Robert James

FAWM’s 50/90 starts on July 4th, Independence Day in the USA, and wouldn’t you know it New England got hit by the remnants of a hurricane that night. Hurricane Arthur was pretty much just a rain storm by the time it hit us, but it was still song worthy.

I’ve signed up for 50/90 a couple of…read more

I’ve had a very productive three day weekend kicking off 50/90. I have nine songs at various stages of completion. Now the question is, how badly do they suck?

I have pretty much fallen in love with the sound of my Strat’s neck pickup. Clean, dirty, it doesn’t matter. I am really digging…read more

I don’t need every song to sound like a power trio, even if I want every song to be arranged for a power trio. Does that make sense?

Also, is it the biggest cliche in the universe to write a song about writing a song?

All of the guitars parts were played on my ES 335.

A little bit…read more

I liked this one a lot more before I mixed it…

I don’t know what the lyrics are about. All I know is that my Strat’s neck pickup is sah-weeet.

The rhythm guitar is the Strat. The lead at the beginning is the Les Paul. The lead at the end is the Strat. The solo section in the middle…read more

This one came together really fast. I had spent most of my Sunday forcing two other songs out of my head and I was tired and not feeling all that pleased with the day’s work. I figured I’d give it one more shot and went to my binkie. My security blanket. My happy place… Emin7. Next thing…read more

Well this was a waste of time. Also, this will teach me not to listen to too much Pink Floyd while working on an internet songwriting challenge.

I thought, it’ll be cool! A droning bass violin with little piano and guitar noodles over it. Add in lots of sauce and it’ll be fun!

No…read more

Not terribly thrilled with the mix, but otherwise this one is okay by me.

The idea was to write one riff that repeats for the length of the song and then have the dynamics and the melody take care of differentiating between verses and choruses and whatnot. It kinda worked.

This one is…read more

Even a redhead like me wants to sound funky every now and then. Nothing else really to note about this one.

The guitars are all ES 335.

The sun shines on you
Let it light the way
The road clears for you
Let it make your day

get up get out of bed
its time to get things done
look…read more

A halfhearted attempt at being schmaltzy. If I had really gone all in the chorus would have been Fmaj7 - Emin7 instead of Fmaj7 - Cmaj7.

All of the guitars are my Les Paul.

The lyrics were written shortly after learning that the Boston Red Sox had cut A.J. Pierzynski. I can only imagine…read more

The music here is my first time messing with the Line 6 Pod app for iPad. I’m pleased with it over all (that sah-weeeet Strat neck pick up) but I question why it lacks any form of overdrive pedal. What the hell? Is it an in-app purchase or something like that? Oh well.

The lyrics are in…read more

Recorded in the USA, mixed in Canada. I’m on vacation, but I found a little time here in Toronto to mix one more song.

The lyrics are about my cat… again.

The guitars are all Les Paul. The riff in the hook is using an E7#9 chord… again. That’s becoming my alternate binkie, along…read more

This was the first thing I came up with for 50/90, and it’s taken almost a month to finish it. Why might that be? Might it be because I’m not very happy with it? Might be.

The lyrics aren’t about anything, I just made them up and they fit. The guitars are all ES 335.

I don’t have to…read more

A song about greater Boston traffic. Just when you think you have it figured out… urgh.

I always sit in 4/4 time. I often need to just break out of it and do something different. This time it’s 6/8, but I feel lots of 7/8 and 5/4 are on the horizon.

The rhythm guitar here is the…read more

We have an interesting thing going on in my little neck of New England. I guess we’d have to call it a labor movement, but that’s not quite right. When the US economy tanked a few years ago, the CEO of a local supermarket chain did the unthinkable and used company profits to make up for what…read more

I have no clue what the lyrics are about. I guess maybe it’s about not wanting to go to work on a Tuesday morning and looking for some existential way out? I don’t know, something stupid like that.

The music to this was written while I was on vacation. That’s how dedicated I am to the 50…read more

This one is a little sloppy. There’s a bum note in one of the guitars in the chorus that got copied and pasted a whole bunch of times. I don’t have time to go back and fix it though.

