This is the last blog I'm going to post in this section. My RPM experience is pretty much over. I have the cd all ready to go, and I'll post it tomorrow (it's raining today so I don't want to go out).

I have a new section on my website to stand as an information point for this album. You can find it here. You will find lyrics and a description of the album.

I found a cover image I made for the album at the beginning of the month. It looks much cooler than the one I posted a few days ago. I plan to work up the album a lot more and give it a proper release at some point in the future, and when this happens I'll put on the 'good' cover.

Final thoughts? I learned something about my creativity and working under pressure. I know now that if I push myself, I can do music pretty much every day, and still maintain a high standard. I know that I can't do production and writing at the same time. It's just too much work, and I'm not really a producer at heart. I really enjoy the creative process, but tweaking the sounds and mixing just feels like work, and it's something I find very difficult to do every day, especially as it conflicts somewhat with the creative process.

An analogy would be: being creative and writing music is like creating a mould. Production is like pouring concrete into the mould. You can be as creative as you like with the mould, but once you've poured the concrete, it's difficult to change anything. You'd have to break the mould and discard the concrete, then reform the mould and reset the concrete. Because of this, it becomes inefficient to produce and create at the same time. This is why I stopped posting songs. Getting to a stage where I have an mp3 means pouring the concrete.

In the future I'm going to completely disregard doing any production until I'm happy with the music. It'll be a more segmented process. I still have to think about how I can incorporate lots of vocals and guitar into the same workspace and still have it workable. The solution may just be to get a more powerful computer.

What am I going to do now? I'll probably have a few days off, but I'm actually quite excited about writing a Teenage Friday 2, incorporating all the ideas I didn't get to use on the first one. It's quite nice to work towards albums, rather than just doing individual songs. It's a different working environment when I can pick a subject and write a lot of songs about it, rather than write in an ad hoc manner.

So, you're wondering where the album is... here it is. It's a big 50.5 meg zip file with all 10 mp3s in it. They're encoded at 160kbps. If you know me and would like the album on cd, or in some other form, let me know and I'll make arrangements. I don't want to sell the album, because I consider it a demo album. But, I won't be giving away copies at my own expense either. If you give me a blank cd I'll gladly burn it for you, and additionally I'll take a couple of copies with me to gigs and sell them for $5 each (to cover the blank cd and effort to make it). I won't be advertising this though, so you'll have to ask me for it if you want it. Basically, if you want the album, and downloading it isn't an option, email me and we'll work something out.

What do I think of the album? I'm very happy with it. I think there are some great songs on there, and considering the time I spent on it, it sounds very good. Obviously it's not produced, mixed and mastered to international best practice standards, but it's very listenable, and I'm proud of it. It's a good testament to what I can do by myself in a month. The volume of good ideas I had while making the album is amazing, and I can't wait to get into the ideas I didn't finish. It should be an awesome album to play live too.

I can't really think of anything else to say, so I'll end there. I'm going to start updating my regular blog from now on, so you can check back there from time to time for more inane thoughts, essays, ramblings and naked pictures. Catch you later - I hope you like the album :)

Ok so I lied a couple of days ago and there's no new music up. It's just a real pain to put up individual tracks every once in a while. Don't fret though, the album is done. That's right, done. I have all the tracks bounced, and I'm organising them into an appropriate order. I'm then going to work on the continuity, master them a bit, then burn it to cd. I promise, in absolute terms, that tomorrow I'll have the entire album for download. I probably won't keep the entire album up forever because of bandwidth considerations, but for a few months at least you'll be able to download a big zip file.

I also spent a bit of time working on a new music section for the website. I'll launch it at the same time as the album. It's basically just a more organized information section, and I plan to have lyrics and a bit of info about the album there.

See you tomorrow :)

I was tired yesterday and just didn't feel like writing up a blog. We didn't end up rehearsing because Raff was on holiday and couldn't get back in time. I kinda felt tired today as well. I've been doing a bit of general admin, but nothing to write home about - just necessary stuff that has to be done once in a while.

I did a bit of work on lullaby and it's now as finished as it's going to be by the end of feb. It really needs a lot more stuff, but it's the kind of song that can't easily be finished in my current state. It needs contributions from other people to fill it out, and maybe even a different singer (female?). It's just in the wrong vocal range for me to sing effectively.

I designed the album cover today. It'll have writing on it when I print it out - title, tracks, my name etc. I thought you'd like to see it without that crap on it though. It's just a quick cover I knocked up in paintshop.

You can probably tell by the nature of this blog entry that I'm tiring of this RPM thing again. I'm just not looking forward to all the technical/production stuff I'm going to have to do over the next few days to get the album onto a cd. I'm also starting to worry about other things, like the gig coming up in a few weeks, and my other album, which is nearing completion. It'll be a relief to get to rehearsal on the weekend and release some energy.

I'll almost definitely put up some more music tomorrow, because I'm going to have to start finishing things off.

