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.