Two years ago I participated in the RPM Challenge – record 10 songs or 35 minutes of original music in the month of February. 28 days later you have a whole CDs worth of material that didn’t exist before. It isn’t a competition, there are no prizes, no judges, no phone-in public vote. You simply commit to producing the goods at the end of the month. And to force you into “Completer – Finisher” mode they want you to mail your finished CD to the organisers in New Hampshire, USA. They then load it onto a Jukebox so that you can share what you’ve achieved and hear what others have been up to. It’s all good.
Last time however I only found out about the challenge one week into February so in the event I had only 3 weeks to complete the CD. I found it tough going, lots of late nights staring at Ableton Live sets, frantically trying to find something that sounded interesting and not too cliched. All this on top of the day job too… It was great discipline to hit the big red button marked “REC” and record whatever I was doing, rather than setting up, noodling around a bit, then chucking the result away at the end in order to go and walk the dog / surf the net / make tea. It also forces you to accept what you are producing as you’re doing it, rather than filtering your output too severely at the first listen – “First-pass metabolism” effects indeed. By the end of the week I was completely knackered and remember posting to the blog saying “Help, I’m pooped, I’ll never get it finished…” or words to that effect. I got a lovely reply from one fellow RPMer saying “Get a grip, you’ve got a week left. That’s 25% of the whole time.” Which was enough to make me put a little extra effort in to get it all finished up. The end result was very satisfying – not because I think it’s a musical masterpiece, far from it, but rather I have something that I know I created in three weeks and captures what was happening at that time, warts and all.
So RPM09 is just about upon us and I’ve signed up to take part this year. It was good to have a year off last year – I was busy training for the London marathon – and I think I’m better prepared than last time to take it all on. I’ve got my tools all ready, I’ve been scouting about for some inspiration and I’ve got some possible collaborators lined up and ready to help out with sounds etc. So it should be fun. I’m Hank Spaniel over there just as I am here. I’m hoping to post work in progress here to let folks listen in to the creative process and help inspire me on.
STAY TUNED!
I’d love to join in this year but I’m rather hoping that I’ll have sale and purchase of property to attend to, which could be rather distracting. I’ll be listening out for your results.
Wulf