the CD way more than I did (pitch it to blogs, podcasts, online ‘zines, and such), and I may just step it up a bit to move more product out of my garage before the year is out. I’ve sold a few copies as it is, and folks who heard it told me they got some enjoyment out of it. It’s all good.
This year, I’m doing things differently.
I’ve been spending the last month prepping my voice and guitar, so as not to spend a lot of time dinkering around and doing a lot of “Punch ins” with the recordings. Also, rather than write/edit songs during the recording process, I’ve culled previously started/completely written new material for the CD in the last two months. I had 26 songs started. I completed 15 of them. 10-12 will eventually appear on the CD, dependent on whether I like them or not. I’m finding the theme this year with the songs pertains to my experiences as a local and LOTS of songs about love. Nothing as edgy as, say, “Incident At Motel 6” or “Withdrawal Symptoms”, but hopefully, you’ll like them as well. My goal this year is to get all of the recording done in 15 days, the mixing done in 5, and the CD shipped off to New Hampshire by February 20th.
I’ve also upgraded the studio for this project. Feast your eyes:
Instead of a PDA, I’m using my new netbook, with an external soundcard, and a bunch of other goodies. Should make for a better sounding experience, if nothing else.
We’re also going for a bit of a genre change on this one. With maybe one or two exceptions, this CD’s going to be all acoustic. When he reviewed my previous CD at the RPM Challenge’s boards last year, “Angie Fights Crime” suggested that my songs were more folk-oriented, and that he challenged me to do said songs with guitar, rather than synths. I decided this year to take him up on it and do the new songs with myself and my guitar. I’m sure there will be some overdubs here and there, as well as a few synthy warbles, but for the most part, I’m going to keep things as simple as possible (or as simple as it can be to keep the netbook from choking on too many tracks).
Because this CD isn’t going to represent my usual genre, it’s going to be set for exclusive use with the RPM Challenge site. I’ll also be giving away these recordings on my own site (should I ever get around to bringing it back up), since my finances these days precludes me from doing the duping, mastering and promoting, as I did with last year’s project. In any case, most of these songs will probably end up, in one form or another, on other CDs I will do that will be sold (for instance, I need more content for my “Stories From the Road” cd, as I scrapped a bunch of songs from that project, as they were a few years old but they didn’t age well).
Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride!
P.S. I’m also working on doing a collaboration with Band C, also from the RPM Challenge. Stay tuned!
