Day 4 into 5:
Worked on a song with a strange directive. “Take Your Little Heart” starts off like a slow Roy Orbison ballad and ends with two minutes of pure hell which was achieved by taking some of my favorite girl group recordings and slowing the speed to a crawl while keeping the pitch the same. It really gives me the willies!

My inner George Martin tells me that this is a bit excessive but why settle for a minute and a half of sonic hell when an additional 30 seconds would be so much more hellish?

I took time out to go to the library to take out a bunch of CDs. There was a Rhino Best of the Chantels that provided some nice samples and a lyrical idea that will find its way into “Friendly Angel.”

Most of Super Sunday was devoted to the tedium of fixing what should be really simple rhythm tracks to “Boomerang Club” and a slow soul number called “Cold Day in December.” What winds up happening is you write directly onto the timeline and you ultimately hear what the song needs and have to remake the song, which is what will happen in both instances.

Revived an old song from two RPM Challenges ago becuase of a faulty rhythm track and I just remade it now. I’ve altered it a bit to make it more Buddy Holly-ish and added the bolero ‘March of the Toreadors” sample from the opera Carmen. Oh you kids will get your culture and you’ll like it!

Recovered yesterday’s epic fail by fixing up “Please Don’t Tattle On Me” so it wouldn’t make me ill to hear it. Many things were tried- doubling a fey vocal, slowing down and speeding up the guitar track digitally using Audacity shareware. It sounds mechanical like a music box but not pretty like “Sentimental Lady.” I even did that Willie Weeks /70′s session player thing on the bass – it almost sounds as if I know what I’m doing besides lots of coke. I’m kidding of course. Everyone knows that cocaine was very hard to find in the 70′s.

I’ve spotted this song as the runt of this month-long litter. It demands the most attention yet might only achieve passable status in the end. Aaaargh!

Was happy to leave that song alone and for a while and move on to “Calabash” a weird little song about a party of people not unlike the Donners who migrate west in search of gold, get consumed by the coldest winter on record and die off.  That’s almost what the ill-fated Winter Dance Party was like- no one got rich there.

Feeling confident  I turned to “Heart Breaking Machine,” a demo of which I constructed in Garageband over Christmas vacation. It being also being The Big Bopper death anniversary, it felt right working on his ersatz tribute song—the “Heart Breaking Machine” referred to in the title is, after all, the telephone over which so much breakup data is transferred and stored. Slapped some bass, handclaps and vocals on it-it’s nearly done. Poor Bopper —will the movie people ever come for you?

I clenched my body like a fist and screamed the lyrics to “Don’t Lose That Rock Child.” It felt right, what with no one being in the house and all.

Ruined my voice for “Friendly Angel” although I did get enough good stuff that I don’t have to redo the whole thing. Thought I could get a good finger snapping sound by sampling the beginning of “Killer Queen” but like most lazy experiments – it’s probably best to just keep doing them yourself. It doesn’t sound as creepy as I originally had it, without vocals but it still is strange.

So five songs in pretty decent shape. Went to bed at 3 AM where there was only a dozen people on the RPM Challenge site–I imagine everyone is playing Spot-the-Runt tonight.

Yes, barely 24 hours into the challenge and already the hatred for a barely week-old composition has set in. I have other songs  that are in better shape than this so maybe I should’ve started with them. Instead I worked on “Please Don’t Tattle on Me,” one of three songs that just popped out of nowhere on Saturday while I was casually strumming on my girlfriend’s daughter’s pink guitar.  If it were February 27th, I’d probably be chucking this one out based on my night’s efforts. But still I persisted, rewriting lyrics and recording before going into work hoping I’d enjoy the results in the car. I didn’t. Here are the gripes:

The melody sounds lazy to me instead of pretty, like a first draft.

I haven;t figured out how to sing this one. I hate HATE HATE HATE!!!!!!  my first vocal attempt and all today I’ll be listening to Buddy Holly with an idea to try and sing it gentle and not in my usual McGruff the CrimeDog voice. “Everyday” is a good song to work from. Maybe I’ll add some knee slapping and glockenspiel. Maybe it would get it to sound less like a Mind Games outtake. I was trying to get this album to sound less Beatle-y but solo Beatles is hardly the answer.

I cut a passable slide guitar part, my first time ever attempt and my fingers are not quite where I’d like them to be.

I attempted to get a music box sound  for the guitars by changing the pitch and also running it through Garageband helium, an effect I wish Reason had. Both were fails. In olden days, you could record on tape, slow it down to half speed ad record on that and you’d get the Bob Welch “Sentimental Lady” sound I’m looking for. I was  dumbfounded on how I can achieve that digitally last night (“Where’s the easy button ? I can’t find it. Wah!” But time away from the computer and the lava lamp has given me an idea.

Hi, Serene Dominic here!

Today begins my third RPM Challenge  recording an entire album from start to finish in the merry month of February. Last year I did a 24 track album called 24 Originals Happening Now which I still feel is the best thing I’ve ever done so it will be very hard to top quality wise. This year I may not even try. For those of you who have ever been annoyed by music that I purposefully designed to please you in the past, with this new album I am going to try purposefully annoying you and see if you are inadvertently pleased with the results.

The new record will be called Winter Trance Party in commemoration of tomorrow’s 51st anniversary of the ill-fated “Winter Dance Party” that claimed the lives of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper and the 45th anniversary of the suicide of Joe Meek. All four musical icons will figure somehow musically in the album, tentatively budgeted at 12 to 14 songs and under 40 minutes. I’ve also written a children’s story called Winter Trance Party that some of the album will be based on. Overall, everything will have a cold and wintry feel to it. I’m in Phoenix where it’s about 68 degrees at the moment but when I wrote and recorded demos for a lot of the songs. I purposefully let the house get to a chilly 56 degrees. I hope when you play the resulting album, you will feel that lack of warmth.

I have about 15 new song ideas, some more fleshed out than others in demo form. And yet I’m missing the crucial side one closer song that would make people want to flip over the imaginary vinyl album to side two (because I still dream in vinyl). Around midnight I sat down with Reason and a sample from The Raindrops and nothing else and hoped  I’d come up with that closer. Instead I came up with a song that would be a great side two opener called “Don’t Lose That Rock Child”. Both are key song positions so I’m glad to have it. I’m of a mind that too many albums in the CD age get all aimless and dull in the middle and they’re too long to ever get to the end of anymore (my 24 song opus included- although it was a great album for an hour-long drive). Putting an album out on vinyl meant you had to start off strong and end stronger twice in one set, making for more classic albums. At least I hope so. Yesterday on Facebook I took an informal poll (because, really, is there a better kind?) and found out what people’s favorite side 1 closer was. Most people named Beatles cuts, which shouldn’t really count since almost every song of theirs sounds good enough to close a side. This album is trying to stay away from Beatles or British invasion sounds this time and concentrate more on pre-Fab and post-Fab music.

OK, so what this album needs is a “Stairway to Heaven” or “Let It Bleed.” Or “Time Waits For No One.”  And the pressure in on to come up with a song that will probably sound forced and suck!

“Be a pop music snob!”

…says award winning writer, author, musician and rock and roll sneerster Serene Dominic.