We meaning "me," and "it" being a CD of recorded material. Good Lord, there's nothing like a deadline - I wrote two of these today (based on melodies I worked out earlier). If I could sustain that kind of output...well, I'd be some sort of early Joni Mitchell meets They Might Be Giants. And no one wants that. I still have a lot to do - I have to 'master' these (like I know what I'm doing with that) and get them onto a CD and get them down to the Wire. Right now I need to go get a bite to eat... (128 more chars)
(Thursday, 28 February 2008) Written by Michelle Moon
Ill admit I haven't been living and breathing RPM the last few weeks. I've certainly been working on melodies and song ideas, but the number of work sessions I've put in has been...well, few. Now that time is short I've been working harder. I just had a solid night's work and now have 3 tracks which I think are basically ready. I'm also really excited about 2 other songs which have melodies I love, but really need more lyric work. The remaining, uh, 5 are less developed, but promising. I think ... (75 more chars)
Ok, maybe not radical, but significant. After spending several days writing melodies, the concept taking shape in my mind has really broadened from the Huck Finn point of inspiration to a general water theme. I've got my melodies and guitar lines mostly developed and am mired in lyric writing. Working titles (these will change): All in Time Ocean City White Horse Deep Leave a Light On Cairo Territory Tanyard Momentum Every Living Thing And the last (bonus) one is titled only "RPM0... (298 more chars)
After polishing the house to a high sheen, I ran out of other tasks and got down to starting songwriting yesterday. For the past two years, I've found it really useful to choose a structure or theme for RPM. Time is so short, and sitting around staring out the window and waiting for song ideas to come has never been a productive strategy for me. So in the past, I've chosen historical times and places to center songwriting on. The first record was i... (5224 more chars)
I used to have trouble finding time for bothersome chores like dusting, sorting files, and re-arranging the living room. Until I discovered RPM! Suddenly I was getting every task in the house done, and looking for more. The place sparkles! The secret is in RPM's special formula, featuring Procastination Power(tm). When everything's done, there'll be nothing to do but sit down and start writing some songs. 'Til then, it's the RPM Pre-Spring-Cleaning. Thanks, RPM!
(Thursday, 31 January 2008) Written by Michelle Moon
Looking forward to the Portsmouth kickoff shindig at the Press Room. Maybe it'll feel real after tonight!
The kickoff party does lend a great, infectious energy. Last year I hadn't planned to sign up for RPM, but went to the kickoff just to cheer for others. Of course, after talking to a bunch of people about how fantastic an experience it was, I couldn't resist, and ended up going around again.
Hope others outside of Portsmouth are also ready for some sort of ribbon-cutting, ball-dropp... (89 more chars)
On the radio last night, a quote from Iris Murdoch:
"Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck."
Now, on the one hand, I realize that's 180 degrees from the RPM philosophy, which is about plowing forward with sheer will and not waiting for the lightning to strike with something amazing.
And yet it's worth thinking about. In my 2 years of RPMing I had very different experiences. The first year I took an idea and started working wi... (1202 more chars)
Heh. I've been sitting about fretting about the travels my RPM CD might take. Last year, most of my friends got a copy, and I was proud enough to give it out. This year, with my rough and rocky DIY recording, I'm a lot less proud of what I submitted. BUt after thinking about it tonight, I realized: I like the songs themselves well enough. Using my now-somewhat-better understanding of mixing, I could re-record some of them to put the CD together, and use the newer (presumably better) versions ... (520 more chars)
My first RPM tune is up on my brand new MySpace account. It's "Some You Win, Some You Lose." http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=155514791
It's funny; everyone seems to be remixing their albums after the fact! I did that today, too. It's amazing what a difference a fresh ear makes. The only problem I can see with the month-long challenge is that it's very hard to allow enough time between recording and mixing to really hear the tracks - you can't hear the forest for the trees, as it were. It was a nice experience, though. Mixing was so new and mysterious to me before RPM '07, and I know I did a bad job and had lousy equipment. St... (856 more chars)
(Wednesday, 28 February 2007) Written by Michelle Moon
Great job, everyone. Can't wait to hear your stuff. Thanks to cortex for drumming up so much enthusiasm -- it's been great fun seeing these two communities linking up.
Now get some rest!
