A Month Off

 
Last year I took part in Weeklybeats, a year-long challenge to produce a new piece of music every week for all of 2014. While the results varied wildly, I was proud that I was able to get a new track online each week (with one exception, which I conveniently don't count, due to technical difficulties).

Since the end of 2014 I've found myself distracted with a whole new set of crazy schemes, but I found I've missed the routine of trying to quickly produce a track to Weeklybeats' local Monday morning deadline. I've thought about continuing the tradition off my own steam, but I just haven't been able to make it stick. And to be honest, the drive just hasn't been there. Something to do with the combination of said deadline, and an inbuilt competitive streak.

Whilst listening to All Songs Considered a few weeks back I heard about the RPM Challenge, which seeks to have people write and record an album's worth of material (10 tracks or 35 minutes) during the month of February. Being one to overcommit myself, I thought to give it a shot, but I've decided to make the process slightly easier on myself. I'm simply going to write a bunch of tunes, commit them to my hard drive, and then release them come March. 

I'm not really bothered by the constraints of length or number of tracks (heck, even quality is optional), but I like the idea of not sitting on the material, waiting for me to get around to finding the right artwork or font to express the content. So that may mean a bunch of stuff ends up unfinished, but sitting here on a Rainy Thursday I think I can handle this.

You'll find the first track A Month Off, embedded above. The complete collection will be called Topical, because I'm funny like that. See you in a month.