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…

Alternate arrangement of this song: https://alonetone.com/robertjames1971/tracks/ending-forever-(coffee-shoppe-mix) Electric guitar is a Les Paul through two Fender Bassbreakers.

I must be nearing the end because all of the playing and singing it getting sloppy. I like the call and response thing in the verse. The punches on the guitars are pretty shitty. I like all the sauce I put on the sax. So it's hit or miss…

I forgot to write an ending for this one. That's why it fades out. Lots of squawky saxophone. I must have been running out of gas when I recorded it. The lower vocal part has a lot of iffy pitches. I'm sort of glissing between notes and I…

My usual generic mid-tempo rock tune. This was written on the guitar rather than on a midi instrument in GarageBand, so I like it a little for that alone. Really though, the whole thing is worth it for the four bar disco break toward the end…

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…

This is the band mix of this guy: https://alonetone.com/robertjames1971/tracks/time's-up-(coffee-shoppe-mix) The acoustic guitar and the vocals are the same on both mixes. Everything else is different. Today’s the day the end of days…

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…

I liked this one as I was working on it. Now that it's done... meh. I feel like I am trying to do too much with way too little. It was a nice idea, and I love anything in 7/8, but I don't know about this puppy. The lyrics are the first time…

This was the first idea I had for RPM this year. It was the first song to have guitars, the first to have lyrics, the first to have pretty much everything. Why then wasn't it the first to get mixed? I don't know. I kinda like this but maybe…

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…

Long story... or, What the hell is a cajon anyway? I listen to a podcast about cover bands. One of the hosts is a drummer and he plays in an acoustic group. He said he played his cajon at the acoustic gigs. I thought, what the hell is…

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…

I just finished an album in a day project, based on this: http://crapart.spacebar.org/aad/ This was the first song I worked on. I was kinda thinking of it as two songs smushed together. It’s not terrible. Maybe if I come back to it with ears…

My first impression was this one wasn’t very good. As the day wore on though it kinda grew on me. Now that I’ve made it track two I think I’m starting to not like it again.

This one is okay. Nothing too special, but it is in 7/8 (assuming I’m writing about the track I think I’m writing about. Who knows).