Two Hour Track Sunday Track originally (submitted here)[http://compo.thasauce.net/rounds/view/2HTS363#entry-17685].

I was learning Shreddage 3 Jupiter, which I had upgraded to after not using Shreddage 2 in about 8 years. There's a bit of a learning curve - it has a lot of articulations and so forth that I didn't manage to get into so the guitars don't really sound real, but that's what happens when you do a compo.

I've been kind of slow on music projects recently. I got caught up in learning a DAW for Windows (Studio One 5 trial, so far) and I'm learning some voice (still a beginner, so no real recordings yet) and am writing more on my blog.

Punk rock originally done for One Hour Compo (http://compo.thasauce.net/rounds/view/OHC540). I did a first pass of vocals and guitar parts in the hour. I worked on the song minimally, re-recording the guitar parts for variety, doing more mixing, and other various touch-ups. I did NOT re-record the vocal parts (my partner was playing video games in the same room with me!) so I've essentially spent less than an hour warming up and doing vocals for this song. By the way, I haven't exactly been practicing guitar or vocals.

There was this girl, she thought she was smart
She knew because they told her so
But when she had to head to the world
She struggled, she toiled, it hurt

She thought she was ready she thought she was smart
Failure sliced her heart
When she couldn’t do it, not anymore
Her will and her dreams were gone

She went on blind
She toiled on broken
And she heard no cry
She tried and she tried

Tides of madness Tides of joy
Rushing water swept her away
Carried her dreams back where they came
In solitude she got away

Sunday, October 8.

16:00 - 16:20: Warm-up and scale practice.

16:20 - 18:05: Song finished. Not too many notes.

This was a bit of a lazy entry. I did a lot of practice trying to play E minor on various parts of the neck using one of the pentatonic shapes as a guide, so it's not exactly a song of intense passion - mostly just scale-based noodling, lots of layering, and repeating chords.

In some respect WeeklyMusic has become "guitar practice" but I guess that's not really a bad thing…

Total time: 1h 45m

Despite how epic the song is and how fitting the title is, my wife came up with it because she joked that what I really wanted to do today was play Divinity: Original Sin 2.

===

Sunday, October 1.

15:05 - 17:20: I am taking guitar lessons. Today's lessons is to do scales more smoothly across two octaves. While listeners might not really hear differences, behind the scenes I'll be working on playing on scale tones more dexteriously.

I also watched a pretty good 4 and a half video about making thicker, more epic chords. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3U5PBQDpxM

This is a little more soulful and epic than the music I normally do?

Total time: 2h 15m

Pseudo-epic-trying guitar ballad.

Notes: I tried to steal chords from pop songs, but it was too hard to figure out how they were supposed to sound good together.

Starting in earnest:

16:35 - 18:50. 2h 15m

Really? It sure felt longer than that.

Saturday, Sept 16: I started this on Saturday, but I didn't keep a time log. I maybe spent 30 minutes on this doing a drum loop, some bass, and a few chords.

Sunday, Sept 17: 16:05 - 18:30.

This turned out to be a pretty normal rock song with some synthpop elements to it.

It was mostly a good opportunity to practice more guitar playing. I realized that my guitar goes out of tune a LOT, I tuned it three times because it was drifting out of tune while I was making the song. Maybe this is normal though and I didn't really realize it.

I spent a modicum more time on the drum design this week than normal - as the song developed I swapped out a lot of the 808/909 samples I had for more traditional rock samples, but I do have a few synth samples there.

Total time: Probably 3h?

Instruments: Software drums, 3 tracks of real guitar (lead/rhythm/backing chords), two Nord Lead tracks (pads and bass), one modular synth (background countermelody)

SPLATFEST COVER TIME!

Sunday, Sept 3, 16:15

It's streak.club time, but I also noticed that PRC356 has a Splatoon 2 remix this week and since I'm a Splatoon fan, I thought I'd give this a shot.

Here's the link: http://compo.thasauce.net/rounds/view/PRC356

16:15: First, learn the song. Chords, key, scales. There's a bit of note-borrowing going on from other scales here (something that I am pretty bad at - I stick to the scale tones a LOT).

17:30: Okay it took me like 30 minutes to get a 4-bar riff. At this rate I'm not going to finish before streak.club's deadline.

19:30: "Done". Only because I'm out of time - the parts all need to be redone so it's more solid. It's kind of outside of my ability but now that I've laid down the song it means that I can practice… and with time…

All of the parts (4 guitar tracks, 1 bass track) are played live (over many takes) except for the drums, which is a computerized drummer.

I guess it's awesome that I managed to do a remix in a few hours that's recognizable as the original.

Total time: 3h 15m

Sunday, August 27, 16:20 - 18:45. 2h 25m

Laying down some beats. Trying to make a few sounds on hardware…

Okay, this turned out okay. The modular patch that I started with is not front-and-center but does some strange and interesting things in the background that I'm happy with. The guitar playing is nothing to write home about but at least can carry the song. I think I wanted to make a progressive synth-pop style song with guitars for some time now and at least this succeeds.

Sunday, August 20, 15:00-17:21 Modular + Guitar Jam.

First 30m was setting up the studio and getting some initial tuning and patches in for the modular synthesizers, and fiddling around with some initial melodies that might be okay.

I kind of wanted this to be done, I didn't particularly like the end result too much. The mood changes too much and I wasn't sure I wanted to go back and fix it all.

Theme notes to come

Not sure when I started actually. It's 10:45 now and I probably spent an hour on this song already laying down parts and getting guitar tones right.

I think I stopped around 12:15, but I'm not clear. So maybe 2.5 to 3 hours? There are some messy parts that I've marked as "FIX" in my project file - the intro for example and the chorus needs work, as well as some of the verses that aren't quite the same section to section.

I think I might do some work next week and add lyrics.

The world is filled with bright lights. Heaven sees them too.

Sunday, July 30. 17:20 - 19:00.

Feeling tired today, so I want to explore a few simple chord progressions and lay down a basic synthpop song. I kind of wanted to try to combine rock/synth a little in this song.

The timing needed work, I ran out of time to work on this.

Total time: 1h 40m.

Summertime hot dogs and burgers.

I started this song in about 1.5 hours for OHC (I submitted it late). I got some encouragement to finish it, so I'll aim for that during WeeklyMusic.

Sunday, July 23, 2017. 11:15 - 12:30. Going to do this song over again and work on the performance parts. Re-recorded most of the rhythm guitar and redid some bass and added an ending.

I started again around 2-3 PM maybe? I forgot to record the new start time.

Including OHC time, I probably spent about 3h 45m on this, with a lot of it recording takes of the guitar parts. My guitar playing is still not that solid but recording it at least reinforces what I need to look at.

My cat passed away this week, so my ability to concentrate is a little shot. I really loved Timmy, he was a beautiful affectionate creature. RIP Timmy.

I received some direct feedback on the last piece, so I'm going to be a little more careful this time. Live guitar parts, live bass parts, fake drum parts.

Chords: Am Em F C / C Dm G F

Time: 16:00 - 17:45. Total time: 1h 45m

Sunday July 9: Guitar practice/jamming.

I kind of lazied out this week, but some practice is better than no practice.

Total time: about 1.5 hours.