The Scope

This is it! It’s the end of February, and the RPM Challenge is in its final stretch. Musicians from across the globe have been busy working on their 35+ minute and/or 10 song album of original music this month, and have but a few hours remaining to complete it.

Listening parties will happen on Saturday, March 27, with details to come.

Here in Newfoundland, almost 170 bands signed up to take The Scope’s RPM Challenge. The tears! The laughter! The hard drive crashes! Here are some updates posted on the RPM website about their progress, in all their spelling mistake glory.

For more info and to hear some of what the bands are working on, visit www.rpmchallenge.com.

From The 6 Fort Waldegrave:
Right den, we gots 9 tunes an only just now got our recording machine set up… we gets da drummers dere dis weekend… see what happens wha?

From Shaun Burton (comedian):
That’s all in how the writing process works. You just keep hammering it out and eventually you’ll churn something out that’s not completely embarrassing.

From The Burnout Project:
Got together and jammed today. Had a laugh, smoked a bat and matched a bowl in the sun porch. (Tuesday, February 9)

Me and Josh spent all afternoon working on getting a perfect drum track down, and I deleted it by accident. (Tuesday, February 9)

Drop out of school, quit your jobs, squat in an abandoned building and beg for your food. It’s the only way, men.

Our keyboard player recently had to sell his keyboard. It’s a long, sad story, but we can work around it.

From Tom Harter:
Last year I did everything in the last week and this year I’ve been spreading out the work. It’s more relaxing this way!! :-) Keep going everyone… we can do it!!

From Matthew Hare:
I… managed to convince myself that it would be a great idea to have a choir of children singing on one of the tracks because if there’s one thing you need when your trying to be quick in the recording process, it’s complexity. This will likely end up being me singing in a number of child like voices and altered to help with the help of Ye Olde Computer.

From Jonathon Aubrey:
5 out of 10, or 20 minutes out of 35…. We’ll see!!!! Wrote 4 new tunes this evening, and recorded three of them. This is working out!
written on February 15th

From Liam Peacock:
I have all my songs written. WOOOOOOOOT.
Also, my audio interface has a broken USB connection. WONDERFUL.
From Joey Bennett:
Ever throw yourself a surprise party? I don’t imagine it being successful unless you planned it while you were drunk or something like that. I only ask because I somehow managed to surprise myself this past week when it comes to writing.

The best material doesn’t always come from not trying to write, but it happened for me. Monday night I sat down with my guitar, and my only intentions were to tune it and maybe run a few songs for my gig tomorrow. What actually happened was I wrote, what I feel, is probably my best song to date.

From zanderwel:
I woke up yesterday and, after a few errands, found myself at about 1pm starting what would turn into almost a non-interrupted streak of writing that lasted until 4:30am this morning!!! Yesterday I managed to complete the writing or 3 other songs!!! The recordings are also just about done. This album is going to have some vast differences from one song to the next. So far I’ve got two acoustic songs going on along with two heavier songs with drums and the works!

I think I’m gonna go and start off day 2 by reviewing the sounds of fatigue from last night. Hope this doesn’t hurt too bad or involve too many required changes. This challenge seems to have set my brain on fire and oh how sweet the burn!

From heart to mouth:
heh. today i finally figured out garage band. here i come!

From Robot Scout:
This morning’s studio session resulted in one long multi-themed jam, which we may cut into some pieces, or add minimal overdubs for more depth. Either way, we finally have some parts to work with after scheduling time to devote to the process. This will likely be the last week that Chris and I can record and get a proper mix, so the pressure’s on. There will be an album done, in whatever method we can figure out to create it. Excitement…yeeeaaahh!

From RPM Doc:
The plan is to make a documentary in 28 days about the artists making an album in 28 days. I’ll interview those taking part, get shots of their recording operation, footage of them performing then some how take it and put it all together into at least a 35 minute documentary. Its not going to be anything fancy. Just me, a camera and the artists.

From Crystal City Printing Press:
Feb 19th. O.k everything has gone awry and we are going with the stripped down versions of EVERYTHING!!!! 10 songs don’t mean much ….but you got to keep it real….

Hope and time are both waning fast

From Pet Legs:
We took some time in January to write so there would be more time for recording this time around… The challenge this year is to build on our sound and see if we can do better. So far so good.

