This is the band mix of this song: https://alonetone.com/robertjames1971/playlists/rpm2020---finished-mixes,-so-far/good-people-(coffee-shoppe-mix) The only note worth making is that unlike almost every other song I worked on this year, the…

This is a last minute bit of guitar goofiness. I own three Gibson guitars and have been wanting to write a silly instrumental that includes all of them. This is it. The rhythm guitar is my '79 ES 335 Pro, the lead on the left is my '18 SG Standard…

The waking dream ends before it began. Trailing off to quantum uncertainty.

Although they would probably not admit it, writing credits to Carl Barnhardt and Kevin Martin. Recorded for the 2020 RPM Challenge The Vaseline Queen of Abilene There’s a little town out west of Sabine Where the wind spins the turbine…

I love surf music complete with Fender guitars dripping in lots of spring reverb. This one came out of the clear blue and somehow developed the double-naught spy thing in the process. Matt plays lead. He's got the surf thing down pat!

Just a little instrumental. HYGGE /ˈh(y)o͞oɡə,ˈho͝oɡə/ noun: hygge A quality of coziness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or well-being (regarded as a defining characteristic of Danish culture).

Sometimes we don't resist the brightest flame until it's too late. ACETYLENE Baby, you burn - I never learn until I'm on fire A dangerous game - the hottest flame I've ever seen I can't look away from your blinding display, drawn by desire…

A few years back in a Portsmouth, NH bar, I saw a guy sitting across from a girl who was looking at him with such adoration and love - and I'm pretty sure the guy had no idea. This song's for you, young man. I hope you realized what you had…

There's a line in an Indigo Girls song that says, "If you need to know that you weathered the storm of cruel mortality, a hundred years later I'm sitting here living proof." For me, ever since hearing the words "cruel mortality," they have always…

Welcome to my RPM album. The line "You might not get what you want - You'll get what you deserve" came to me without me truly understanding it. By the time I finished recording the album, it all made sense. WHAT YOU DESERVE Is this what…

This one is a turd and a half. I knew it was a loser from the word go but my February rule is everything that can be completed will be. As a result we have a song where the guitars are half assed, the lyrics are half assed, the vocals are half…

New material to put together and listen to in case we get quarantined:)

There is almost no snow this year, it appears for some time from nowhere and immediately disappears. I look at this all out the window, and found myself looking more and more often back at the past experience. Is this a sign of age? Hmm, I certainly…

This one was fun to play while I was working on it, but now it's kind of a turd. I don't know if I am going to drop anything from this year's RPM Challenge album, but if I do this is definitely a candidate. The lyrics are cheese, the singing…

The miracle here is that I was able to upload this using the guest wifi at Disney World and it didn't take six days! Nice! The lyrics are about how I used to be a cynical asshole when it came to love and relationships and then I met my wife…

Alternate arrangement of this: https://alonetone.com/robertjames1971/tracks/deja-vu-(coffee-shoppe-mix) The guitars are a Les Paul through two Fender Bassbreakers.

This is the moment when my good time with the saxophone came to an end. It's just a simple 12-bar blues but I had this groovy idea for some pseudo ensemble playing at the beginning of the song and my sax skills were not up to the challenge…

Source: Samples and iPad

I woke up this morning with an idea for a strummy riff in my head. I telecommuted to work today and in the couple of hours before I had to punch in to work I wrote all the sections and recorded the rhythm guitars to a guide drum track. During…

Another band mix of an acoustic song. I had a hard time getting GarageBand's drummer to fit. I went from way too busy to way too passive to mildly too busy and decided to live with it. I think the problem was probably the 7/4 time signature…

The plan for the RPM Challenge this year is to do an album with two distinct parts. Side One (if you'll indulge the ancient way of thinking) will be a straight up bar band. The instrumentation will be my normal guitar/bass/drums/vocals. Side…

Back in 1991 I was a music major at UMass Lowell in Lowell, Massachusetts. I was in the audio program and I was flunking out because I had zero math skills. I was not flunking out in the instrumental music courses though. I played guitar at…

This one is a coffee shoppe arrangement but as soon as I had the guitar parts down I thought it would sound good with drums and bass. As soon as I had that thought I decided to do two versions of each acoustic song. Verse 1 There’s got to…

I hate Sunday Sunday is dark and lonely...

I setup a drum loop and started playing and this is what happened. The verse is a 12-bar, the chorus is the V chord section of a 12-bar. There were a lot of punch ins for both the rhythm guitar and the bass, but there was no copy and paste anywhere…

This is an alternate mix of an RPM2020 song. I'm hoping half of my album will be arranged for acoustic guitar, hand percussion, and saxophone. I also want to do an alternate mix of each of those songs with the usual three piece rock band arrangement…

The first RPM2020 song. For this song I setup a click track and just started playing. There are only two phrases and there are punch in's everywhere and many of them are just plain bad. I don’t believe what I want to believe I only believe…

guitar and little boxes that go beep and hiss

its way too long I tell you. chop it.

a guitar and mood n stuff drifting aimlessly as aural wallpaper

It tells itself.

I literally destroyed the whammy recording this.