Yet another website for a nerdy musical project I was involved in: instantalbum.org. The gist was to throw a party where random ‘bands’ would be drawn from a hat and tasked with writing and recording a song in an hour. Below is the latest version of the ‘rules:’
- Invite a bunch of ‘music people.’
- Write names of all participants on slips of paper, which are then folded and placed in a bowl.
- Draw ‘Bands’ of a predetermined number from the bowl
- No more than 2 bandmates on any team, only 1 if they’re regularly a trio.
- Once the first band is drawn, they will descend into the basement, where they will have exactly one hour to write and record basic tracks.
- No further names will be drawn until their hour ends, so no one gets a head start.
- Each band will be granted an additional half-hour for vocals following the subsequent band’s initial hour.
- Strict clock enforcement!
We did this on three seperate occaisions. Our findings are available on the website, which exists in order to encourage others to duplicate the experiment / event.
I meant to link to this awhile ago, but I somehow managed to completely forget about it. Only upon seeing this Pitchfork news story, detailing a forthcoming live composition gameshow pitting members of the Shins against SNL’s Fred Armisen was I reminded that it existed. Now seems like a good enough time to link to it. The article mentions that this event may eventually be developed into a TV show, which would be very, very great.