So, with about a week to go before the start of this year’s RPM Challenge, it’s about time I posted something about last year’s recording. First, an apology… I started writing this post months ago, but then I got side-tracked by any number of shiny things and, well, here we are…
Earlier last year, as February 2021 approached (so, January then…) I started to think about the forthcoming RPM Challenge (your annual reminder that the RPM Challenge is to record an album of new music entirely in the month of February).
I started to look around for some ideas for a theme, but nothing was really jumping out at me. Then I found that the NASA Perseverance mission would be landing on Mars in mid-February, and I decided to pick that as this year’s theme. This was something of a risky move. I’ve themed several albums around events which have already happened, but this was the first time I would be writing music about something which hadn’t happened yet, would actually be happening while I was writing it… and may not even happen at all – landing on Mars is hard!
So, Monday February 1st arrived and – after a day of working from home – I fired up Reaper, ready to get started.
I had a good evening of recording. Ideas were coming out. And then there was something different from previous years. Normally, after an evening of RPM Challenge – and especially after the first evening – I might head to the pub to enjoy a pint and relax. But we were in lockdown, so that wasn’t an option this year. Luckily, I now keep a good stock of decent bottled beer in the flat.
Writing and recording progressed well over the following days. And then, 18 days into it, a Very Important Event was happening. It was the day that Perseverance was due to (hopefully) land on Mars!
I watched the coverage of the landing quite nervously as, if anything did go wrong, then I would be 18 days into a project that might have to change drastically with only 10 days left (I appreciate that NASA probably had much bigger concerns about the landing 😉 ). Thankfully it all went perfectly!
Time went by and more progress was made, and before long it was the final week! Still no tracks completed, but they were at least coming together.
And then – as you do (or as I do, it seems) – I started a whole new track! This was the last track on the album (Dare Mighty Things), which was named after a phrase which was apparently encoded into the lander’s parachute design.
The following day, with just a couple of days left to go, I finally finished and uploaded a track! This was one of the long ones, which I had spent a while humorously referring to as “the 12 minute track called Seven Minutes”. The track is based around the landing of the rover, and is named after the Seven Minutes of Terror – the time of the landing process when any of a number of many things can go wrong (thankfully, nothing did).
So with one track finished, there were just three more to do (I had been hoping to do five tracks for this album, but one of them just wasn’t coming together in time, so sadly I had to decide to abandon it).
And then, the next day, it was the final weekend of the challenge.
A few hours later and the 15 minute opening track (which I called “Between Two Worlds”) was finished and uploaded. I was getting there!
Finally, the last day of the challenge came. The two long tracks were done, so I just had the two shorter tracks to finish. It was still a lot to get done… Breakfast first, though!
Just after 8pm I had a third track finished and uploaded, which meant I just had one more track to finish by the end of the day…
Fortunately, it turned out that the last track didn’t need a great deal doing to it, and I had that done and uploaded a little over an hour later. Then I just needed to finish the cover, which didn’t take long. By about quarter past ten at night it was all finished and uploaded to Bandcamp, and I could enjoy a beer while I waited for midnight to press the Publish button (I could have pressed it before midnight of course, it just seems to be the way I do it – probably because normally I don’t have everything finished and uploaded before midnight)
And so, after midnight (nearly twenty minutes after, it seems…) I pressed the Publish button on Bandcamp and my new album was all done and released!
As always, I’ve made this available on Bandcamp for whatever you want to pay (or have it for free if you want). I hope you like it!