Had a quiet day today. The blog will reflect this.

It's actually the 24th as I write this, it's only been the 24th for 7 minutes, so I'm letting it slide. Another productive day today. I did my washing today, which doesn't happen that often. I also finished Super Metroid, one of the greatest games ever. My brother bought it for the Wii. It took me a little under 5 hours. I also played a little bit of tetris. I've been playing tetris a bit recently as a diversion. Have you ever had tetris dreams? They're weird.

I also did some music today, believe it or not. I tend to work better in the evening, as was the case today, I started at around 6 and worked solidly until writing this. Not quite an 8 hour day, but I probably did some stuff in the morning too that I forgot about. I focussed on lingering addiction, which was one of the first ideas I had. It's not going to be called lingering addiction any more, but rather theif.

Theif is a very interesting song. It's ambiguous, which I like. It could be about me being a vampire and hunting people in the night, or me being a sexual predator and breaking into people's bedrooms, or me being a mysterious character who steals women's hearts (metaphorically speaking), or maybe even something else. The most likely version is the last one.

Now that I'm basically finished, I went back to the original tracklist I posted on the 29th of Jan to see how many tracks on that list actually made it to the album.

• all you wanted (made it, retitled 'spurned')
• constant reward (didn't make it)
• contempt (made it)
• lingering addiction (made it, retitled 'theif')
• my sick desire (made it)
• never escape (didn't make it)
• no more fun (made it)
• take a breath (didn't make it)
• teaching the naive (didn't make it)
• tailored to your needs (didn't make it)

I'm surprised so many made it on really. There are a couple of additions to that list, such as teenage assembly, lullaby, goodnight, take your shot, and the title track, teenage friday. I'm probably going to include a bonus track - just a quick soundscape I tossed off whilst playing with my nord (that's a synthesizer, not a penis analogy).

Sally comes in to sleep on my floor every night. I opened the door to let her in and took the first photo, but because I was giving Sally attention, Meg came in.

I've had a light music day today. I did a little bit more work on no more fun. I wrote the lyrics (quite tricky) and did a few touch ups. It's sounding pretty damn cool. It's about the young generation refusing to follow the traditions of the older generation, but inviting the older generation to join the traditions of the young generation. Quite an odd topic for a song I think. It wasn't going to be that when it started.

I had quite a bit of difficulty writing lyrics for the song, because some of the words I'd adlibbed in when coming up with vocals melodies conflicted with other words I'd adlibbed in (conceptually speaking). Despite this, there was a strong incentive to keep the adlibbed words, because they were quite evocative. In the end I had to change some of them, but I think I found solid replacements that keep the original feel, but are more meaningful.

Initially I was going down a serious path with the lyrics, making it about controlling society and indoctrinating young people, but my entire second album is about that type of thing, and I didn't want to head into that territory again. I want Teenage Friday to be a fairly happy, boisterous album. Where there are dark or serious themes, I'm attempting to undermine them by adding a humorous or tongue in cheek element.

After giving the song a bit of time to marinate in my subconscious's creative ooze, I let some lyrics flow, forcing myself to stay relatively positive. I kinda like the way it worked out.

I was seriously considering posting no more fun tonight, but as I haven't actually recorded the lyrics yet, I thought it would be a bit premature. I really need to get down and record some vocals, but I've been a bit self conscious about annoying my dad and neighbours with raucous singing. Rest assured it'll be all done before the end of the month.

I didn't take any pictures worth putting up today, so I instead just took a picture of my feet and put that up. Now a question you might be asking is, 'Is Chris wearing pants?'. The answer is, 'Yes, I am wearing pants you perverted bastard'.

I was feeling a bit manic today. I don't know why. I guess the music I'm working is basically psyche up music. I did a small amount more on no more fun, but spent most of the day on all you wanted, which is what I intended to be a cheesy love song. It's not actually cheesy, just a regular song about being spurned. I still have the idea for the cheesy song sitting around in my brain for later use.

As always happens, I tried to join two bits of music together and ended up spawning extra stuff and not using one of the bits. It's pissing me off, because I've now got quite a few cool little titbits lying around not being used.

But, well, I'm not too unhappy. In fact I'm actually not unhappy at all, I'm just pretending to be dramatic. It's the best thing to have a lot of spare ideas lying around, because it means I don't have to confront a blank workspace unless I want to. Blank workspaces are very difficult things. If you don't understand the terminology 'workspace', just think blank page, or blank canvass.

Tomorrow I'll probably do a bit of refining and production to reduce the amount I'll have to do at the end. Maybe I'll record some vocals too, we'll see how it goes. I'm at about 8.5 songs now, so I'm just about done. It feels much easier to push myself now, because there isn't such a big workload in front of me.

I'm hopefully seeing the new Rambo movie tonight. I can't wait.

