International

Concept

Album

Month

Wow, I've got lots to say. This has been an awesome experience.
I didn't beat the challenge; all the rules were met except one.
10 - Everything I created was original. The theme of the album was to remix other things. Well, what I ended up doing was taking a motif from another song, making it my own, and then built a song around that. Some of the results are completely unrecognizable from their source, some just barely. One song breaks this pattern by only using some speech samples; that one has no musical relation to it's source. Another track is only included because I liked how it turned out. Consider it a bonus track.
20 & 30 - I started this challenge on March 1st. And by "started" I mean I installed a driver for an old midi keyboard I had in the basement and installed Garageband onto my computer. On March 2nd I googled help on getting my keyboard working and continued to install Garageband. It took two days to install. On March 3rd I googled "how to use Garageband". Get the picture? There was nothing from before March because I literally was starting from zero. Before this project, the total number of songs I had written over the course of my entire life was... zero. I had written some phrases, some ideas. Zero songs. I wasn't even sure I could write a whole song. Anyway, who even knows where those little scraps of music are right now? Or what format they're in? Nope, rules of 20 & 30 were covered.
40 - This was my one and only challenge. I did not know if I could create even 3 minutes of music. I gave my chances of producing 40 minutes a solid 0%. The fact that in the end I produced nearly 20 minutes... that is amazing. I am truly amazed. I did not know I had this in me. Next year, I will totally BEAT THIS CHALLENGE!
This project, for me, was completely "learning to swim by jumping off the deep end". In the end I learned that I can make songs, they're pretty decent, I enjoy doing it, I get into a flow state very quickly doing it, and my wife and kids like listening to the results. I know I failed the challenge, but there is no way for me to see this as anything other than a total win. The project was a way to trick myself into learning something awesome about myself and my life is richer for it.
I took some notes during the month. This is all honest and true.
3/1: Dug my old midi keyboard out of the basement, installed GarageBand.
3/2: Googled help on getting keyboard working, continued to download GarageBand, played with Noise.
3/3: Googled how to use GarageBand, got my motifs started, bought Rebirth for iOS and got some rhythms going.
3/4: Tried to move forward with what I had so far, had no idea how to do that, panicked. "I guess I can't actually do this."
3/5: Did some random stuff, hit on something decent, got my first song framework in place. "I need to do what I always do: throw random stuff at the wall until something sticks."
3/7: Formed melodic phrases.
3/10: I can copy/paste from Figure to GB. This will be a big help.
3/16: Two songs done. Only one counts. Also, I think I want to add a few measures to one.
3/21: Discovered GB live loops and also very cool effects.
3/24: Did very little today due to a day long massive headache.
3/26: Added vocal samples to 4th track, completing it.
3/29: "I need to suck for today." But then it got better.
3/31: Finished trk5. Tweaked trk2. Can't stop; maybe one more? Yep, did one more.
That last note... I finished the work I had left for the last day and felt sad. I didn't want to be done. So with 4 hours left I made another song. Again, I am so surprised and happy to have found this capability in me.
So here's the lesson I would share with others: Don't be afraid. Just jump into the deep end and flail about and be cool with the possibility of failing. The worst thing that happens is you have a funny story about how one time you tried something crazy and failed spectacularly. It beats watching more tv. And you just might be surprised when you don't fail and you discover something new about yourself. I believe living your life as a never ending series of new jumps into new deep-ends leads to, when you're old and lying on your deathbed, looking back on your life and smiling.
Final note: I have much to learn and improve and one of those things is production. I swear, the whole thing sounds great on my headphones. In other environments your mileage will vary.

My plan is to create a rigid workflow, as if I was assembling Ikea furniture rather than art. I want to remove most of the idea of "what I feel like focusing on" or "staying in a groove". I've got X hours to produce Y tracks of Za-Zb minutes each. I intend to stagger my assignments so I am forced to jump from one piece to the next constantly. I intend my mental coach to be saying "Too bad, you're doing THIS now."

