Week 13, These Days

This week’s song is called These Days YouTube link for iPhone

Completing this song means that I’ve reached the 1/4-way mark for Project 52. I’ve completed a season, and since the first song went up on September 6, and the song was posted on December 1, it sounds like fall to me.

I’d written the song early in the week using my Hovland tuning (F-A-D-G-A-E). But when it came time to record it, I had to take my operation on the road. On Wednesday we headed out to Philadelphia to visit the in-laws for the Thanksgiving holiday. Thanks to father-in-law having dabbled with the guitar a number of years ago, I was able to pack my Telecaster next to the suitcase, plug into his amp and hit record. He has a great sounding Fender Blues Junior – a smooth little tube amp that can get a little dirty when pushed. I recorded the three guitar tracks using the Blue Mikey into the iPhone. The sensitivity of the Blue Mikey required that I keep the amp pretty low. The rumor is that a newer version of the Mikey is coming out at some point which corrects the sensitivity and clipping issues on the iPhone that make using Mikey for a wide range of applications tricky. (I’d love to hear this directly from Blue, but so far it’s just rumors)

Anyway, the guitars ended up sounding good, but I couldn’t resist throwing a couple of xylophone tracks in when my wife’s childhood Fisher Price xylophone was sitting right next to me. My son is super into marching bands right now, so a good portion of our vacation was spent marching around the house playing the xylophone along with him rocking out on a toy guitar which has faithfully played “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” for the last 30-odd years. I just managed to sneak the two xylophone tracks in while everyone was having breakfast (any attempt at playing xylophone within earshot of my son would have inevitably led to marching). The guitar tracking wasn’t so lucky to go undisturbed – you can hear near the end of the song that my wife and kid were sitting on the bed next to me, trying not to make a sound. My son is two; what can I say, he held up admirably. But at the very end, right when I finished, he let out this “caaahhh” sound that just cracked me up. I left it in mix for everyone to enjoy, along with them clapping and a brief chorus of everyone’s favorite word: poop.

I recorded the vocals after we’d returned home. They’re just straight into the iPhone mic, which has proven to be a dependable and fine-sounding vocal mic. All of the tracks were recorded in MultiTrack, which has been a pleasure to use. And with no need for a metronome for a song like this, I could just set up and go. From what I’ve read on the forums, it sounds like the first MultiTrack update will be available by the time I get into the next song or two… hopefully. The update sounds like it will take MultiTrack from being the most stable and overall best recording app out there for the iPhone to being, well, even better. Everything was mixed in Reaper as usual – no problems there.

In lieu of getting the song up early, I was able to add some features to the site that I’ve been meaning to do for a while now. I added Week 8 to YouTube for the iPhoners out there and added a few more blog links, but the big change is the addition of the Free Downloads page. I wanted to get some of the mp3s from the collection out to you and let you vote on which songs you would like to get the most. I also wanted to throw some fun bonus songs up from days and bands gone by. I’ll keep adding stuff over the year so keep checking back. Don’t forget to vote  for your favorite song on the sidebar.

Thanks everyone for coming back and listening. I would love to hear your comments on the downloads page and everything else.

2 Comments to Week 13, These Days

Dale Markham
December 2, 2009

Love it when you break into the half time guitar with the multi-track vocal. Good stuff. I think you should continue to explore your vocal abilities.

Dean
December 29, 2009

Really nice tune! I am impressed with the sounds you get recoding on the iPhone…

Leave a comment