[HN Gopher] Album-a-Day (2001-2008)
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       Album-a-Day (2001-2008)
        
       Author : dgellow
       Score  : 45 points
       Date   : 2021-04-03 07:23 UTC (2 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (crapart.spacebar.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (crapart.spacebar.org)
        
       | codezero wrote:
       | A bit off topic, I doubt anyone remembers this, but that domain
       | used to host a pretty hip telnet chat (telechat) back in the 90s,
       | I thought the domain was sold off, but this looks aesthetically
       | similar to before, so maybe they kept their personal pages up.
       | Cute!
        
       | SonOfLilit wrote:
       | One of my favorite albums from my high school years was an AAD.
       | Unlit Cigarettes by Omry Levy and Shany Keidar. I still listen to
       | it sometimes.
       | 
       | https://open.spotify.com/album/3PJot26iNv9FYcXdJUdb0N?si=Lbx...
       | 
       | Track 6, Dirty Water, is the true masterpiece. If you only sample
       | one song, make it this one.
        
       | Igelau wrote:
       | So many broken links :(
        
         | codezero wrote:
         | The page is from 2003, I think, so I'm surprised it's even
         | available, I bet most of the links live in archive.org because
         | this site was picked up by major news sites back then.
        
       | nickloewen wrote:
       | This reminds me of the Milkcrate sessions:
       | https://milkcrate.com.au/sessions.html
       | 
       | "Adventures In Homewares Featuring The Mortar And The Pestle"
       | (2009) is quite lovely: https://milkcrate.com.au/sessions-
       | details-032.html
        
       | carlob wrote:
       | This made me think about Oblique Strategies
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblique_Strategies
        
       | Lorin wrote:
       | The artist Beardyman (https://www.youtube.com/user/beardyman)
       | used to create entire albums within an HOUR - and many tracks
       | were incredible. He has an incredibly custom audio editing setup
       | I'd highly recommend checking out some of his work.
       | 
       | Been following his journey for 15+ years and now I'm one of his
       | patrons.
        
       | orobinson wrote:
       | As someone who's only managed to put out one single in the past 5
       | years, I'm intrigued to give this a go.
        
       | 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
       | I was going to say that the concept is loosely modeled on
       | hackathons, but as noted separately, it appears to pre-date them
       | by 10 years or so.
        
       | hashkb wrote:
       | I've been a songwriter all my life and hate challenges like this.
       | What's the point? To overcome writer's block? Art takes time and
       | thought, and recording is taxing and difficult. These constraints
       | will just force folks to release half baked works.
       | 
       | Edit: r/guitar used to run a fun contest called "one-take
       | Saturday" (or Sunday, I forget) where they gave you a track and
       | you had one take to play over it and submit to the thread for
       | constructive criticism. That was awesome. )
        
         | surprisetalk wrote:
         | Good art demands time, but good art also demands practice and
         | experimentation. I'd put challenges like this in the "practice
         | and experimentation" category.
         | 
         | * 24-hour (or shorter) challenges may help you identify
         | needless churn in your art process.
         | 
         | * Restricting your toolset (e.g. removing colors or editor-
         | plugins or instruments you're most comfortable with) forces you
         | to learn more about your craft without your normal crutches.
         | 
         | * Creating artificial size-constraints (e.g. Alan Kay's
         | "t-shirt computing") can guide you toward the essence of your
         | art.
        
           | tshaddox wrote:
           | Yep. You gotta half-bake something before you can fully-bake
           | it. In fact, there's no reason you couldn't take some of the
           | good bits of your 24-hour album and use them for later more
           | polished compositions.
        
         | codezero wrote:
         | One thing I like to point out is that not everyone has the same
         | toolkit or approach to learning as you have. They may have no
         | framework at all and just a desire.
         | 
         | Contrived practices like this help people jumpstart a routine
         | they otherwise don't really know how to start.
         | 
         | It doesn't work for everyone, but it works for the people it
         | works for :)
        
         | brudgers wrote:
         | To me, these things are a way to improve process. Making thirty
         | works in thirty days will identify points where there is wasted
         | energy or where unfamiliarity with tooling exists or where
         | insufficient consumables are an impediment.
         | 
         | A person making thirty songs in thirty days will get better at
         | setting up gear. Turning on the recoding device will be
         | normalized. Not keeping enough blue gel pens at hand will
         | become obvious.
         | 
         | And it can all be in addition to time spent on a master work
         | progress.
         | 
         | Or maybe while everything is ready to go, it becomes easy to
         | lay down a take of the master work.
         | 
         | Working little things end to end is a good way of developing a
         | habit of finishing. A perspective that is less precious. A
         | catalog of experience. And questioning absolute links between
         | effort and quality.
        