(Wednesday, 28 February 2007) Written by Michelle Moon
Well, sort of. Against all odds, I completed the recording -- 9 songs, just about 35 minutes. And it all went pretty smoothly. I'm now playing with the sequencing. Tomorrow, I have to figure out how to change the songs from.wav files to mp3s, burn them onto a disc, print out the gorgeous art my friend Teresa made, and hie myself to the RPM HQ to drop this puppy off. I really didn't think I was going to make it. I thought I hated my songs -- I don't really. They could use a lot more polishing ... (751 more chars)
(Wednesday, 28 February 2007) Written by Michelle Moon
LORD, it's been hard to finish this project this year. My life's in upheaval, work is crazy, and too many volunteer gigs. But I'm determined! Absolutely determined. Yesterday morning I had the last three songs at "germ of idea" stage. After a day of work and a 7-8:30 meeting, I went down to the Press Room, and within about an hour, amidst a loud throng of jazzbos, I was able to finish scrawling out perfectly acceptable lyrics for two of those songs. Amazing what deadline pressure can do. Today,... (627 more chars)
(Tuesday, 27 February 2007) Written by Michelle Moon
Wow - I'm far behind. But that's what the last minute is there for. Tonight is finishing writing, tomorrow is all recording, Thursday is DONE. I hope to drop off my CD at the Wire at some point before midnight Thursday, though earlier would sure 'nuff be better.
Had a great day yesterday writing - 6 of the songs are finished and ready to record. Today I've gotta get the last two to three nailed down (I'm going for the 35 minutes rather than the 10 tracks. 10 just doesn't seem to be my num... (334 more chars)
That little 40-some-second Beatles odyssey stuck on the end of Abbey Road.... was Paul just trying to fill out his RPM project to 25 minutes? Ah, well. As I sit here among similar fragments that went nowhere, I wonder if I might need a couple of little ditties like that to make this a 10-song project. After all the Gear Wars I've been through, I finally got the right cable this morning that I needed to hook my whole system together...only to find that I still cannot get a sufficient signal ... (483 more chars)
It's immanent! The latest skirmish in the war of Michelle vs. Audio Gear is my discovery, this morning, that my new audio interface box takes an RCA stereo input, not a 1/4 input like I thought. Back to Radio Shack once more, blowing a big chunk of yet another day that was supposed to be all about recording... This won't be a great work of art, but I'm still trying to get it done. I'm considering titling my submission Sophomore Effort.
(Thursday, 22 February 2007) Written by Michelle Moon
Oy! And the new audio interface that FINALLY arrived today via Musician's Friend after their two-day shipping deal morphed into SIX days over President's Day weekend and when it arrived STILL needed yet ANOTHER patch cord to connect a male 1/4" input to a female 1/8" input, meaning before I REALLY start recording for REAL tomorrow I have to go first to RADIO FREAKING SHACK and give them my ZIP CODE and PHONE NUMBER so I can purchase this silly 2' long piece of electronic sine qua non? ACK!... (2 more chars)
(Tuesday, 20 February 2007) Written by Michelle Moon
It's all over but the lyrics. Yesterday I spent a productive few hours in sunny downtown Portsmouth hammering out rhyming couplets and such. I have yet to go back and refine, but there's at least enough raw verbiage to work with - I actually got most of the lyric writing for four of the songs out of the way. Only, er, six to go. Oof!
Sometimes things don't fall into the shape you want to force them into. It's funny - you're the creator, after all, but sometimes songs seem to have a resistan... (297 more chars)
Last night, for reasons I do not care to elaborate, I ended up seeing the latest Hugh Grant cotton-candy confection of a film, "Music and Lyrics." Stupid as it was (which was pretty stupid), it certainly fit the theme of my month. It's all about a washed-up former 1980s pop star who gets the chance to write a new song for a young dance-pop princess. It will save his career, but he's got to do it in three days. And the kicker -- he's a melody man. He's never been able to write lyrics. Enter ... (1233 more chars)
(Saturday, 17 February 2007) Written by Michelle Moon
Today for the first time I awoke with a hint of panic. Ten days left! What do I have? I have 9 songs in progress. All have titles. All have melodies. All have a structure. All have a basic attempt at a refrain or chorus. Some have a first line or first verse. All have been recorded as quick sketches, just so I'll remember them. I have a looooot of lyrics to write. I have one 'song' that's just a title. I have an audio interface on the way in UPS so I can record with a better mic than I'... (1776 more chars)
Techies, gearheds, and audiophiles, look away.
