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Thursday, January 28, 2010

Write an Album in a Month. This February.

Get your studios geared up, blow the dust out of your keyboards, tune your guitars and oil your mic stands... the RPM Challenge is about to start full force:



This is The Challenge - Record an album in 28 days, just because you can.

That’s 10 songs or 35 minutes of original material recorded during the month of February. Go ahead… put it to tape.

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?


Who's in? Sign up!

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Sunday, January 24, 2010

M.I.A. - Space Odyssey

M.I.A. leaked a pre-release version of a song form her new album to twitter, along with a lofi but strangely hypnotizing video:



(from slate)

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Saturday, January 23, 2010

Techno Made With Cars





(from autoblog)

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Tuesday, January 19, 2010

NIN: "Cars" with Gary Numan, London 7.15.09 [HD]

What is interesting about this is how much its a straight up version of the original:



I suppose they thought the best way to pay tribute to someone who was obviously a huge influence was to play the song as originally envisioned with the man himself. I still mark the original video as one of my all time favorites.

(thanks robert)

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Monday, January 18, 2010

Rick Astley vs Nirvava - Never Gonna Give Your Teen Spirit up

This works way better than it should:



(thanks chantal)

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Sunday, January 17, 2010

Iceberg movements create eerie songs

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Thursday, January 14, 2010

Ableton, Meet Serato. Serato, Meet Ableton.


Ableton and Serato present The Bridge—the first result of the partnership announced in October 2008.

The Bridge spans the gap between music production and DJing, creating a natural link between Ableton Live and Serato Scratch Live or ITCH. The Bridge provides a powerful fusion of DJ and production tools, opening a world of opportunities for DJing, remixing and live performance.

You can cross the Bridge in either direction:

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Monday, January 11, 2010

Free Album: Music for Our Future

XLR8R magazine have put out a nice, free album that is a musical tribute to the world of Battlestar Galactica spin off Caprica:

Music for Our Future



Featuring tracks by some great electronic music producers, including Lusine and Richard Devine.

(thanks lee)

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Sunday, January 03, 2010

Old Man on a Super Drum Kit ATV saves the people of a weird Norwegian RV Village from a potbellied, berry-eating Overlord using the power of drums!

Otherwise known as "This Must Be It" from Röyksopp:

Yeasayer - Ambling Alp

I love it when people aren't afraid to use a little nudity in their videos:

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