And so, yet again we’re less than two weeks a week about a day away from the start of the 2026 RPM Challenge, so – as ever – it’s way past time for me to write about last year’s challenge. And as usual, your annual reminder that the RPM Challenge is a challenge to record an album of new music during the month of February.
But last year’s challenge was close to setting off with a difficult start, as setting everything up on 31st January revealed a serious glitch where I wasn’t getting any sounds when I pressed the keys on my keyboard, which thankfully turned out to be a dodgy USB lead, and a (longer and better) replacement was quickly ordered and arrived in time to start on the 1st February. I wrote more about this in a blog post last year…
And so, the 1st of February came along (as did my replacement USB lead!) and recording commenced. The 1st this year was on a Saturday, so I didn’t even need to wait until I’d finished work to start. It was a good day, ideas were developing, and then it was time to relax at the end of the day with a beer…
A week went by and things were progressing well. The first track was almost done, and a few others were started, and I had thought of a theme to tie the album together.
It was odd to come up with a theme after I’d already started recording. Usually if I do choose to use a theme, I’ve picked it before (sometimes long before) I start recording, but this one came to me when I had already started a (at this point) un-themed album. I had decided (for some unknown reason) to take a musical tour around the circle of fifths.
The idea was to record 12 tracks in each of the keys around the circle, with the idea that when the album gets to the end, it can (in theory) circle around to the start again. However, to keep things interesting, instead of going around just the major or minor sides of the circle, I decided to hop from one side to the other with each step, so the first track was in A minor, the second in G major, the third in B minor, all the way around to the final track, which was in F major.
With a theme in mind, I carried on and much was getting done. 12 days in and over half the tracks were started. I did have some odd glitches with some VST synths again which was mildly concerning, but nothing quite as bad as last year.
And then, with just over a week of recording left to do, I had an evening off to go and watch Fish playing in Manchester on his last ever tour. It was a Friday evening, and I was staying overnight in a Premier Inn, so that meant that the start of my last full weekend of recording would be delayed until I got home, and for the first time in years there would be no photo of marmalade on toast in front of the keyboard on the Saturday morning! (Perhaps I should have photographed my Premier Inn breakfast instead?)
I got the train home on Saturday and by the afternoon I was back recording again. Although it would seem that the hopping between major and minor keys was starting to take a toll…
As we were now into the final week, on the Sunday I listened through everything I had so far and made notes as usual. It showed that I was certainly getting there, although I still had a lot to do on some of the tracks…
… but after a good day of recording, much progress was made, with 3 out of the 4 tracks that needed a lot of work really coming together nicely.
The following evening I made some more good progress, and ended up going in a different direction with the one track left which had needed a lot doing to it, which meant I was now well on target to finish.
While the music was coming together nicely, I still needed to do the artwork for the album cover. With the cyclical nature of the album, I’d decided on the title “Full Circle”, and tried to think of some suitable images to go with it. Originally I’d had an idea to photograph a mug of tea from above, to get the circle of the mug, and a smaller circle within it of the tea. I’d also thought of adding extra circles to the image in the form of biscuits, so with that in mind I bought a packet of chocolate digestives (dark chocolate, naturally!) for purely artistic reasons, of course!
By the end of the week I still hadn’t taken any photographs, and by now there were only 2 of the chocolate biscuits left. So I made a mug of tea, set it up on a table, put the remaining biscuits next to it and took some snaps. However, looking at the pictures, it wasn’t really right for what I wanted, so I needed a new idea.
Earlier in the month, I had been looking at some photos I’d taken a while ago of a Tunnock’s Tea Cake wrapper, and thought of using one of those, but I couldn’t get them to work as I’d like. So I decided to take fresh photos of a new one. I opened a Tea Cake, and promptly tore the wrapper. So I ate that one and got a fresh one. I got the wrapper off that one ok (and ate the tea cake), then wrote my name and the album title on the silver strip at the edge of the wrapper, placed it on a black t-shirt for a backdrop and took some photos, and that was the album cover done!
And so with the photos done, by midnight at the end of the penultimate day, I found that everything was finally written and recorded. All that remained was some tweaking, titles to come up with, and then rendering out the tracks and uploading them, all of which could be done on the last day.
The final day came around, and I spent the evening after work doing the last of the tweaking and getting everything ready. Eventually, it was all done, and all that was left was to render out the tracks and upload them. I took a short break and then started on that.
And finally, about an hour or so after that, everything was rendered, everything was uploaded to Bandcamp, and I had time to settle down for a little while and relax before it was time to publish the album.
So after a well-deserved beer and settling down in front of the telly for an hour or so, it was after midnight and time to press the “publish” button. Another album was done!
As always, the album is available on Bandcamp, and you can name your own price, or pay nothing at all if you prefer. I hope you like it!