Lessons from FAWM 2009March 13th, 2009 by Plat
It’s March! Another FAWM is over. Here’s what I learned. Not that I’ll listen to myself later.
Cheerleaders beget games : FAWM is full of smart, talented artists. A number of them left positive, cheerleader-style comments (vs harsh criticism) on my songs. Don’t get me wrong, honest critiques are still helpful and have their place. But for FAWM I’m sure this encouraged more song output, and of songs that I like. I need to become a better cheerleader.
Write for yourself: Above all. Worry about the audience second.
Large collaborations can work: 6 FAWMers (myself included) completed a pretty decent song within 2 days. To me, the collaboration was amazing. No walking on eggshells, no ego trips, no shirking of responsibility. Easy-going, fun, talented, trusting group. My favorite collaborative product since Rocko. I usually shy away from these endeavors; maybe that needs to change.
When all else fails, there’s Yahoo! Answers: A while back, I had to delete tons of old e-mail. I wrote down the subjects I liked, and planned to FAWM with them as titles. When it was time to FAWM, lyrics didn’t arrive. (This song was supposed to be “Can you access this directory?”). So I went back to the Answerman schtick, and started cranking out tunes. Standbys are old, but beautiful.
Record it, even the homeless: About 7 months ago, I started a Google Docs document with scraps of song notes (titles, phrases, words I liked, etc). I added a bookmark link to my browser’s toolbar, so I could load it up quickly. When a tiny thought popped in my head, I added it to the Doc. And as a result of recognizing/capturing those thoughts, more ideas came. It was like my brain said, “oh, you think these stupid thoughts are important, do you? Well, have more then.” I haven’t been able to mine it hardcore, but I did get to use the puppet line in a FAWM song. It was comforting that I had a bucket of fillers if I needed them… and they cheered me up by themselves.
Instant gratification is important: ‘Far as I can recall, each of my FAWM songs were written, recorded, and posted in one studio session (generally within 4 hours). The only exceptions to the rule were Pure Cane Lover (a 2-day, 6-person collab), and some Mindless Instrumentals. That is to say, only one song got finished, which took more than one sitting. If I want it finished, I have to keep going. Once I hit 4+ hours for a draft, it may be time to give up and move on.
Make sure you like your vocals: …because you probably will never bother retaking them again. This is a corollary to the “instant gratification” comment.
Don’t expect people to immediately grasp art pieces: I created a gimmicky song that took some effort to appreciate. Not surprisingly, I suppose, people were slow on the uptake. I had to explain it. Some art pieces are destined to be a joke between me and myself, Andy Kaufman-style. Maybe no explanation is necessary at all.
Webcams are creepy: I threw up a UStream feed once in a while during FAWM. I think others enjoyed it, but it was pretty creepy for me. Probably would be more exciting if it were more than a 1-way experience. I really enjoyed watching Charlie Cheney, Debs, and Errol when they were improvising songs on UStream late one night. So they’re creepy … when I’m not the creep.
The Singing Answerman can be helpful: It doesn’t happen often, but I sang a truly helpful response to someone’s PHP question. Pretty low on the snarkometer. And it worked. Down to the line number. Helpful replies swimming in goofy are a nice balance.
Get lost: I’m writing a bad song when I “follow the beaten path” of composition. It’s very easy to accidentally reuse similar progressions, styles and instrumentation as my earlier work, especially since I’ve written a lot of songs. But I’ve been trying to throw myself off that path by trying new stuff. Particularly, for FAWM 2009: learning other genre styles (via video/Web sites), framing the song around instruments I don’t know how to play (so I’m more likely to play strange chords), and singing melodies before fingering them on instruments. I also went heavier into my string/brass samples, as predicted by last year’s FAWM song sprinkling. I need to use the foreign stuff to get myself lost, and use the stuff I’ve mastered to justify the trip. This was most apparent in Mindless Instrumental #2.
Tools are great: I spent a little time fixing up Dillfrog Muse pre-FAWM, and it came in really handy. It’s still got some odd bugs ever since I ported it from Perl to PHP and used a new dictionary source; I need to clean it up. But as imperfect as it is, I’m glad I had it. It really improved the “flow” of my lyricizing. I wrote a special program to find phrases patterned after “how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?” Then I manually filtered through the results to find my favorites.
I love writing raps: Nothing new here. I was not the sole author of the Pure Cane Lover rap lyrics, but I did help glue them together. And I love a good rap lyric. My process seems to be pretty straightforward: rhyme a bunch of weird words, talk about how awesome you are, and say something suggestive or vulgar. Done. (Sidenote: being an Answerman helped me here, too; one of the questions I read but didn’t answer was something like, “What does it mean when a guy says he ‘melted’?”). Astronaut amused me, as well as the studio/live versions of Brioche. More, please!
Don’t talk, sing: An old technique, but it continues to pay off. I struggled with this on Bugs. There are still talking parts, but there used to be more. It’s either rap, or singing, or both. None of this talking nonsense. Hyperbolically speaking.
Studio monitors awe: I upgraded from a ~$100 colored 2.1 speaker system to an ~$80 pair of passive Event 20/20 monitors (including shipping costs! THANK YOU, eBay!). They’ve made music come alive again, and my mixes feel a lot cleaner now that the coloring has gone away. And I don’t use headphones as much, so the earache has passed. So very much worth it.
Okay, that’s all I’ve got. Now I need to compare these thoughts against 2007’s notes, and see what’s changed.