I worked on no more fun again today. Listening to what I'd done yesterday, it just wasn't up to my usual standard. I think the twenty days or so of music have worn me down enought that I'm more likely to let mediocre stuff slip past - it just takes too much effort to fix it up. But I pushed myself today, and managed to fix up no more fun, and it's now sounding about right. It turned out way heavier than I thought it would.

It's been a bit of a weird process writing this song. It started with me getting an idea for a drum pattern, and singing it into logic, kinda like this, "bor, shikka tish, tikka bork, pukka chika tok". I also did a bit of "shwar"ing. I then tried to emulate this drum patter with real drums, but failed to capture the raw beauty of my vocal performance.

It so happened that I accidentally moved the vocal drums into the guitar track, making the vocal drums distort and sound kinda cool. I decided that it added something nice to the track, and so kept them in, and built the first part of the song around it. As time went on, I realised that the vocals drums were actually kinda annoying, so I took them out. But their influence can still be felt. So when you listen to it, you can make your own sounds and remember me fondly.

Thursday is a free day for me, so I'll try to get into that cheesy love song. If I can finish it off this week I'll take a break over the weekend, then get into the last track and production next week. I have to post the album by friday at the latest. I suppose it's kinda fitting that Teenage Friday will be finished on a friday.

Today I worked on no more fun. I had several bits I wanted to paste together, but as always seems to happen, I came up with new stuff, and so have an unused bit just sitting there. I have no idea what I'm going to do with this album after the RPM challenge is finished. I'll probably spend the next six months just finishing off all the ideas and producing everything up to a good standard. I'm starting to think a double album is on the cards.

I don't know if it's just how I was feeling today, or if constantly writing is getting me down, but I'm feeling really scattered at the moment. When I sat down to work on no more fun I came up with musical ideas really quickly and built the song out to about four and a half minutes. But then I just had no motivation to add anything to the track, and writing lyrics was really difficult. I'll probably end up scrapping most of the lyrics.

I think I'm encountering burnout, but it's an odd kind of burnout, because my creativity seems to still be intact. New music is still flowing, but production and lyric writing is really hard. This probably has something to do with the fact that writing music is much more fun than production or writing lyrics. I'm just over the 'work' aspect.

I still have at least one more major piece of music to work on before the deadline. That will only take me up to nine tracks, but it'll easily be over 35 minutes. I'll try to get into that track tomorrow and thursday, and then see where I'm at. I'll need to spend a good couple of days doing production and getting the album as a whole together before I burn it and post it. But I should have 4-5 spare days in February. If I really need a break, I could concievably take that time off, but I'd like to reach my goal of ten tracks. There are enough ideas, it's just a matter of pushing myself to develop them.

It will be quite interesting indeed to listen to all the tracks back to back and see what it sounds like. Whatever happens, it will have been a good month, and a very productive one. Just not one that I'm going to repeat any time soon.

So I've kinda been promising new music for a while. There are two reasons why I haven't posted any. Firstly, I'm using three instances of guitar rig in the tracks (two for double tracking the rhythm and one for the lead), and this makes logic run slowly. I can still compose like this, but bouncing the tracks is difficult (read: impossible). I'll have to bounce the guitar and other stuff separately, which I only want to do once at the end. Secondly, I haven't got around to recording the lyrics yet. They're all written, but I just haven't been in the mood to sing them. I'm going to have to yell some of them, and yelling at home is not the most comfortable thing to do. I often wonder what the neighbours think of me.

I have three tracks just about done:
1 - the more finished and substantially different version of teenage assembly (with proper lyrics)
2 - the last track on the album, goodnight
3 - a cool, faith no more type track called take your shot

Rather than go through the hassle and waste of time posting them now, I'll just save them all till the end. It'll only be 10 or 11 days.

In addition to those three, I have a nice, quiet lullaby type thing, a cheesy love song, a song about fun (or lack thereof), and a couple more ideas that aren't defined well enough to be described. Needless to say I'm on track to finish the album on time, and possibly include an extra track (or two). I'll probably just stick to eleven though.

As far as today went/goes/will go, I've pretty much wasted it so far. I worked in the morning then had a big lunch, watched some tv, and generally just relaxed. I think I needed a bit of a break. I'm prepped to get into it again after I post this message though. I tend to work better in the evening hours.

Ok, so I split up the blog again. Links to past dates are above.

Well, we rehearsed today. Things were going really well till one of the speakers caught on fire. At that point we stopped playing. I don't think I can say anything that can't be explained better with pictures. The only thing I will mention is that the orange glow behind the speaker in the first large image is the fire. It actually got a bit bigger than that, but there comes a point when you stop taking pictures and start putting out the fire. Needless to say, we need to (i.e. Rehan needs to) do some repairs before we can rehearse again.

I can't help but feel that this is the most poignient indication we could have possibly recieved that we should play less loud. Oh and by the way, for those who know a bit of our past music history, the song that set the speaker on fire was 'Gorgon'.

Oh yeah, and Raff was overcome with the toxic plastic fumes. It's ok though, because he's only a drummer.