RPM Challenge Days 7-9

Monday we started running into writer's block and the stress levels have been rising as it's already week 2 and we still have a lot of work cut out for us both!  Monday, after a lot of errands and chat and talks with clients and doing a few side jobs, Troy managed to get ideas down that he liked for the Pop Punk song.  While the album calls for a particular style that would be reminiscent of Blink 182 in their old days back around their first album release, he came up with a pretty cool riff that is more pop thank punk but still pays homage to the genre.

I've been having a terrible case of writer's block coming up with ideas that I actually liked to fit the bill for the progressive metal song.  While I cycled through a bunch of ideas and some that fit other song ideas, they were too rough and I couldn't seem to focus on one I liked until I hit the main riff that set me into motion on the intro to the Progressive Metal song.  It took me quite a while to dial in what I was hearing in my head that inspired the lick, but it finally got down.


Tuesday was our worst day of all.  Don't ever try to force musical concepts out from nothing when you simply don't have the ideas.  Not only does it sound less authentic, it simply sounds uninspired.  Troy eventually stumbled across some ideas he liked but nothing solid.

As for me, I tried to tackle the ambient interlude track that comes in before my alternative electronic song, but absolutely nothing was getting done!  All in all, we spent a lot of time discussing and clashing ideas and trolling through my vast sound collection with samples I've collected, made, and virtual instruments galore.  I think I found a decent start for the Alternative song I have to cover.  I managed to demo a basic idea for it, but both Troy and I were just too tired.  I exercise every day, and he swims before he works his part time job.  Tuesday just seemed a slow and uneventful day.

Wednesday we got a lot more accomplished.  During Troy's lunch we demoed his Folk Pop song idea

While Troy went back to work, I did my usual routine of hitting up the Gym and taking care of errands.  Later in the evening we resumed tackling the 2nd interlude track.  With a few minor interruptions from family and clients calling and booking more work (yay!) we started capturing Foley in my family's garage.

The interlude is a dark ambient track with a heavy foley base and will require a lot of processing and mixing.  We spent a good couple hours just setting up and getting ideas down for Foley, sound effects, and even voice work for background. 

I set up 2 mics in the garage extended from my snake and ran headphones out as well.  I quickly found a good placement for both mics and set them pretty far away from the sources of the Foley.  I let Troy go at it for a few takes and then I did my takes after.

 

We ended up with like 8 different takes, trying various ideas from bumps, impacts, and scrapes to vocalizations and guttural noises.  This interlude is already sounding a lot darker and more violent than I had originally imagined it would!

All in all, the energy we had yesterday made up for Tuesday's shortcomings and lack of progress. We're still on schedule and plan on keeping this pace up until the end of the project.

Troy making a point

Today (Thursday) we have more demo's to finish and hopefully by Friday we can tighten up ideas to take to the studio to track as much as possible!

With the 2nd week coming to a close very fast, Weeks 3 and 4 are going to be critical when it comes to tracking Vocals, heading into editing, mixing, and mastering.  Several other elements need to start coming into play too as we have to discuss album artwork ideas and schedule photo shoot time for ourselves, and I have started to work on the album design with Discmakers' templates for the particular package design we want to use.