RPM Challenge

January 27, 2007 12:33 PM

So. The write-and-record-an-album-in-Februrary RPM Challenge thing. Who's doing it? Who still needs convincing? [Recently, on mefi]
posted by cortex (staff) to MetaFilter Music at 12:33 PM (51 comments total)

I'm in, and between comments in that thread and offband communications I know that sleepy_pete, pyramid termite, and drezdn are going for it as well.

But what about you maybes, you lurkers and hesitants? Are you like Flynn? I have no reservations about goading more of you to commit. Considering the stuff we keep seeing on Music, I think we could blow the damn top off this thing, and it's a great excuse to do some challenging creative work.

And goading or no goading, it'd be great to get a role call of mefites going for it. Links to your RPM '07 profiles would make it easy for everyone to keep track of every one else—the "connections" engine they've got on the site would make it easy for us to glom together a mefi cabal.
posted by cortex at 12:34 PM on January 27, 2007

I think it'd be fun, but I'm just starting to get into recording. I may do it, depending on how quickly I can learn Logic Express, how creative I can be, and how much schoolwork I have.
posted by danb at 1:18 PM on January 27, 2007

I'm there under my real name. My wife thinks I'm insane. Not really because of the RPM Challenge, though. I think it'll be a lot of fun. Drezdn, where are you on the site?
posted by sleepy pete at 1:25 PM on January 27, 2007

Man, I wish I didn't have 800 tons of schoolwork to do, or I'd be all over it. I'll try to make some time if I can...
posted by equalpants at 2:20 PM on January 27, 2007

I'd do it if I hadn't lost my Live-Lite registration. Don't have the $ to shell out for a decent replacement
posted by edgeways at 2:30 PM on January 27, 2007

i say we make it challenging. why not write, record and perform at carnegie hall 6 hours of uninterrupted original music^* by 6pm tomorrow?

^*material must exhibit common musical attributes such as melody, harmony, rhythm, tonality, key, time signature, theme, reflect compositional thought, and preferably evoke emotion. random or premeditated noise disqualified.
posted by quonsar at 3:17 PM on January 27, 2007

Hell, I'll do it. It'll be all classical trombone recordings, almost none of which are public domain, and it will be recorded on my $80 Sony mic, but hey, my teacher is always telling me to record myself more often anyway.

But wait - on preview - is it kosher to make an album of previously composed music? I can't quite tell.
posted by rossination at 3:50 PM on January 27, 2007

The thrust of the RPM challenge is to write original stuff, so, yeah, that'd be going against the grain. On the other hand, you're your own man.
posted by cortex at 3:54 PM on January 27, 2007

Actually, cortex, that's the thing - I'm not my own man.

Oh, wait a second. Shoot. I've got things horribly wrong.
posted by rossination at 4:14 PM on January 27, 2007

Damn, I'd love to, but there's no way I'm gonna have time to do it. If I had other guys to play with we could just jam-record some songs on the go, but right now I'm on my own here.

Would love to hear how it goes for you guys, so, if you come up with a way of tracking you (or if you post the names that you are doing it under) I'll be delighted to check it out.
posted by micayetoca at 4:15 PM on January 27, 2007

28 days? Try 85 hours.
posted by bardic at 4:41 PM on January 27, 2007

Including writing and composition, bardic? That (granted, very terse) writeup just suggests the actual recording was breakneck.
posted by cortex at 5:08 PM on January 27, 2007

Not sure cortex, I was absent. Like your sense of humor.

Apparently they were tripping balls the entire time too. God, I love that album.
posted by bardic at 5:36 PM on January 27, 2007

I wasn't being humorless, just pedantic. I was smiling the whole time.
posted by cortex at 5:47 PM on January 27, 2007

ZEN ARCADE SPOILER: It's all a dream!!!
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 6:09 PM on January 27, 2007

They probably did record Zen Arcade in 85 hours, but they practiced it for months in the church they recorded it in. I really loved that album when I was a teenager (that's not pedantic, I'm just old). I don't think the Minutemen took much longer to record Double Nickels on the Dime either, but they were all a part of one large monster living together as an organism, so they could write and record a whole album in a month. Trout Mask Replica, on the other hand is most rumored to have mostly been recorded in one day (although I've read two for all 28 songs, which is unfortunately in a book and not on the internet) while Frank Zappa slept at the controls, was practiced for 8 months in a house that Van Vliet kept everyone captive in. So, yeah, it can be done... or something. Personally, I like quonsar's idea.
posted by sleepy pete at 7:17 PM on January 27, 2007

