RPM Challenge Day 10

Thursday, Day 10 was a good day to get stuff done.  Troy and I tackled my idea to have a blues-inspired song on the soundtrack to get back in touch with the concept we came up with.  During his lunch break we talked about ideas.

It seems like the longer we're around each other the more we screw around.  It was hard enough to stay focused with us both feeling so much pressure.

Troy feeling the pressure of the ever-creeping due date

We eventually got down to business and recapped over some crucial points on our progress we've made so far and what we have left to do.  After he left, I got back on task and started setting up to track guitars and demo the Blues-inspired song.

Setting up mic to record

I spent a good couple hours looking for a good setting on my amp and microphone placement that sounded new and different but at the same time called out that flare i was hearing in my head.

me preparing to lay down guitar tracks 

My primary goal was to completely demo the blues-inspired song and get it out of the way as the arrangement i imagined would be fairly simple.  There isn't a lot of changes going on, but it keeps it interesting enough that when layered with vocals the song still moves.  I played around with a bunch of guitar takes and different amp settings along with mic positions to get the right feel.

Afterward, Troy came back over and we chatted for a bit about the project.  Yet again, we found time to goof off as Troy heard my progress on the blues song and decided to do an impression of "me singing"...

Troy impersonating me rocking out to the Blues song

But seriously, we did get back to business.  Troy showed me his progress on writing his folk-pop song for another track on the album.

Writing lyrics and coming up with the main guitar riffs for the arrangement was easy, yet hard to land stuff he really liked and wanted to keep.

All in all, not a bad day.  Just not as far along as we'd like to be.  Troy continued to write and I continued to work back and forth on ideas for the alternative song as well as the blues song.

Thursday drew to a close too fast.  Tomorrow's day has to progress a little smoother as we both feel like we've lost steam on our pace we set out.  While technically we are still on schedule, next week we should be focusing on final tracking sessions, which mostly include vocals.  A lot of the demos only have rough lyrical ideas at best, so this is going to mean long hours trying to lay down vocals as we write!

Me demonstrating the balancing act we are doing on the project management