How I wrote, recorded, & designed EPs in 48 hours using just my iphone
Today I’m going to outline the framework I created for this challenge, which I decided on one day when I remembered I’d once been challenged to write and record an EP in two weeks… & wondered if it could be done in two days - welcome to the kinds of things that keep me up at night.
There’s another part to this backstory that involves realising what an intimate & beautiful format voice memos are during a creative exchange with someone in the last months of their life - they were a wonderful raconteur, actor, writer, humanitarian, & despite the context of it all it was a very inspiring time. There’s more on that in the liner notes of the releases themselves, & in their forthcoming accompanying book, which is being typeset as I, well, type.
For me, laying parameters is always easier than staring at a blank page, so here are the ones I felt needed deciding on ahead of time:
Time: The 48h don’t have to be continuous (that was a lifesaving hack!)
Apps & content: The EP’s must be recorded, designed, & released on/via phone using its recording, camera, & text apps. (Originally I wanted to mix in my phone too, but my screen was just too small & fiddling around getting things right was using up time).
Sound: It almost goes without saying, but I’m going to say it anyway: the EP will be low-fi (no point even pretending here!)
Track listing: The titles, when put together, should read as much like a poem in their own right as they can, and this will determine the track listing.
Tracks: The pieces/songs will predominantly be 4 tracks.
Instrumentation: The EP’s will generally contain a balance of: speech, singing, piano, prepared piano, field recordings, & captured & created sound.
Source material - words/lyrics: The source material will be the photo-poems I created in lockdown + the poems originally submitted to Lazy Gramophone Press when first joining that publisher. (The time taken to write these couldn’t completely be taken into consideration, as I couldn’t recall how long my Lazy submissions took all that time ago, however, the photo-poems I took in lockdown came in at around 1.5h each.)
Source material - music: As well as my self-designed processes, the musical source material will include: a local student’s tone-row & another student’s challenge to include a piece about their furby (!) (Yes, you read that right, & yes, I did fulfil it.)
Source material - photographs: The photographic source material has already been made, however, the EP covers must be made on site.
Composition process: Each piece/song must use a different compositional process/technique to any other on an EP.
Artistic Framework: Each EP must have a running theme & artistic framework of its own that must be defined in no more than 5 words.
Working in this way felt more like pouring the music into containers, so to speak, or cutting cloth to dress a mannequin, & I think this was ultimately the reason I could make this rickety this challenge work. I just have so much in the way of writing & music & ideas too, much of which goes unused, that I got this lovely sense of completion that some things from the vault’d been put to good use & given a new lease of life.
Is anyone else up for doing this challenge? Let me know! I’d love to hear about it.