*Jeez, preview much?*
Why, no, no I don't. Especially now that I'm writing and recording an album in a month.
posted by sleepy pete at 7:49 PM on January 27, 2007

I am all over this.
posted by potch at 1:03 AM on January 28, 2007

I just signed up, under my actual name. The end-of-the-month deadline will be a good thing for me, as I sometimes have a tendency to sit on material too long, undecided as to whether it's good enough, or if there aren't changes I should make, or if it needs more polish here and there... I reckon this'll give me a bit of a kick in the ass to just throw caution to the wind and get a bunch of new songs out into the ether. Thanks for the reminder, cortex.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:17 AM on January 28, 2007

flapjax at midnite writes "I just signed up, under my actual name. The end-of-the-month deadline will be a good thing for me, as I sometimes have a tendency to sit on material too long, undecided as to whether it's good enough, or if there aren't changes I should make, or if it needs more polish here and there... I reckon this'll give me a bit of a kick in the ass to just throw caution to the wind and get a bunch of new songs out into the ether. Thanks for the reminder, cortex."

Yeah, ditto. I'm in. Just signed up. Update this if we start some kind of group on there to link together our accounts.
posted by defenestration at 7:24 AM on January 28, 2007

You know what? The hell with too much schoolwork, and the hell with not knowing how to record things. I'm in.

I'm Cruise Elroy, based on this old Ask MeFi question that no one could answer.
posted by danb at 8:25 AM on January 28, 2007

Important note, if you're linking your RPM profile—the URL the site displays to you when you're looking at your own profile while logged in is useless generic. You'll have to log out, or be more clever than I am, to get a hard link to your own profile.

For example, the 15-16 puzzle link is good while the Cruise Elroy link is not.

Update this if we start some kind of group on there to link together our accounts.

Heck, if people want to link (correctly, natch) their profiles here, I'll be glad to contact you all through their internal system and start setting up a little mefi web of deceit contacts.

I'm there as Josh Millard.
posted by cortex at 8:39 AM on January 28, 2007

Sorry 'bout that. This link looks like 23skidoo's, so hopefully it works better.
posted by danb at 8:52 AM on January 28, 2007

Sounds like fun. One of my projects will be there.
posted by malocchio at 10:51 AM on January 28, 2007

I've got cold feet, cort. I'd obviously love to do it (I mean I did make the FPP), but I guess I do indeed need some more convincing. Some hugs and a bottle of vodka might do it. Or some vodka and a bottle of hugs.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 11:24 AM on January 28, 2007

What if I drink vodka and then post a comment that says "bottle of hugs"? Because I can do that for you, man.
posted by cortex at 11:29 AM on January 28, 2007

I'm signed up as DJ Dial-tone, and I've been getting my equipment ready, polishing all of my knobs and whatnot.
posted by drezdn at 11:32 AM on January 28, 2007

I am really on the fence. I had such an amazing experience last year, and I'm excited that so many MeFites are joining the parade. I hope you can all come to Portsmouth for the listening party blowout.

And last year, I was just panicked about the composition and it became a huge deal. What I learned through RPM is that composition will happen just fine if I make the time to sit down and do it. I'm utterly not intimidated by that any more -- miraculous!

I sat down today to see what might happen if I signed up this year. There were 5 or 6 fragments of melody or song ideas I had jotted in a notebook -- I spent about an hour noodling with them and realized they were solid enough starts that I'd probably be able to work up into 10 new songs without much stress.

My holdback is that I have a lot more responsibility than last year, both at work and as the co-coordinator of a new non-profit, and my personal life is going bumpity-bump. Not sure I need one more thing to think about.

On the plus side, if I bail out of writing the album, I live here, and I can go down and volunteer in the office helping to make the prooject happen. It's fun being at Ground Zero.
posted by Miko at 12:45 PM on January 28, 2007

It takes me months to write and record one song. But this might be a useful spur to me, to either do a single song from start to finish (I've got a few rough concepts in mind), or perhaps demos of several.

