RPM Challenge 2009 edition - record an album in 28 days

This year's RPM challenge has been announced. More information is
here: http://www.rpmchallenge.com/component/option,com_frontpage/Itemid,1/

The idea is simple: Start February 1, record ten songs, or 35 minutes
of music, committed to a CD, and mail a copy to the organizers.
Details are on their web site. A summary is posted below. I did it
last year, and hope to get it done again this time. Make some music!

Prent Rodgers

"It's a little like National Novel Writing Month, (NaNoWriMo.org)
where writers challenge each other to write 1,700 words a day for 30
days, or the great folks over at February Album Writing Month
(fawm.org), who encourage artists to write 14 new songs in February.
Maybe they don't have "Grapes of Wrath" or "Abbey Road" at the end of
the month, or maybe they do—but that's not the point. The point is
they get busy and stop waiting around for the muse to appear. Get the
gears moving. Do something. You can't write 1,700 words a day and not
get better.

Don't wait for inspiration - taking action puts you in a position to
get inspired. You'll stumble across ideas you would have never come up
with otherwise, and maybe only because you were trying to meet a day's
quota of (song)writing. Show up and get something done, and invest in
yourself and each other.

Anyone can come up with an excuse to say "no," so don't. Many of you
are thinking "But, I can't do that! I don't have any songs/recording
gear/money/blah blah blah..." But this doesn't have to be the album,
it's just an album. Remember, this is an artistic exercise. Just do
your best using what you have in order to get it done. If you have a
four-track, become a four-track badass! A mini disc, a pro-tools rig,
a Walkman, an 80's tape recorder – use it. Do your best. Use the
limitations of time and gear as an opportunity to explore things you
might not try otherwise. If you can afford studio time in a "real"
studio, fine, but let's be completely free of any lingering idea that
"good" records can only be made in a studio. If that were so, then all
the old scratchy blues records or Alan Lomax field recordings that
have changed our culture – the world's culture – wouldn't still
resonate with us today as they do. Springsteen's haunting classic
"Nebraska" was a demo he did at home on a crappy machine. That album
is fricking awesome. What label would put those recordings out now?
(See: who cares) There are a million examples of this kind of stuff,
but the fact will always be: Well written, honest music is compelling
and undeniable no matter what it was recorded on. So put it to tape.

February will come and go whether you've joined in or not, but do you
really want to be left out?

To recap:

• This will be fun!

• Ten songs or 35 minutes of recorded material, on a CD, postmarked or
hand-delivered by noon on March 1 to:

RPM HQ
10 Vaughan Mall, Suite 1
Portsmouth, NH 03801
USA

• Recording can only be done in the month of February – no prerecorded
songs.

• All material must be previously unreleased, and we encourage you to
write the material during February too.

• Participating bands get their own page on the site, which you can
blog to as much as you want. You also get access to the band-only
discussion board, where you can swap ideas, resources, etc., and the
ability to e-mail and private message with the other participants.

• All the completed albums may be put up in the jukebox on the
website, if you so choose, so people can check it out; conversely, if
you'd rather not share your work with the public, then no one needs to
hear it but us.

Write some instrumentals, split up the songwriting duties amongst band
members, form an RPM side project, write songs on the piano or
clarinet instead of your primary instrument, make that metal album
you've always wanted to - buy a ukulele! Just do your best to make the
best album you can. Be unafraid.

What if every musician you knew put their music first for 28 days?

What if you recorded the best song of your life?

What if the world was never the same?

What's stopping us? Nothing. February is Record Production Month. You
have no reason to say no, and nothing to lose."