Right-brained concrete types, come here and sit by me.
Recording gear! Heavens to Murgatroid! Am I right? For someone with very little interest in electronics, this stuff is a nightmare. Trying to put together a serviceable home-studio setup is a crash course in things I've never wanted to learn. From nomenclature to brand names to signal flow, it's nothing but an entirely new language and worldview to master. It makes my brian hurt.
Th... (3908 more chars)
(Saturday, 10 February 2007) Written by Michelle Moon
Yes, a solid 4 hours of work today. Thank God for weekends - I needed some long ubroken time to plow up one row and down the other. It's amazing, isn't it, how many times you have to work through a simple three-minute piece before it starts to come together. It seems so ridiculous sometimes to be playing the same progression over and over for two hours straight, making the smallest changes. When you listen back at the end, it hardly seems like that time went into it, and yet it did. And as we a... (617 more chars)
Yikes. That's what it says...under 20 days left. And where am I? Still wandering in the woods. A dozen hazy little song starts. No idea about this recording apparatus and how to make it sound halfway decent. The terrors!
Fortunately, the weekend is ahead. I have a feeling I won't be seeing much of the light of the day...
(Thursday, 08 February 2007) Written by Michelle Moon
I might actually get something done at work today. Things are going slowly. Monday night and last night I had work-ish commitments that took the whole evening and left me wiped; Tuesday I spent a couple hours lollygagging at Flatbread for Jazzmouth night. I need to get on the stick! I've got a dozen song starts, each recorded as a simple sketch, but no complete lyrics. I'm also not really in love with any of the material I've got right now. I want to tinker with my recording setup, maybe even... (236 more chars)
(Tuesday, 06 February 2007) Written by Michelle Moon
Oh, the heartbreak. I'm just no good at the high haunting country yodel. No 'Lovesick Blues'-style output for me. If only! I suppose I'll have to employ some other tactics...
I'm back at work today. There's a Slow Food meeting tonight, so I won't be able to work on music all day today. In lieu of that I'm seeking inspiration through Pandora Internet Radio - I've set up a station that is now streaming me wonderful Western Swing and roots country: Hank Snow, Webb Pierce, Carl Smith. I got fascinated with the Western Swing guitar sound and found a couple great web tutorials. Neat stuff -- and it's an easy sound to replicate, though it would be hard for me to constru... (269 more chars)
..a bull in a china shop? One of the three, because today I figured out how to use Audacity. Yee-ha! I've never done any recording at home. Last year I was very fortunate to have a friend record my RPM in a single day on very fine equipment. I don't yet know what my final project will end up on, but I wanted to take some steps in getting the ability to record at home. One mike and one free Audacity program later, I'm in business. At last I can get rid of the hard-used early-80s Panasonic mini... (947 more chars)
(Saturday, 03 February 2007) Written by Michelle Moon
Came home early from work yesterday to set aside two hours for writing. After a predictable 45 minutes of procastinating ('oh look! Must read all the mail! The living room is a frightful mess! The dishwasher needs to be unloaded! etc.'), I finally sat down to work on some of the song starts I laid out Thursday. And, bleah. Everything felt painfully clunky and awkward. The guitar needs new strings. The tone sounds funny. I'm rusty. I don't know where I'm headed. The early song attempts sound ins... (764 more chars)
Crazy for feeling so lonely. Crazy. Crazy for feeling so blue. Crazy for considering "Honky Tonk Torch Songs" as my seed idea for this year's project. Yeah, it could end up sounding pretty silly. But I keep listening to this Hank Williams and this Kitty Wells and delving into all sortsa pre-Nashville sound country music, and I like it. I like it a lot. Simple song structures, painfully direct lyrics, vivid picture painting and universal emotion. The two strongest song starts I have are head... (106 more chars)
(Thursday, 01 February 2007) Written by Michelle Moon
I wasn't gonna do it. I really wasn't. Last year was great, but when I thought back to those long February nights, sitting on my living room floor with my guitar, surrounded by scribbly scraps of paper -- when I remembered the scramble to the finish, still working out the arrangment of the last song just minutes before it was recorded on Feb. 27 -- it just seemed like the kind of effort you can't pull off twice. But the thing is: I learned something. I learned that it can be done. Now that I... (717 more chars)