While I met important personal goals, and consider the experience a "win", I won't declare that I've won the challenge until I meet the album length requirement. Maybe next year!
My "concept" was to deliberately break the idea of "getting into agroove" or "working when inspired". I set myself a schedule where I forced myself to jump from track to track and sit down with no idea what I was going to do. To this end I was very successful. I discovered I could sit down at any time and within 5 minutes I was in a groove and being productive. I think identifying the thoughts and ideas which hold one back, and then deliberately challenging those ideas, is an important exercise for an artist in any medium.
After the tracks were done and I set about naming them, an actual concept emerged. The album describes a man realizing he doesn't want to live where he is anymore, setting out alone to find a new place to live, and then the thoughts and emotions that can arise on a long, solitary, journey.
I met all the rules except 40. That, to date, is my biggest challenge and one I accept.
Invoke the Rule of 0?  Ha ha.  Never.

TBD

I'm calling it a win with room for improvement.  For the challenge Rules:
40: Every year, as happy as I am with what I produced, I've been WELL short of 40 minutes. This rule was my goalpost this year. I am happy to say I produced over 40 minutes of music. No cheats, no padding, artificial stretching. All music.
30: Nothing was done beforehand.
20: Ditto.
10: Everything is completely original.
0: My only miss was there was no concept, not even an attempt at one.
My goal was to hit 40 minutes hell or high water.  Now that I've done that, my goal next year will be for a 40 min concept album.  Nevertheless, I'm calling this year a win.
This year I used a spreadsheet to plan and keep track of things.  Once I had what I call "seeds" in place, I noted the bpm and thus how many minutes I could get out of various clusters of 16 measures. This was invaluable to keep me focused and productive. If a song went longer than anticipated, that took pressure off the rest of the tracklist. If a song felt finished with fewer measures than I had anticipated, I tried to find ways to boost other tracks. Near the end I simply decided to create another short song. The whole process felt akin to outlining a book or storyboarding a movie. It is a method I will certainly use on future JoCoAlbMos.

an album comprised of remixed motifs from the extensive back catalogue of the band Rush

After years of learning and stretching and pushing, I’ve done it - a 40 min concept album in a month! There were times when I didn’t think I was gonna make it, times I thought about quitting. But I kept going on the faith that if I just kept at it then it would eventually shape into something decent. I’m very happy with how it turned out. :)

no concept yet either. really, I don't think about this challenge at all until Mar 1. :D

So I had a crisis of faith of sorts midway through. Do I push for a full 40 minutes of substandard product or do I abandon any hope of "winning" and just make whatever I can? I eventually concluded that I just can't release anything I won't stand by as a finished product. So I gave myself permission to just forget about the 40 minute goal. Also, I couldn't abandon this new idea I had for a workflow even though that meant a lot of time was gonna be wasted. I was worried about letting other people down if I produced less this year than last year, but at the end of the day I have to satisfy myself first.

Without going into too much technical detail, I decided early on in the month that I really like working in AUM, even though there's no timeline. I made sounds in synths, I made patterns in midi, and I feed one to the other. I made variations on the midi and then used other midi to switch between those variations. I used midi to mute parts. I found a way to use midi to trigger gradual fades and cutoffs. And to cap it off, I used midi to sequence all the above into a song. It was a bit of a crazy way to work, but I think it appealed to my programmer background - functions calling functions calling functions.

I also experimented with vocals for the first time. I recorded some lines, used midi to trigger those lines as samples, and put it through a vocoder along with additional midi to control the pitch.

I had this idea, which I haven't realized yet but I'm close, that I can have my song layer midi just be an abstract song structure and then replace the instruments and note patterns to make different songs. Again, kind of like top-down programming. If I can get that to work, I'll make a whole album of just that and we'll see if it flies. :D

So in the end I'm calling this year a win because I accomplished what I set out to do, which was push myself again in new ways to do new things. And while I don't think this year's product is a good as last years, I'm still happy with what I produced.

I'd rather not say yet. It's ambitious. For me.

My concept was to write 12 songs, one inspired by each of the 12 steps in the Buddhist doctrine of dependent origination. It's going well. I only got 5 done, but I'm happy enough with how they turned out that I definitely plan on finishing the album.

Either finish last year’s album or try my hand at ambient.

My first stab at ambient. I’ve always wanted to make ambient, but didn’t have enough know-how, This year I thought maybe I can finally do it. I am happy with the results. Also, my songs are almost always completely sequenced so I can hit GO and the song plays itself. This way I can tweak everything just so. This year’s final song (final created, but track 1) I couldn’t sequence. I had to perform it live. That was a super mega challenge and I’m proud of my accomplishment. Thx as always for the challenge.

Songs about the things I spend my time on. (So no songs about writing music, I guess. Zing!)