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RPM Challenge

The RPM Challenge asks us to write and record 10 songs during the month of February. I’m using this page to document my attempt to meet that challenge, as well as to facilitate collaboration, should anyone decide they want to help me out on this.

February 1

I feel like I’m off to a good start. I figured one way that I might be able to write 10 songs in a month is if I use a drum machine and record a guitar part for each song, and then fill in the rest over time (and maybe replace those later, especially the drum machine, especially if a drummer happens to want to work on this with me). I have a KR-mini that I bought for jamming and that hasn’t gotten much use, but I think it’s going to be pretty perfect for this. Tonight’s song features the Metal-1 and Pop-1 and Pop-2 beats. I happened to get a pickup installed in my acoustic recently, and it’s sounding excellent through the speaker emulation / DI of my Marshall. Biggest revelation tonight – the nasty ground loop that I’ve never been able to pin down goes away when I unplug the laptop that I’m recording onto!

February 2

Luckily there’s a sound booth across from my office, so I got to get some scratch vocals done. Note to self – remember to close the sound booth door in the future!

February 3

Found another beat on the KR-Mini that I liked, but technical glitches plagued by attempts to do anything with it, and all I wound up with was this not particularly original Roxy Music-like progression.

Postscript

That’s as far as I got – it was too exhausting trying to do this alongside my real job. Oh well, there’s always June…

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