TheoGB
25-01-2005, 01:11
Right ho: On Boxing Day I decided (what with all that free time at Christmas) to record a new album in a month. Just do it all myself, not worry about whether the finished track could be performed live with the band or without, not care who I ripped off blatantly, and generally just force myself to write music.
This was inspired by my having completed http://www.nanowrimo.org (which is the National Novel Writing Month, for those of you who didn't see that stuff in the Books forum). The problem I found was my novel was (of course) utter choss, but with some half-decent bits that you couldn't in any easy way use anywhere else. However, I reasoned that doing the same thing in music would probably utilise a couple of nice bits that I could easily lift out and use elsewhere.
I've put it all on line for download if anyone is bothered:
http://www.snaregirl.com/1101010
That page is pretty arty and pretentious so there's a link three lines down to this more simple version:
http://www.snaregirl.com/1101010/1101010-kill-all-techies.html
I decided at the beginning that "to be considered an album there should be over 28 minutes of material or at least eight tracks. All material should have been written within the month."
The following comments are on the page linked above but I thought I'd highlight them here in any case:
I bent my rules a little by using two ideas I'd had kicking around for a long while but never really used. However, all of these were new recordings and in fact everything on the album ended up being recorded live, even the stuff I could reasonable have cut and pasted or programmed. This was down to laziness more than anything else.
Anyone who remembers the 'DVD Forums Band' thing will recognise one of these ideas from track 01 as something I submitted as the possible basis for 'band' track. :D
Most tracks were recorded quickly and the first take was often the one used. Occasionally I would write something that was hard for me to play and forced many retakes just to get a half-decent version, and you'll hear this in the many bum notes, mistakes and slight timing issues on all tracks. I did try to fix as many of these as possible but part of the time limit was to get over a desire for perfection.
If I was to name a 'single' it would be '03 - This Room Spins' maybe followed by '06 - Convenient How Convenient'. However, the album contains quite a few different styles and there's stuff on there that's quite unlike those tracks. The album was arranged and produced (barely!) to be listened to as one continuous piece, so if your MP3 player puts tiny pauses between each MP3 as it plays them your enjoyment might be improved by burning them all to a CD with no gaps between tracks.
Cheers
This was inspired by my having completed http://www.nanowrimo.org (which is the National Novel Writing Month, for those of you who didn't see that stuff in the Books forum). The problem I found was my novel was (of course) utter choss, but with some half-decent bits that you couldn't in any easy way use anywhere else. However, I reasoned that doing the same thing in music would probably utilise a couple of nice bits that I could easily lift out and use elsewhere.
I've put it all on line for download if anyone is bothered:
http://www.snaregirl.com/1101010
That page is pretty arty and pretentious so there's a link three lines down to this more simple version:
http://www.snaregirl.com/1101010/1101010-kill-all-techies.html
I decided at the beginning that "to be considered an album there should be over 28 minutes of material or at least eight tracks. All material should have been written within the month."
The following comments are on the page linked above but I thought I'd highlight them here in any case:
I bent my rules a little by using two ideas I'd had kicking around for a long while but never really used. However, all of these were new recordings and in fact everything on the album ended up being recorded live, even the stuff I could reasonable have cut and pasted or programmed. This was down to laziness more than anything else.
Anyone who remembers the 'DVD Forums Band' thing will recognise one of these ideas from track 01 as something I submitted as the possible basis for 'band' track. :D
Most tracks were recorded quickly and the first take was often the one used. Occasionally I would write something that was hard for me to play and forced many retakes just to get a half-decent version, and you'll hear this in the many bum notes, mistakes and slight timing issues on all tracks. I did try to fix as many of these as possible but part of the time limit was to get over a desire for perfection.
If I was to name a 'single' it would be '03 - This Room Spins' maybe followed by '06 - Convenient How Convenient'. However, the album contains quite a few different styles and there's stuff on there that's quite unlike those tracks. The album was arranged and produced (barely!) to be listened to as one continuous piece, so if your MP3 player puts tiny pauses between each MP3 as it plays them your enjoyment might be improved by burning them all to a CD with no gaps between tracks.
Cheers