Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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!"

8 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 Negatyfus · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Have you ever been in a band? One of the biggest problems you encounter (aside from getting along with each other musically as well as personally over an extended period of time) is excessive time spent on perfecting your material. Musicians are perfectionists. If it's not one song they continue to work on for much too long, it's a new song they started, neglecting the old one. Songs never get finished, because they're still too busy trying to work out the right way to transition from this part to that or aren't happy about one riff or another.

      The purpose of this project, and it seems to me like a great idea, is to motivate bands to have a definite time-line and a goal to pursue. When you are actually working towards something and are under pressure to finish it, when you have an actual end to your project in sight, then suddenly the band will pull together and work thrice as hard on it. Stuff gets done, and what do you know? It turns out that creativity doesn't need years upon years of perfecting.

  2. .rpm Only!? by DevelopersDevelopers · · Score: 5, Funny

    What, were they too lazy to make .debs? Some of us use frickin' Ubuntu, you insensitive clods!

    What? Oh, never mind...

    1. Re:.rpm Only!? by ozbird · · Score: 4, Funny

      Heh, Gentoo users make their own music.

  3. Like NaNoWriMo by Form-o-Stuff · · Score: 4, Informative

    Kindof like National Novel Writing Month (november). http://www.nanowrimo.org/ And Channel 101 (5 minute videos monthly) http://www.channel-101.com/ The internet's becoming a seasonal support group for artists lacking impetus. Now if only there was a way for these independent producers to make money off their labor...

  4. Hrmmph, submission grousing. by t0qer · · Score: 4, Informative

    I submitted this a looong time ago....

    Justin Frankel, you know, wrote winamp? Sold Winamp? Well, he wrote this program called Ninjam that allows folks to collaborate music in psuedo real time.

    http://www.ninjam.com/

    He also wrote a DAW (digital audio workstation) called reaper.

    http://www.reaper.fm/

    as well as a programable software DSP called Jesusonic

    http://www.jesusonic.com/

    This all started circa 2004 or so. Justin has set up some public Ninjam servers, and everything played on these servers is released under the Creative Commons License...

    http://autosong.ninjam.com/

    Point being, I probably submitted this quite a few times over the years. Don't understand why slashdot would ignore a story about someone who pretty much revolutionized how we listen to music. Time for slash to get new editors again.

  5. What RPM stands for by Cow+Jones · · Score: 5, Informative

    In case you were wondering (like me) what RPM stands for in this context, it's "Record Production Month" (says so in the last paragraph on the linked page).

    --

    Ah, arrogance and stupidity, all in the same package. How efficient of you. -- Londo Mollari