The Inspiration List

With less than an hour to go until February Album Writing Month, I've been furiously scribbling away at my ideas list (though no actual song writing has taken place so this is within the rules). I'm going to stick them up here because (a) I've committed to sharing this whole thing for better or for worse and (b) I want to get some contributions from other people to keep me inspired. So please, take a look at this list and ask yourself: "what do I want to hear a song about?" Then stick it in the comments box. There are three categories here; I've got song ideas, styles and approaches. Why not pick one of each and I'll see about giving it a shot.

Song ideas

• Backward in time song
• Paranoia-induced dystopian future song
• If I didn't have thumbs...
• Who's in charge of purgatory?
• Surrealist song
• Google-translated song
• Recipe song
• Protest/rebel song
• Letter to my 16 year old self song
• Imagining I'm an animal song
• How it might have been song
• Response to another song song
• Shakespeare song
• Left-handed song
• Made-up language song
• "Havana Montana"
• Wedding song
• Insane in the Ukraine
• If I was a sperm...
• Debate speech (water-tight first prop) song
• Diary of a ...
• Song for a montage
• Theme for a Bond movie
• A humble tribute to our Glorious Leader
• Song about a painting
• Film Noir theme
• Glasgow's East End: The Opera

Styles/genres

• Power ballad
• Acoustic
• Funk and soul
• A Cappella
• Blues
• String quartet
• Ceilidh
• Hair metal
• Falsetto
• Punk
• Sleazy 80s synth pop
• Irreverent gospel
• K-pop
• Musical Theatre
• Bedouin tribal
• Grunge
• Finger-picking

Starting points

• Melody
• Lyrical structure
• Chord sequence/harmony
• Rhythm
• Time (length)
• Time signature
• Tempo
• Bass line
• Drum pattern
• Key
• Jazz chords
• Number of lines
• Lines start with certain letters

This list is by no means exhaustive and I might not even use any of them. But it shows that with just a bit of creativity and not being too precious about the results, 14 songs in a month might not be impossible after all.

Anyway, I'm off to bed; tomorrow is going to be busy.

The Rules

This is a creative challenge so there aren't many hard and fast rules. 14 songs in 28 days is pretty much it. The only prize is a sense of accomplishment and, hopefully, a fistful of half-decent new songs.

Nevertheless, I think setting myself some basic ground rules will keep things interesting and save me from a number of temptations. So, here we go:

1. There will be at least 14 of these songs completed in the month of February 2014 (the proper rule).
2. These will be new songs. The stack of half-finished ones will have to wait their turn in the back of the cupboard for some other time. Like fine vintage wine, another five years won't hurt them.
3. These will be my songs, or our songs if I find some collaborators. That acoustic re-imagining of The Outhere Brothers back-catalogue will also have to wait for another time. I've decided that responses to other songs will be permissible ("What if the dogs just got out by themselves?", or "No it's not Lionel, did you not notice that I'm blind?"); I will explore this along with other paths of intrigue in another post about ideas. 
4. These songs will vary in their style, structure and subject matter. Whilst I'm wouldn't write-off the merits of an album of three chord punk songs about things I've eaten for breakfast, or a prog-rock concept album about what it feels like trying to write an album in a month, I'll probably start to struggle after the first week. I'm going to play about with some themes (again, a long list will follow) and different musical approaches - i.e starting with a melody, a chord sequence, a rhythm etc.
5. It will be at least 42 minutes long, or an average of three minutes per song. Anything short of 40 minutes just isn't an album as far as I'm concerned. I once bought an album by Blink-182 that came in at under half an hour and I actually felt ripped-off (it was probably more like 15 minutes if you exclude the chatter about having sex with things), though I hope you agree that it served me right.

So there we have it, five simple rules for writing an album in a month. I'll try to keep up the posts every couple of days, hopefully with some actual songs once things officially kick off on Saturday. Please do share your comments and suggestions in the usual fashion and I'll see you all soon.

It started with a Google search

It's a sure sign that your creative juices are running low when you find yourself typing "how to write an album" into the search bar late one night.

Unusually - for such a desperate plea to the Google Gods - I was given an intriguing answer: a songwriting challenge called February Album Writing Month (FAWM). It's essentially a lesser-known musical cousin of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), so I knew I was on to something; in 2011 I completed a whole 1,000 words of a 50,000 word novel - that's more novel than I'd written before in my life! Ever a sucker for a creative challenge, and with FAWM due to kick off on Saturday, I decided to get stuck in.

The premise is simple enough: participants are given the month of February to write an album of at least 14 songs. Only a rough demo of each one is necessary, but only a song with words and music and (hopefully not too unbearable) singing and playing will do.

To the mathematically challenged, this works out as an average of a song every two days. There once was a time when I could write a song in a double period of chemistry (to varying levels of success). But now that the realities of working life and doing my own laundry have taken hold, I'm lucky if I finish two a year.

But how to motivate myself to see this thing through to the finish line? Well, as much as I will no doubt come to regret it later, I've decided I will share the whole process with you, dear reader. On this here blog I will post ideas, lyrics and half-baked songs to (hopefully) inform, entertain, amuse and offend.

And with the best intentions of under-promising and over-delivering, the songs are going to be terrible...