This will be my 10th year doing FAWM: February Album Writing Month. Several other folks from this forum have joined in along the way. The challenge is to write 14 songs in the month of February.

I know of no other more encouraging and insanely inspiring site dedicated to the practice of rapid songwriting.

It has evolved over it's 15 or so year existence into a world-wide community of thousands of people; some never having written a song, to several who crank out 30+ in a month.

Discussion forums abound, with collaboration, creative block removal tips, lyric craft, song craft, you name it.

I have had some years where I meet the 14 song goal, some years where I haven't, but never a year where there isn't at least one song that I like listening to and performing again. (Hey, if you don't enjoy your own songwriting, then there's a problem!) I can see my songwriting skills evolve over this period, and very often I will set some goals ahead of time for things to try out.

The forums for the site will start dialing up activity anytime now.

PG products are particularly well suited for this fast, frenzied, frenetic festival of songwriting.

You'll see me over there as scottlake . This year, I want to do more pop-rock stuff ala Nada Surf, Death Cab for Cutie, etc. I will probably also do some ambient/soundtrack type things, as well as some bass-focused compositions.

I know Kevin Emmrich participates as well as a few others from these here forums.

www.fawm.ORG Make sure you do ORG, not COM.

-Scott

Yup, I participate every year (2008 was my first). The best part of it all is the community (sound familiar?) -- It is just great fun. I tend to get 3-5 songs every year that are keepers as is or are keepers after some post-FAWM editing.

Here's one of my favorites from last fawm: I Must be A Ghost . It was written as a one hour skirmish. You are given a title and you write and record a song in one hour -- so, of course some boo-boos are in there. I have added another verse post fawm to make it more performable as a single guitar/vocal at open mics (but I haven't re-recorded it yet).

... and yes, I do use BIAB on a few tunes every year, too.

I'm ready!

Y'all absolutely amaze me. A serious goal for me will be to write 14 songs over the next two years. Really.

J&B

Maybe that is a good reason to give it try!! You may not come up with anything that is "new" or a keeper -- or you might just pleasantly surprise yourself. Once you get started you realize it isn't that hard. BUT you have to tell your internal critic to stay out of it and just write and record. I end up writing a few that end up sort of weird.

Correction, this is my 11th year.

J&B. You can do it and once you catch the fever there is no turning back. I assume it's somewhat like what they call runners high. A few songs in the first week and you're addicted.

Well as former runners and current mountain bikers we get the athletic high but you guys are forgetting the creativity element that you have. In mountain biking racing you can have all the motivation in the world but it means nothing if you don't have the legs.

Y'all have a gift.

Bud

I thought the same thing about other folks that were in FAWM before me, but really, just give a try to the community and see what happens.

www.fawm.org is live for 2017. Join in

Some of my compositions for this year, two of which are from the week2 challenge to transform a classical piece of music (I cheated, mine are both impressionist period! As far as I know)

A redo of Erik Satie's Trois Gymnopédies:
https://soundcloud.com/rockstar_not/whisper-gymnopedies-scott-lake

First couple of melody phrases from Fauré's Pavanne in a prog-rock parody. I have to admit, I did like how the lead synth and lead guitar harmonies ended up.

https://soundcloud.com/rockstar_not/pavanica-scott-lake Gotta redo the render on this one, it's a little hot in the high end. I would redo the bass tone also, but I had very little time to get the whole thing committed to 'tape' yesterday.

I'd be happy to finish one song in February.

FAWM is always a blast, but I just went down to Florida for 8 days to take care of family stuff, this weekend I am going to knoxville for my mother-in-law's 90th birthday bash and then the following weekend to see my daughter in college -- not very conductive to getting to 14. I have been playing around with powerdirector 14 to try and do videos. Here are three (no biab in them yet). They were all one-hour skirmishes that took about 40 minutes to write/record -- and then an hour to produce the final videos!! Boo-boos are left in (pretty much one takes).

Love you videos Kev. Wish you had time to do more....

Great job on the vids! Thanks for posting.

Jeff

Ha....are you getting personal? ....I'm in the same fold.

I could never be happy with anything I wrote by forcing the creative process into a specified (contest) amount of time.
Hence, I'd be a disappointing failure working under pressure to compete with all of you participants.
I'd be happy to flesh out one song every quarter!

Don't know how you do it but best to all during the competition.

Back to it....

1. It's a challenge, not a competition
2. Deadlines can surface creativity that you might habitually push down
3. Very supportive and wildly creative community fans the flames of personal creativity
4. BIAB owners and users have a very distinct and purpose fit tool for this challenge
5. Every person who has tried FAWM had some form of your thoughts of creative limits.

Creativity takes practice

All points acknowledged.
I should have referred to it as originally conceived being a 'challenge'.

Of course, I agree...'creativity takes practice'.
I think I'm just slower than others at arriving at compositions I'd be satisfied with to post for others to listen to.
Obviously, I'm too self conscious in the context of a song writing challenge.

As I type, something else that would be quite beneficial just came to my pea brain for those that participate....one will quickly get more intimately familiar with the interface, depth and capabilities of such a great program as BIAB/RB.

Back to it....

Boy really nice videos of your work in progress

This will make you laugh - but I use the "extreme songwriting" method - where the goal is to write 20 songs in one day!


The most i have managed is 18, but I have done it quite a few times now (check into a motel room with a guitar and laptop)