So, I've taken the RPM challenge, which is to record an album's worth of material (10 songs or 35 minutes) entirely during the month of February. Today I got started with the process.

I recorded a song called "My Sanctuary". I'd written the basis of it already, but I'd never really put it all together or anything. But I sat down and did the whole thing today. It's certainly a rush job. There are things I could have done better with more time. But the great thing is that I can always go back if I want to and fix it. It's an electro-rock tune of sort, very poppy (by my standards).

Then, since it was still relatively early in the day, I recorded a second song, this one basically from scratch. It was based on a little warm-up thing I used to play. This one was much more unusual. It's entirely in 13/8 time and has an odd structure to it. The song is called "A Chance of Loss".

My album will be called Five Years in Providence, and the themes of the songs will have to do with the five years I spent living there. "My Sanctuary" refers to a message board where I found a bunch of like-minded people. I never did make any real friends in Providence, but I did meet a lot of people online who were very cool, and that was a sort of sanctuary for me. "A Chance of Loss" is about a difficult time I went through with my wife, where we almost split. It's a painful thing to think about, but if I don't include a song about it, it will feel like it's the proverbial elephant in the room.

I'm quite tired now. I spent many hours writing music today. This month will be really crazy. I can't wait to see what I end up putting together. Two songs for a total of about 8 minutes in one full day's work. Not bad, but I'm not going to have too many full days like this.