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Global Collaborative Music Experiment

Posted by kdawson on from the mixing-it-up dept.

hephaist0s writes "Last year, 165 bands completed the RPM Challenge: to record an original album (10 songs or 35 minutes) during the 28 days of February. The idea is to get musicians to set aside the barriers that stop them from working on their music and simply devote a month to getting it done. This year, more than 300 bands from around the world — including two groups from McMurdo station in Antarctica — have already signed up at www.rpmchallenge.com, and this time the organizers of the challenge have built into the site the ability for bands to share samples with each other. If a band chooses to upload a sample into the Sample Engine, then any other participating group can use it however they like. The possibilities for global collaboration are vast!"

7 of 80 comments (clear)

  1. This is an excellent idea... by gearmonger · · Score: 4, Insightful
    ...because everyone knows the REAL reason there's not as much high-quality music as there should be is that musicians spend way too much time trying to make it enjoyable and interesting.

    Yep...speeding up that process is without a doubt the best way to improve what bands few have ever heard of produce.

    -1 Cynical

    1. Re:This is an excellent idea... by ronabop · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Having recorded over 1000 hours on high end gear, I can definitely say that a vast amount of time is spent trying to get the "perfect" take.

      Sometimes time limits are good.

    2. Re:This is an excellent idea... by wass · · Score: 3, Insightful
      I highly disagree (or I agree with your sarcasm). In my experience, as an amateur musician, many times when I or other band mates set out to write a song per se, things sometimes feel forced and it's hard to find that muse. But in my experience (and I'm highly curious of others reading this) some of the best songs in my and my band's repertoirs are ones that just "came out", from either screwing around and stumbling onto things that rock, to making fun of something that happened, etc. This also occurs with famous musicians, they need to release a filler track at the studio just to finish the album and sometimes the filler becomes a chart topper!


      Do you like garage rock, or even much rock from the 60's and 70's? Some common criticisms I've heard from popular musicians in those days compared with today's recording techniques is that things now are too controlled. Ie, back then you'd set up microphones, do some quick soundchecks, and play music. Today, with the high-tech audiophile equipment, you spend forever soundchecking and tweaking your parametric filters and pink-noise generators to get your ideal flat response curves. But - the complaint is that all the flat-response tweaking makes the sound kind of 'dull' and too 'studio', losing that gritty or grungy character of older rock n' roll.


      Finally, if you read the page, the point isn't to make your magnum opus this way, but to just get off your lazy urban-sprawl-induced fat ass and make some music. Have fun, you'll improve your chops, learn some things, and maybe possibly pull off a great tune that in the future you'll be glad you came up with.

      --

      make world, not war

    3. Re:This is an excellent idea... by MicrosoftRepresentit · · Score: 0, Insightful

      Speaking as someone who has literally hundreds of tracks that have been banished to the Hell of Never Getting Finished, I agree this could be a great excuse to dig them all up and actually finish them.

    4. Re:This is an excellent idea... by clickclickdrone · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Back in the late 80's when production values just got silly, my friend's band were in the studio doing their next single. The producer had the singer do the entire song 60 times and he then went through the vocal tracks sylable by sylable dropping the preferred one down to the master vocal track. Crazy.
      That said, I understand that some well known and respected singers, still do this including one that is supposed to have one of the best voices around.

      --
      I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
  2. This IS an excellent idea by Bitter+and+Cynical · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You should consider the idea that it's less about improving the quality of music or producing hits and more about breaking down cultural barriers and sharing diversity.

  3. industry by polar+red · · Score: 1, Insightful

    IMHO a larger problem than making the music is getting it to the public. What with the music-industry not liking non-mass-produced originally-sounding material, they just keep that kind of music OFF the air, and pushing the next boys-band or the next Britney Spears.

    --
    Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?