Unfortunately, I'm occupied right now with a different, long-deferred project: creating video projections to go with my live set. I think I'm gonna follow thru on that one instead.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 12:46 PM on January 28, 2007

Here's my page. I just checked my messages and it appears cortex has already snooped me out. Sneaky.
posted by defenestration at 1:46 PM on January 28, 2007

I really wish I had time to do this. I'm already working on ~3 musical projects and I'll be happy if I just finish one of them soon. Maybe I could churn out something single/EP length, but an album? Eep.
posted by speicus at 1:49 PM on January 28, 2007

I'm in. My RPM '06 band (The Man Who Was Thursday) just debuted the first third of our second album this month. More music coming from them... and I am doing a hip hop album for RPM '07. We are all very excited.
posted by john.c.herman at 3:29 PM on January 28, 2007

OK I'm in too. Hope nothing gets jinxed :)
posted by First Post at 4:40 PM on January 28, 2007

Well, I'm "in," but let's see how that plays out by the end of February. I'm guessing not well.
posted by uncleozzy at 4:49 PM on January 28, 2007

Here's me.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:45 PM on January 28, 2007

I just checked my messages and it appears cortex has already snooped me out. Sneaky.

I went back and checked "okay, I'm in messages" against profile locations and the RPM joined-as-of listings. I'm like an cross-reference ninja.
posted by cortex at 6:19 PM on January 28, 2007

that is, "okay, I'm in" messages.
posted by cortex at 6:50 PM on January 28, 2007

I signed up even though there's a snowball's chance in hell I'll come close to finishing...Still, if I manage to actually set aside some time to set up some mics and do some recording I'll count that as a success...so thanks for the inspiration!
posted by dan g. at 8:18 AM on January 29, 2007

I'm in provided there is a follow up "failure shame" MetaTalk post for shaming all the failures who don't follow through. Mmm, piping hot shame.
posted by nanojath at 11:32 AM on January 29, 2007

Here's mine.
posted by sleepy pete at 11:40 AM on January 29, 2007

Oh, don't worry, I'll shame the hell out of you.
posted by cortex at 12:05 PM on January 29, 2007

And, oh hey, another RPM '06 mefite identified. And that album is entirely decent so far, too. Hi, John!
posted by cortex at 1:04 PM on January 29, 2007

Man, everything going backward. You'd think I might actually read this damn thread.
posted by cortex at 1:05 PM on January 29, 2007

OK!

I just came back from the project launch party, which was the last bit of evidence that I needed that I just can't not do this project. Too many great people, too many great lessons to learn. A month of music. How do you turn that down?

I'm in...again.

Did y'all know there are RPM participants on all seven continents, including McMurdo Station in Antarctica? Check the site for details.

I'm proud and glad there's such a strong MeFi contigent. Keep in touch, everyone. Best of luck!
posted by Miko at 7:55 PM on January 30, 2007

yeee-haw.
posted by chococat at 11:28 PM on January 31, 2007

Just went through and tracked down all of you that I could find on the site - I'm up 12, though I think I'm missing a few. The 'Connections' page on the profile lets you link to one another and make brief comments. Most of you I tagged with "MeFi posse."
posted by Miko at 7:23 AM on February 1, 2007

Oooh, also, here are some pics from the launch party. I'm the one in #12 making the hand-pistol gesture (and holding a yummy Sea Dog blueberry ale. #8 depicts one of the project masterminds and e-mail senders, Dave, and #36 shows Chris of the project Northern along with Dave. Just some of the local faces of RPM.
posted by Miko at 7:40 AM on February 1, 2007

Flash! RPM on NPR-- All Things Considered. Bob Boilan's in!
posted by Miko at 4:45 PM on February 1, 2007

Neat!

*goes back to work on epic Generation Spam lifestyle anthem, "I Spend All My Spare Time On The Internet"*
posted by cortex at 4:48 PM on February 1, 2007

Launch party on John Herman's webtv show.
posted by Miko at 7:08 PM on February 4, 2007

A demo, with link to more in the comments. Also, I note recent music posts from goodnewsfortheinsane and others, which may or may not be RPM related.

Suggestion: if you're posting an RPM song to Music, throw "RPM" into the tags. We can sort of track the mefi microeconomy a bit better that way, I reckon.
posted by cortex at 8:27 AM on February 8, 2007