Song-a-Day May: Where the Road Disappears

I can't believe this is the last day!

To celebrate, we wrote a super emo tune about the lengths of the months.

I feel that it is reasonably likely that, after today's song, Schmitty will no longer need to ask me how many days there are in a given month. Good thing, too, as I always have to do the trick where I count across the tops of my knuckles in order to remember.

Well, except February. That one's pretty easy, other than the whole leap year bit.

The plan going forward is that, while we won't write a song a day every day this month, we'll probably write more songs, and perhaps we'll also revisit and improve some of the things we put together thus far.

It should be neat.

Also: The Schmitty has asked me to apologize to you, the internet, for his, as he puts it, "terrible singing." I don't think it's that bad, but then I might be biased, as I am rather fond of the fellow.

Song-a-Day May: Math is hard

Gretchen's still in open D tuning, this time piloted by the Schmitty. I played Josie, who remains in standard tuning.

We were trying to think of good fractions and the only one that came to mind was the length in miles of a marathon.

I have soy sauce on my glasses.

I can't believe tomorrow is the last day!

Song-a-Day May: Open D tuning!

When it comes down to it, as much fun as Song-a-Day has been, we really are trying to learn stuff about how to play and assemble music. Schmitty picked today to teach me about open D tuning. Basically, it's a different way of setting up the relative tones of the strings so that when you strum all the strings, it forms a D major chord. Likewise, holding down all of the strings on the same fret will produce a chord.

This is neat and useful and makes it super easy to play chords...unless you want to play something other than major chords. In that case, you still have to come up with the right finger positions, which is tricky in part because all of the things you learn about how to form minor chords in standard tuning no longer apply.

Serious stuff, people.

Song-a-Day May: The one where the cat helped

If you listen close, the cat meows twice near the beginning of the song, and then, at the very end, rubs his teeth on the microphone. He's special.

Other than that, the song is actually pretty simple.

(Warning: Schmoopy.)

Song-a-Day May: Self-referential

I'm starting to think that we've officially jumped the shark owing to the fact that we're all trying to be clever and make references to our own songs in the lyrics of our own songs.

It's kind of terrible.

That said, we had dinner at Endo Sushi in McLean, and it was delicious, and then I made s'mores using the flame of the gas stove to toast the marshmallows. That's not at all relevant to the whole song-a-day paradigm, but, hey, whatever works, right?

I like making music with this Schmitty fellow.

Dee-Ay-Gee. It's kinda been done.

Song-a-Day May: Dinner!

We had soup for dinner. It was delicious!

Song-a-Day May: Holiday Weekend Edition

I think we used up the entire quantity of internet available in West Virginia to post Friday's song. Or, in the very least, that is what is suggested by:

• the fact that Friday's song never even loaded correctly
• the bit where, for all intents and purposes, none of us were able to get even a little dribble of signal for the rest of the weekend

Granted, it's kind of okay, it probably prevented us (well, Jay and I in particular; Schmitty and Jackie tend, on balance, to be a lot more sensible about these sorts of things) from foolishly spending our vacation working. But it did mean a break in posting the songs...but not in recording them! Thus:

• On Saturday Schmitty dropped a pick into the body of his guitar while we contemplated the difficulties of making songs
• On Sunday, Schmitty was particularly entertaining by the time we got around to recording after a full day of white water rafting
• Today we're dehydrated and tired and couldn't keep the cat away from the microphone

I can't believe we have less than a week left!