Lyrically, I haven’t mined the endless source of inspiration that is https://twitter.com/_FloridaMan since…read more

Another simple arrangement that uses dynamics to differentiate between verse/chorus/ect. I really like that gimmick, but I have to force myself not to do it, or I’d do it 100% of the time.

The lyrics are about depression and were written the day after Robin Williams committed suicide…read more

Actual, real live percussion. There’s a little monkey drum that I bought at a Ren Faire many years ago, and a pair of finger drums I bought at the Moroccan Pavilion at Epcot Center even more many years ago. It’s the first time since I had an actual real live band in a real studio that I have…read more

Another song about depression that was sort of inspired by Robin Williams’ suicide. It’s getting harder and harder to write lyrics for 50/90, but somehow I managed to write a whole bunch today. Topics were repeated. Melodies were repeated as well. It’s okay because music had already been…read more

I spent some time last night (August 13, 2014) following the situation in Ferguson, MO on twitter. The pictures and descriptions were… alarming. When I woke up this morning I immediately wrote two songs that were inspired by what I saw.

The disclaimer, of course, is that I don’t know how…read more

This one came really quick as I was working on another, completely different, idea. Lyric wise it’s a simple little love song about the love of my life and I sticking it out. Usually I tend to match that type of lyric with something less dumb rockerish. Not today though!

The guitars are…read more

This song represents the place where things got alarmingly repetitive for my 50/90 project. In another day or two I’ll be posting a song that is musically very similar to this one. As I worked this one out, I had no memory of the previous attempt. They are different enough that I am going…read more

An angry little ditty about the seemingly overzealous police in Ferguson, MO. Not much else to say about this one except that the guitars are all Fender.

Take me away
to where it’s safe
get me out of this
police state
tear gas
and flash grenades
riot police
troops in the street…read more

So 50/90 is an unnatural forcing of a crap ton of songs in a relatively short period of time. We’re half way though and I’ve learned one thing. I’ve learned how easy it is to repeat something you’ve already done. This one sounds a LOT like a song I mixed and posted last night.

The lyrics…read more

This one feels forced. I don’t know, it just isn’t doing much for me. I like the part after the first solo where the drums ride on a crash cymbal, but the rest of it doesn’t seem to gel. The lyrics are gibberish made up on the spot. The guitars are all Fender.

what do you say
lets call…read more

Last month I did a bad instrumental thing inspired by the quiet little instrumental breaks in the last couple of Pink Floyd records. I don’t like the way it came out, but I did decide right away I’d try something similar again before 50/90 ended.

Well, here it is. Break Time pt2 is also…read more

There’s a lot of weirdness going on here.

First, King’s X has a song on their Dogman album called “Go to Hell”. It’s 30 seconds long and it’s balls to the wall and just when you start to feel the groove it ends. I thought I might try something like that. Fast, loud, and over before it…read more

I kinda like this one, although the cutting and pasting sounds really obvious to my ears. I usually try and get my punches cleaner than this, but I seemed to be slacking on this day. The lyrics are part of my current atheist bent. The guitars are all Stratocaster.

believe what you want…read more

Not sure about the mix for this one. My left ear hears much better than my right, and I do all of my work with headphones. Sometimes when I have two doubled tracks split left/right I end up having a hard time keeping them balanced. I over compensate one way or another and then I end up throwing…read more

Boston, Massachusetts is not just a college town. It’s THE college town. I mean it. Seriously. There is a major university in just about every neighborhood, and there are institutions of higher learning on nearly every street corner. Add Cambridge across the river into the mix and you gain…read more

I wanted something slow and dirgish (is that a word?) and twangie. I sorta got that, not really. This is another one that I got weird with the time signature setting in GarageBand for iPad and then the drummer function on GarageBand for Mac had no idea what to do with it. I kept the iPad drums…read more

The music was written in a hotel room in upstate New York. How rock and roll is that? I occasionally find myself very inclined to throw electric pianos at everything. This comes from such a phase. The part in question here was recorded using GarageBand for iPad. If you use GarageBand for…read more

On Facebook, my sister in law (a middle school teacher) told us that my niece said the second day of kindergarten was even better than the first. My sister (an elementary school teacher) said something along the lines of yippee for good days at school.

And a song was born.