Last year’s record seemed to be about goodbyes and endings, while this year’s is all about hellos and beginnings. It’s a more living kind of winter.

From Justin Guzzwell:
Last years RPM challenge was the most fun I’ve had recording in a long time, but this time around life is too busy to get things done on my own. Thankfully Alex Bridger has given me a creative push, and we’ll be writing/recording/producing an RPM album together! See you all at the finish line.

From People on Pause:
So far this recording effort has consisted of Guzzy cranking out hit after hit, while I scrape the recesses of my brain for lyrics like a elementary school students scrapes the bottom of his Minigo with a spoon that just ain’t the right dimensions. While Guzzy has been struck with RPM fever, I’ve been struck with branding fever, and have been devoting most of my efforts to coming up with the more shallow aspects of the album; cover art, band name, album name, what the next album will be like. Basically, Guzzy rules.

From Jack Betty:
5 tunes completely in the can by Feb. 17 is pretty good, it’s nice to have a full month to work on this (last year I was away for gigs a lot). My Toshiba NB200 netbook crapped out a week in (junk, don’t buy!) but thankfully I’d uploaded all my files to my Hotmail Skydrive thingie, otherwise I’d have lost it all and given up. Don’t forget to back up!

From Worker:
Help Is On The Way: was programmed when I should have gone to sleep sunday night. I managed to get to work on time the next morning, but I’m still a lilttle sleepy as I type this. THX1138 was a bit of inspiration for this.

From Samuel Whiskers:
For the past month, my heart has been stuck in my throat like a kitten in a chimney.

From Clash Contrast:
Crazy, only have the nine days to complete the math. 10 songs or 35 minutes. 1 through 10, however long, or 35 minutes. So even if it is 10 songs but less than 35 minutes, it’s cool. So, I literally have two in the can, and one on the mixing table, not quite there.
I will have to work through these next songs with resplendant fervour, that which others would not venture. My own full length by March first. Good to send out as demos, good to create some promotional materials in and of. Good to use as grant proposal materials. Ectetera…Melpomene…these are the days in the forlorn maze, finding space for my grace. Wish I was off the richter, eh?!

From The Composers:
I hear somewhere that Elton John and Bernie Tuppin and their studio musicians wrote and recorded his breakthrough album in a feverish weekend of non-stop creativity so a month is actually a long time when you think about it. And remember Deep Purple only had a month to record an album with a mobile recording bus and they came up with Smoke On The Water

From Alive Underground:
Just Chillin’…really! It’s minus 25 degrees C with the wind chill! good weather for indoor activities! Feb 4th

From Audrey Cohen:
I kind of wish I was writing this with other people…it’s much more fun playing music in a group because every once in awhile you have those magical moments where everything fits. When you’re sitting in front of a computer listening to tracks you recorded yourself, it’s not the same. I’m still having some moments of clarity, when something perfect happens and everything fits together, but…it’s just not the same.

From Wizzards of Kaos:
So I’m realizing that this has become really hard managing family time with a wife and child. But thanks to the RPM, it’s helping me learn how to manage my time and motivate me with a bunch of friends to lay some tape, well.. hard drive space.

Since early 70’s, as a child, I had an interest of cheesie post apocalyptic movies, i.e. Mad Max. It was interesting how we perceive Doomsday and make all these calcualations to show it on film. We decided to pretend we were scoring a typical movie and use that as a template for our inspiration. Hope you like it!

From am/fm dreams:
Well the worst has happened. After 6 long years of service our faithful Boss 8-Track has bitten the dust, taking with it all of our work thus far. Luckily, I back up 6 of the songs on CD, but we’ve been set back from 8 songs to 6. Now we need to find a new mixer (rent/borrow/buy) ASAP. We’ll finish this album if it kills us.

From Sharona Clarke:
I’m stripping down……….. the instruments, that is. Just me and the piano. What you see is what you get. Nothing else. Hmmm… naked cover art maybe?! ;)

From Kevin Woolridge:
1 song written. 1 song almost written. and two solid starts. i played the finished song for my girlfriend and she said that was her favourite. i said ‘of everything?’ and she said yes. so i guess if anything i’ve gotten one really good song out of this. the rest should be all downhill. right?