February Album Writing Month



FAWM.org – the February Album Writing Month, is a challenge for song writers to write 14 songs during the month of February.

My bud Cacti introduced me to this (and has participated in it) for several years now, and I think I might try my hand at it, although not quite the 14 song goal. I think my target will be 1-2 songs, and if I have a surge of inspirado, I'll try to hit the full 14.

With (Cactus) Joe's help, at one point I felt like I had the creative chops to take on song writing, but my comfort zone ended up pulling me back down to feeling like a source of inspiration rather than a recipient of the inspirado. We'll see if February can pull me out of that comfort zone a little.

My normal "creative" outlet has been programming. When I get bored I churn out a few lines of Python code, and if I finish a project I then marvel in whatever it does. To anyone looking, it's just a bunch of code that maybe does some screwy processing with some random data source, spits out a bunch of numbers, whatever – but to me it's almost like writing a song, or creating a painting (painting a painting sounded weird).

So… if you have any great ideas for a song – do tell!

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5 Comments »

  1. Tom said,

    I've written a lot of lyrics, but have never put the music to them. I've written about donuts on paper boxes, confusing strangers for someone I know, jeggings, hipsters, the dust on my monitor, and cool facial hair.

    January 24, 2011 @ 3:40 pm


  2. sparx said,

    What are jeggings?
    I want to hear the cool facial hair song!

    January 24, 2011 @ 4:06 pm


  3. Joe Leonard said,

    Actually, I object!

    Your goal should be 14 songs as required, of which 12-13 you will throw away and be left with 1-2 gems = good songs (your goal).

    That's why they set it up this way.

    It's based on the 80/20 rule of Tim Ferriss (and some old guy). Essentially 20% of your effort yields useful product.

    If you self limit yourself to 1-2 songs, you might not end up with any. Think of the other 12-13 songs as simply "practice" or rough drafts for the 1-2 awesome songs that is your real goal.

    Unless of course that is what you meant, in which case disregard all of that, and I can't wait to collab on FAWM.

    Say…do you have a FAWM account set up? Add me as a fan if you didn't already.

    I put my FAWM page in as the web link for this comment.

    Joe

    January 25, 2011 @ 10:35 am


  4. sparx said,

    I was taking the easy interpretation of the 80/20 rule, and only putting in 20% of the effort rather than wasting another 80%.
    The goal is 1-2 usable songs, more if I can manage. If I end up with some crap that I manage to see through to completion, those won't count towards my 1-2.

    Hopefully I can come up with 30 awesome songs though.

    No account yet. I'll get on that a little closer to February.

    January 25, 2011 @ 11:45 am


  5. Joe Leonard said,

    rawk! it's really fun.

    i usually go over 14 songs and chuck most of the chaff.

    in 2010 i got basically 3 songs that became GUPPY EFFECT tunes, but ROAD HOG is my favorite – http://media.guppyeffect.info/FAWM2010/roadhog.mp3 – very AC/DC-esque.

    Joe

    January 25, 2011 @ 1:15 pm


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