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40 in 40: What It Was
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I guess I should provide a little explanation about this project that I undertook.

I had absolutely nothing planned for any of this. I just happened to be up late on the night of Ash Wednesday 2011 and found myself in a bit of a somber mood, so I plugged in and recorded a song. People seemed to enjoy it so I decided to make it a thing: I would give up “not recording a song every day” for Lent.

To be honest, I kind of made up the rules as I went along. As I progressed I found that more than anything else it grew into an exercise for me to become more familiar and comfortable with my voice - discovering what works and what doesn’t, etc. I’ve never been a very confident singer and I don’t think 40 covers significantly changed that, but I challenged myself to try it and find out.

After the first week I had established the following set of rules:

1) Record 40 cover songs in 40 days.
2) Only one song from any band.
3) Songs from solo albums are OK (e.g., I can do a David Bazan song and a Pedro The Lion song, etc.)
4) No loops or samples (virtual instruments and effects are OK).
5) I had to completely finish recording the song before midnight and then draft up the post for the next morning. No touch-ups were allowed the next day, but I could get ahead of the game and work on more than one song in any single day, as long as the one that was posted the following day was finished by midnight.

Other than those rules, it was a free for all. Some songs came out a bit better than others. Some received completely different treatments than the originals while some were note-for-note duplicate performances. I consciously tried to force myself to not be too technical with the recording process by not getting too mucked up with microphone placement, digital effects, tone, etc. I wanted to make it sound good, but I didn’t expect it to sound great.

Recording process: Garageband, Focusrite Saffire Pro 40, various mics and instruments.

You can find all the original posts from the project (music, photos, reflections) tagged as "40 in 40" at Steelopus.com.

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41 in 47 or 1 in 6?
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So, my astute readers will probably realize that today is, in fact, not Easter Sunday. It is, actually, 6 days before Easter Sunday.

“But” they’d ask, “if Lent is always 40 days long, how did you managed to record 40 days worth of songs, starting on Ash Wednesday, and not end up on Easter Sunday?”

Well, as it turns out, Lent is longer that 40 days. In fact, it’s always 46 days in length.

“But” they’d continue, “how is that possible? Why don’t they just tell us it’s 46 days long?”

Little did I know, the six Sundays that occur between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday are not counted. I guess I repressed that fact along with countless other facets of my catholic upbringing.

“Huh.” they’d quip.

Yup. Huh. Indeed.

“So what does that mean for your 40 in 40 project? Will you be recording 6 more songs and re-branding the project to 46 in 46?”

No. I will not. Sorry. Instead, here’s what I’ll be doing:

I’m going to spend the days between now and Easter Sunday working on one song. I’ll give my full attention to one song to see how much better I can do when I’m more relaxed and not scrambling to finish recording by midnight each night.

“What song?!?!?”

You’ll just have to wait and see. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.