         | shampto3 wrote:
         | I tend to view challenges like this as the songwriting version
         | of doing "freewriting" as an author. The purpose isn't to write
         | perfect songs that you would want to commercially release. The
         | purpose is to get out of the "perfection" mindset and just
         | write anything without judgement.
         | 
         | One of the primary ways to get better at songwriting is to
         | write a ton of songs. Challenges like this help you do that.
         | The best part about writing a ton of songs is that when you
         | decide you want to truly release something, you have an arsenal
         | of songs to choose from.
         | 
         | If you feel too much pressure to do an entire album in 24
         | hours, then make your own challenge. Write a new song every day
         | for a month and see how your songwriting skills improve. Or
         | maybe just write and record one song in 24 hours. Make the
         | challenge work for you, stretch your skills, and utilize
         | Parkinson's law to actually complete something. The majority of
         | amateur musicians that I know (myself included) rarely finish
         | songs, and that is what makes these challenges useful.
        
         | LQDH wrote:
         | The author goes into the reasons why here it looks like:
         | http://crapart.spacebar.org/
         | 
         | Art doesn't have to be "good" or take time. Art can be whatever
         | you want it to be, even if that's just a way to have fun and
         | mess around. I think the authors view is that art is actually
         | for the artist, not the viewer.
        
         | capableweb wrote:
         | > Art takes time and thought
         | 
         | According to you, yes. But not according to some. One could
         | claim the ability to make something without time nor thought is
         | art in itself.
        
           | hashkb wrote:
           | One could claim pretty much anything about art. It's the
           | category that defines itself by having no definition.
        
         | swsieber wrote:
         | Art also takes practice.
         | 
         | https://excellentjourney.net/2015/03/04/art-fear-the-ceramic...
        
         | offtop5 wrote:
         | Can't you make a half baked album and then refine it later ?
         | 
         | Music is just an hobby for me, but I love making as many rough
         | drafts as I can and then coming back later to them.
        
         | hashkb wrote:
         | If you want to write a song every day, fine. If you want to
         | write a song and hack on it with your ensemble every day, even
         | better! Those are awesome challenges!
         | 
         | Forcing yourself to sit there and do post-production without
         | taking a nap is not creative (unless you're an EDM producer),
         | it's just torturing yourself. How many of you have spent much
         | time in post-production? Or even actual production? There are
         | really fun and inspiring ways to achieve what we're aiming for
         | here; this just isn't a good idea as stated.
        
         | bityard wrote:
         | > Art takes time and thought
         | 
         | No. _Your_ art takes time and thought. Others can and do work
         | differently.
         | 
         | One of my favorite makers of music is a guy with an extremely
         | customized sampler and effects interface plus one microphone.
         | He makes sounds with his mouth and then loops/modifies/distorts
         | those sounds into spontaneous real-time electronic music on the
         | fly. With just the right amount of swearing and surreal comedy
         | thrown in to make it interesting. No pre-prepared sequences or
         | samples at all. He has performed to sold-out gigs, clubs, and
         | festivals and isn't a household name but has a decent
         | following. It's not everyone's cup of tea I'm sure, but anyone
         | who says it's not "art" would be just plain condescending not
         | to mention wrong.
         | 
         | > These constraints will just force folks to release half baked
         | works.
         | 
         | The whole point is to force folks to release half-baked works,
         | because half-baked is better than not baked at all.
        
           | iamdbtoo wrote:
           | I'm pretty sure you're talking about Marc Rebillet.
           | 
           | Assuming I'm right, I would argue that the music he produces
           | isn't his really his "art" but rather it's the experience and
           | the spectacle of the creation of the music.
           | 
           | The songs are ephemeral and I imagine after a show, most
           | people don't remember much of the actual songs, but they do
           | remember how they felt when they were at the show. I think
           | that's where his art lies and it does take a lot of time and
           | thought to perfect giving a crowd of people that feeling.
        
         | mirkules wrote:
         | This is waaay too ambitious, and you are right, it would lead
         | to poor quality works. If you wanted to write, record, mix and
         | master something meaningful, even one song a day is stretching
         | it.
         | 
         | However, for writer's block, I'm part of a discord server for
         | Jake Lizzio's Signals Music Studio where we have weekly
         | "Musical Games" - you are given a prompt with some restrictions
         | (key, tempo, signature, etc) and then share it with the group.
         | Most of it just in good fun, but you get to explore different
         | aspects of songwriting, whether it's working with polymeters,
         | different modes, or getting to work with your DAW in different
         | ways.
         | 
         | But one album a day just seems more like a factory than
         | exploration.
        
           | vastutsav wrote:
           | How do I join the server?
        
           | hashkb wrote:
           | That discord server sounds fun.
        
         | tshaddox wrote:
         | The first two sentences describe the intent very simply and
         | clearly:
         | 
         | > Album-a-Day is a Crap Art project. That means that it's a set
         | of constraints (the rules below) which are meant to help you be
         | creative.
         | 
         | It's just one of many many different ways one might choose to
         | spend one's time. Choosing to not spend your time this way is
         | abundantly understandable (heck, I'm on a 12,000+ streak of
         | consecutive 24-hour periods spent _not_ doing this challenge),
         | but I 'm having a difficult time understanding why you would
         | _hate_ the idea.
        
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       (page generated 2021-04-05 23:01 UTC)