Resurrecting Punk Rebel Renegade, Pt. 4
I’m pretty sure this will be the last installment of Resurrecting Punk Rebel Renegade because I know I’m just a few days from sending my audio files to be mastered. Like with Heat Stroke, I plan on doing a retrospective, so there are things I will save to talk about there.
So back in Part 2, I explained where Punk Rebel Renegade started, I guess. I spent most late nights/early mornings recording these songs. It wasn’t the most pleasant experience, but I did discover that it’s apparently impossible for me to feel very badly if I’m making music. Hunger, sleep-depravity, exhaustion…none of that seemed to hinder my creativity. If anything, it might have spurred it a little bit. Since my brain wasn’t letting me play these riffs I was coming up with very easily, I was forced to spend more time on them. I can’t really remember there being a specific time where the extra time made the basic song idea better, but then again, I can’t really remember anything about recording Punk Rebel Renegade. It’s not a joke, even though it is kind of funny.
I could probably triangulate a fairly precise date if I tried hard enough, but I’m pretty sure I was working on preparing the title track for use in Rock Band via the Rock Band Network. This would have been in 2011. I know that much. You know, I don’t mention RBN as much as I should. Not that I have a huge fanbase or anything, but I can’t imagine anyone that anyone found my music from somewhere other than Rock Band. Anyway, I’m sure I’ll talk more about that in a future Random Blog Post or something.
So yeah, I do kind of remember this. There’s a part in the middle of “Punk Rebel Renegade” where it sort of chills out and kind of goes quiet, mimicking a concert, I guess. And I recorded myself singing the chorus lyrics in probably a dozen different timbres, simulating a crowd singing along. And I’m pretty sure I did that just so there could be a fun little harmony section in Rock Band. I got a couple versions of it into testing, but it never made its way to the Rock Band store. I don’t think there was anything wrong with it. That was just at that point where you had to test 20 other songs to get 1 test on your song. And I was all tired and crap and didn’t feel like spending the time and money for another year of XNA to get it through. With Rock Band 4 coming back later this year, it would have been cool if “Punk Rebel Renegade” was available in the game to go along with the official release of the album. Or, who knows, maybe RBN will come back and I’ll end up getting it in the game like I wanted to 4 years ago.
What else? Well, just looking through my files, I’ve realized how much music I recorded and almost finished that didn’t make its way on the album. None of it is as good as what is on the tracklist, but it’s still kind of cool to listen to all this stuff. Some of the tentative song titles of these rough songs became lyrics in other songs, which is kind of neat, maybe.
Oh yeah, and I tweeted some statistics a week or so ago that I came up with when fixing up the tracks to get them ready for mastering. Like, 50% of my songs are 50% longer than they need to be. And the vocals are 50% of the volume they should be in 50% of my songs. And this isn’t a statistic, but the second track on Punk Rebel Renegade is called “Let It Go,” and I’m pretty sure there was a song called that in that Frozen movie that was popular or whatever. I still have never heard that song. I definitely didn’t hear it 4 years ago. No one will probably even make the connection, but I kind of worry about it anyway.
Next week, I’ll probably post another one of these. I want to get my tracks shipped off to be mastered this weekend, but I’m working more hours at work and my ears aren’t usually in the mood to work on it. So if there isn’t a new Resurrecting Punk Rebel Renegade post, there will be something else to read. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’ve been trying to post something at least once a week on here.