I’m calling time! Stopping the clock! Ringing the bell! Buzzing the buzzard.
I finished the challenge for the second year in a row. 10 new songs are in the can! Or, computer. In the cloud?
As with last year, I’ve arrived at a destination that I didn’t set out to find. I had envisioned a more traditional, polished collection of songs. This year’s result is very guitar oriented, with layers of MIDI supporting it.
Early in February, but after I finished the Punk Frocker’s tracks, I began recording with an Epiphone Les Paul “Black Beauty” guitar with three humbucker pick-ups. It has very heavy strings (12’s?) and I used a random, non-standard tuning. I decided to only use this guitar for the rest of the month.
I recorded some live drums here, and I relied on Teenage Engineering Pocket Operators for other rhythm tracks.
My results are a bit like last years, with heavy signal processing weirdness and odd production values. I have a few gems that I’m excited about. Some of this stuff is probably self indulgent, in that the music will likely only be interesting to me.
That said, I’ve made the decision to not share this material at this time. I want to continue developing the gems into a more polished state, and the other half will go into soundtracks.
I can’t recommend this challenge enough. Something good always happens.
I’m resuming my daily music exercises now that this is complete.