Last year, thanks to the RPM Challenge, I had a completely manic and productive February and put together my first-ever album of music. You can listen to my songs here or here. To play around in the sandbox of everybody else’s music, just click the Jukebox icon.
I’m working on my RPM album for 2010, but I’m not sure whether it’ll get done this year. I’ll try my best. Meanwhile, I’m going to blog about the process and “show my work” so to speak. Giving anyone who wants it some insight into this creative madness and allowing me a chance to look back later and see where it all came from.
The first step is to have ideas. Anytime I’m playing guitar and I hit on something new and fun or a cool riff or chord progression, I switch the microphone on and record it so I can remember later. Over the past year, I made about 30 of those little fragmentary ideas. The first step in writing is to sort through them and weed out the ones that suck and find the ones I’m most excited about. So here are some lo-fi clips of the ideas that I’m most likely to try and make some music out of (ignore my Randy Jackson “arright” in just about every take):
- Idea Fragment 2
- Idea Fragment 5
- Idea Fragment 7
- Idea Fragment 8
- Idea Fragment 9
- Idea Fragment 10
- Idea Fragment 15
- Idea Fragment 17
- Idea Fragment 20
- Idea Fragment 22
- Idea Fragment 24
- Idea Fragment 25
- Idea Fragment 26
- Idea Fragment 28
- Idea Fragment 29
They don’t sound like much yet, but I can feel at least a glimmer of potential. The next step is taking the fragments and putting in some transitions and seeing if they work as rough “song-length” pieces. I’ll post those when I’ve got ‘em.
Meanwhile, if you happen to know a percussionist(!) or an instrumentalist who might want to have some fun, collaborate, or contribute, I’d love to have help. Especially a percussionist, bass player, or any quirky instrument like a violin, cello, or oboe or something….