Sidingsound

Albums: one nearly done, and one to be?

Almost a month since the last post here, though in my defence I've been Twittering most days!

It's been some time since I mentioned anything here about the concept album project, which I embarked on as a New Year resolution with the aim of actually finishing it by the end of 2008. So, how is it going?

Well, I reckon I'm about 85-90% done with the recording—as far as I can recall, all but two of the songs have at least been started, with the rest needing additional or re-done parts. At this rate, I think I could well complete the album by Christmas, though I may hold it over for the New Year as I'm currently saving up for an electric mountain dulcimer, which I'd like to play on one of the songs if possible. Of course, if that doesn't go through as planned, I'll probably just record the song with guitar and have done with it...

I also had an idea for an album project for 2009, which would be even more of a commitment than the current one. I'm an admirer of songwriters like Neil Innes and Mitch Benn, who both have a great talent for writing parodies of existing songs, which sound like their subject matter without following them too closely. Mitch Benn is also a regular on BBC Radio 4's The Now Show, where he writes and performs two songs per week on a topical theme from the past week.

Yes, you can probably guess where I'm going with this: the challenge would be to write one song per week for the whole year, each concerning a topic from the past week, and post the results on the Web somehow. I doubt I'd be able to keep up a consistent quality throughout the project, and sometimes the recordings would probably be very rough, but it might produce some interesting results.

Anyway, I think I've got RSI, so I'm stopping there :-)

Labels: conceptalbum, dulcimer, recording, twitter

posted by Tim @ 19:12