Not sure what…read more

The music was written in a hotel room in Montreal (I think) and the lyrics are about how stupid the Market Basket situation got in New England (ironically, as I was recording the last vocal line a friend sent me a link to a stream of Artie T’s speech to the employees thanking them for their loyalty…read more

The music was written in a hotel room in Niagara Falls, Ontario. When I first recorded the rhythm guitars it hit me how 80’s corporate rock this was. It sounded like Journey and that pissed me off. When it came time to write the lyrics that was the original concept: This song sounds like Journey…read more

Nothing special about this one. The riff is kinda cheesy, and the lyrics are a lot cheesy. It has a pre-chorus section which is unusual for me. That’s about the only thing that’s interesting at all. The mix might be awful, but I was 99% asleep as I was working on it. The guitars are all…read more

Throughout the whole zaniness that is 50/90, I have never written, recorded, and mixed a song in one day.

Until now.

This whole thing was done on Saturday 9/6/14. The vocals were recorded in the car while I was waiting to pick up one of the kids at the movies. Very rock and roll. Especially…read more

I love playing in 7/8 time, don’t you?

There was a day late in August when I simply decided that everything I was going to work on would be in 7/8 time. I ended up with three songs. This is the first of them. I was also considering overdoing the wah-wah on all three as well, but I ended…read more

This one was forced. I had just finished recording guitars on another couple of songs and made myself come up with something new. I wasn’t very into it at all, but now that it’s finished it’s not as bad as I thought it would be.

The lyrics are a songwriting challenge cliche for me. It…read more

I had planned for more pieces for this song but it was late and I was tired so I quit while I was ahead. The next day i stitched together the few riffs I had into a song structure and decided it was set. Then as I was recording the leads I decided that it needed an ending, specifically an ending…read more

I thought going into 50/90 that I would need to do some quick recordings of really simple arrangements. Maybe just acoustic guitar and voice. Nope, not really.

This isn’t meant as filler. This idea is something I noodle on almost every time I pick up a guitar, but I have never tried working…read more

The verse is a 12-bar blues phrase, but the rest of the song isn’t. Clever? Probably not. The lyrics are kind of about work stress, but maybe not completely. I can’t really tell anymore. The guitars are all Stratocaster.

Mixed up confused
What do I do
Run down and used
Can’t make…read more

Something tells me I’ll be mixing this one again soon.

The lyrics here are specifically about 9/11, but I guess it would apply to any major event. I was just listening to the accounts of people who were there at the time and comparing their point of view to mine watching from home.

Musically…read more

The verse and the chorus are pretty much the same thing except the chorus is louder and heavier. I consider that a gimmick and a bit of a cheat, but I very often really like the way it works out. Shoot me.

The lyrics are about being afraid of everything. Being alone in the crowded room…read more

This is the 45th song posted for 50/90, but it is really the 50th song to be worked on. Somehow it seems fitting to close off the festivities with a sappy love song that swings a bit.

Of all the crap I’ve written this summer, this is the first to have a 3-part harmony, and it’s only for…read more

Not quite sure what I was going for musically with this one. It was just a couple of off the top of the head ideas. Not a lot of thought or planning. The lyrics are an Florida Man story about a guy who called 9-1-1 to ask for a ride to the liquor store.

The rhythm guitar is my Les Paul…read more

This is the 47th 50/90 song posted, but it was the 49th idea. I figured one last head banger before I was done. The lyrics are supposed to be political without really trying to pick a side. Eh.

The guitars are all ES-335

how do we handle this
what should we do
we just cannot dismiss…read more

This one is pretty sad. Sad as in, it’s not very good, not sad as in it’s a sad song.

I spent one afternoon working exclusively in 7/8. This was the third thing I came up with. It’s the worst of the three. I still sort of like the groove, but not that much.

The lyrics are based on a…read more

Another song that is entirely in 7/8. I like this one a little bit even though the riff seems a bit forced. The guitars are all Les Paul.

I won’t try to hold you back
I won’t try to keep you down
I just want to build you up
I just want to see you fly
won’t you let me try

whatever…read more

Unless my math skills have failed me, this is song #50 and 50/90 is complete! WOOHOO!

This song broke my one 50/90 rule… sort of. The rule was that all ideas get used immediately. Nothing gets dropped and everything I try stays. The idea was that I didn’t think I would be able to get…read more