I was hoping to do a solo album for February Album Writing Month (FAWM) again this year, but a bunch of factors have combined to prevent me from doing that. Partially, I wasn’t prepared when February began, and I’ve been tied up with some family drama.

I have tried working on music a few times, and haven’t had much success. I guess it’s just been too long since I worked on anything. I will probably have a few more false starts before I am able to be productive.

However, I am really excited because as a birthday gift, Sarah got me a flight to go to a jam/recording session with the brilliant band Halaka. I’ve been friends with these guys for a while now, although only in an online capacity to date. I’ve also worked with Kingo Sleemer, who sings, among other things, in that band, and who is a part of Spiral Galaxy Collision along with furiousBall and me. There seems to be some possibility of Van (furiousBall) showing up too, which would be incredibly awesome. Also, if we crank out an album’s worth of material (which is likely), it could count for FAWM.

Now I just need to figure out how to improvise. Being classically trained, that’s something I never really learned.

Well, February is here already, and I completely forgot about February Album Writing Month (FAWM). I had been planning to do it, but I just completely forgot, and now I don’t feel ready at all.

I don’t really want to just start writing without having any idea of what direction I should take. Last year, my album, “Elements” was a pseudo-concept album where each song was inspired by an element from the period table. It’s all instrumental, so there are no lyrics tying anything to that concept, but it gave me a good framework in which to work, and a thread tying things together.

If I’m going to do FAWM this year, I would like to have something like that to give me something to work toward. It wouldn’t have to be a concept album per se, it could be a methodology, or an overarching theme. I really dropped the ball by not figuring this out sooner.

I have some ideas, some new, some left over from last year, such as:

• Soundtrack for a non-existent movie
• Soundtrack for an existent movie
• Soundtrack for a video game
• Write the album continuously and in order, from start to finish
• Do an ambient album
• Do an album with a lot of vocals/lyrics — something I haven’t done very much
• Try to use more songlike structures (verse, chorus, etc.)
• Have each track centered around a certain instrument (violin, guitar, mandolin, weird gourd thing, kazoo, harmonica, etc.) — the main problem here is that I don’t really play most of those instruments.
• Do lots of violin-based pieces, possibly processed violin.
• Minimalism

I know there are other ideas I’m leaving out. I’m really not sold on any of these, although they all appeal to me on some level. Any ideas or commentary would be very much appreciated.

I tried to work on some music last night for my band, Spiral Galaxy Collision. For those not in the know, this is a joint project with Van (furiousBall) and Kingo (also of Halaka). We have been inactive for some time, but I think we’re ready to start making music again.

One of the Cubase projects opened fine, and everything seemed to be in order, but the other one — a song that we started a few years ago — was plagued with problems. I had to dig out copies of old programs (soft synths/samplers) to get it to open. I really wish that if you open a project with, say, an Absynth 2 patch, it would just open using Absynth 3 instead, with the same patch data. But alas, it looks for that specific version of the program. I haven’t used Absynth 2 in a long time now, so I had to really dig to find it.

Then, once I got the missing software installed, I realized I was missing some samples. I eventually found them, but realized I had to convert them to another format (a lengthy process, especially given that there are 4 CDs of samples) before I could use them. Now, I’m crossing my fingers and hoping that once I have all the samples, it’ll automatically load the right ones. If not, I may never be able to get it to sound exactly like I had it before.

Making music on a computer can be incredibly frustrating when things like this happen. I love soft synths and samplers, and I get some great sounds out of them. However, it’s at times like this when I want to throw my computer out the window, pick up an instrument, and just play it, recording into some kind of simple device when necessary. Maybe I should just buy a 4-track tape recorder. I’m only half kidding.

Seriously, though, the thought of finishing some old songs and starting some new stuff is pretty exciting.