As we move through the final week of January 2025, and February fast approaches, I realise that once again I seem to have left it to the last minute to blog about last year’s RPM Challenge before I start this years challenge in just a couple of days! And, as ever, your annual reminder that the RPM Challenge is to record an album of music within the month of February.
The first evening of the challenge went well, with a couple of tracks started. And before long it was time to tweet about relaxing with a beer afterwards…
Quite early on in this year’s challenge I had to take a night off (as well as the following morning) to go to a tremendous gig by Fatoumata Diawara in Manchester. I stayed in a hotel overnight, and a photo I took from the hotel window later came to be used for the album cover.
Nearly a week into the recording, with some good progress being made throughout, I was more than a little horrified to realise I hadn’t been doing any backups! This was quickly rectified, and the regular schedule of nightly backups was resumed.
One night, as I was about to go to bed, a short piano riff popped into my head. I switched the keyboard back on, fired up Reaper and recorded it as best as I could. Then I shut everything down again and went to bed. The next day I listened back to it. It wasn’t quite what I wanted as it was, so I made some changes, and a few more, and then I was happier with it, but something still wasn’t right. I switched the sound from a piano to an organ and it sounded better, but still it wasn’t there. I also had another piece that was developing into a longer track, but I was stuck when trying to take it further. Then I had an idea. I took this new riff part and added it onto the longer track. I thought it worked quite well. Then I switched it from the organ sound and back to a piano and it worked even better. This became the next part in the track that was to become View From Above.
It seems inspiration for new music was also coming from other strange sources…
There was one concerning issue though… I’d rediscovered a pack of synths that I hadn’t used in a while, in a VST called “Arminator 2”. I’d found some nice sounds on it and had been using them on a few tracks. However, every time I reloaded a track with this VST on it, it had unloaded itself, and I would have to reload it and set the correct sound again. This was obviously quite a problem, and googling didn’t help at all. I would have preferred to keep these sounds, but with the clock ticking I had to abandon them and try to find some similar sounds on more stable VSTs. If anyone has any clues for how to fix this (I’m using Reaper) I’d be pleased to hear from you.
As we moved toward the final week of February, I took stock, and was happy to see things were certainly coming together. A few tracks were almost done, others were close.
And then it was into the last full weekend, which also meant it was time for the obligatory “toast & marmalade and a mug of tea in front of the keyboard” tweet!
… and a great discovery was made!
After the end of the final weekend, a lot of progress had been made, and it was all looking hopeful, with more tracks marked as “all but done”.
And then on the last day (which was an extra bonus day, thanks to the leap year!), I had 9 tracks finished, making 38 minutes of music, and the album was complete! Except more than half of them still didn’t have titles… still – for me – one of the hardest parts of the process…
A couple of hours later, everything had a title, all the tracks were rendered out and uploaded to Bandcamp, the artwork was done, and it was time to put my feet up for a little while before publishing the finished album.
And then, shortly after midnight, I pushed the “publish” button on the Bandcamp site, and another RPM Challenge album was finished!
Here is the finished album on Bandcamp. As always, I’ve released it on a pay-what-you-want (from £0) basis. I hope you like it!