International

Concept

Album

Month

In roughly 600 million years, lunar tidal acceleration will render one final moment when the moon is still close enough to the earth to completely eclipse the sun.

Driven by a semi-improvisational engine of very short recordings and randomized words, this spoken-word experiment seeks to capture the journey of a creature wrought solely for the purpose of observing that moment.

I'm happy to report that this record did actually get done!  My approach, designed to keep things simple and lighter-weight this year, worked out pretty well.

My process went something like this:

0)  I came up with my production concept: record one spoken-word track each day of March, largely improvised, to create a 31-track album.  So long as the average track ran more than 78 seconds, i would successfully meet the Rule of 40.

1)  Prior to March, i did a little research on my album concept and prepped and outline.  I decided that, for every track except the first ("Realization") and last ("Redemption"), i would use a randomly selected word (https://randomwordgenerator.com/) within the track text, and as its general subject and its title.  I drew 29 random words (one for each day in March other than the first and last).  Using the words in the order they were drawn, i started mentally outlining a rough story that would move the protagonist through different stages of the adventure.

2)  Each day in March, i quickly put together a few paragraphs of copy for the day's track.  I did this by taking a look at the outline, quickly skimming the previous day's copy, and then (often with speech-to-text) dropping a draft into my Notes app.  I then made a fast pass of edits, and recorded the copy using my Voice Memo app.  Editing was done right in the app and kept very minimal: just trimming front and end space and pauses/noises from recording between paragraphs.  On most days, the whole process took maybe 30-45 minutes.  With only a few exceptions, i managed to keep pace by getting one track done each day.

3)  On the last night of March, after getting the final few tracks recorded, i dropped them all into GarageBand, spaced them out, added dynamics control and EQ, and automated out a few spurious noises that popped through the gating.  I also added and mixed in the Super Secret Bonus Feature: a background ambient synth drone track by KC2, which he cooked up for me alongside finishing his own full-length album this year!!

At this point — written, recorded, edited, and mixed — i called the album "done". ... but there were a few catches.  First, due to some technical issues (and my limited availability in the final days of March), the audio for KC2's track had some unintended errors in it; the result was still listenable, but it wasn't really what he had composed.  Second, in the midst of trying to put all that together in the last night of March (after losing a few full days to travel), i ran past midnight by about 4 hours.

All that said, i'm still calling this album a WINNER for this year.  I'm invoking the Rule of 0 because of the lost days, the fact that KC2's work was a bonus feature not in the original plan, and the fact that i only went over a few hours.  Given the technical issues, i've decided to replace KC2's drone with the corrected version and release the album in its intended form.  All in all, i feel that this final product falls successfully within the spirit of the challenge.

So, given my invocation of the Rule of 0, i'm otherwise compliant: album runtime is over 54 minutes (Rule of 40) and all new/original material (Rules of 30, 20, and 10).

As for my experience, this album was a fun and relatively easy project to bang out — as intended (cuz i have a lot going on this year!).  The random-word-driven semi-improvized approach definitely got the juices flowing, and i feel like i ended up with a neat little cinematic story that people might enjoy.