Hello World

Welcome to the Record Time VI blog!

Record Timers can use this space to post about their progress throughout the event, as well as before and after. I would encourage everyone to share a bit about their preparation, their writing and recording processes, and of course the inevitable descent into madness.

Hopefully you’ve all received a message about the blog by now, but if you haven’t, and YOU WANT TO POST ON THE BLOG, just send me a message or e-mail with your e-mail address. From there, I just plug you into the “permissions” page and you can post as if the blog were yours and only yours.

Also, when it’s all over, this blog will be used to post reviews of everything – one of my favorite parts. The more people who can contribute, the better. But I’m getting ahead of myself, and I’ll send out more info later!

I thought I’d kick the blog off with some actual content…maybe even useful content. After organizing and participating in RT five times over the course of 4 years, I’ve accumulated VAST amounts of wisdom. Here are my top 5 tips for having a fun and safe Record Time experience.

1) Prepare. Change your guitar strings. Clean off your keyboard. Untangle your cables. Make sure they’re all working properly. Warm up your voice/fingers/mouse clickin’ muscles. Back up your computer, and delete some crap. Make some new guitar/synth/drum patches. SET UP DAW SESSION TEMPLATES. Clean your room. Get some sleep.

2) Be adventurous. If you’ve ever wanted to experiment with a new style, or try out a new technique, now is the time. Go outside your comfort zone – you’ll learn some new tricks that you can use (or not use) later.

3) Be ambitious. You can do a lot more in a week than you think. You’ll be surprised when your “rushed” material starts sounding as good as your carefully plotted, yearlong projects. I wrote the best album of my life for Record Time (RT3 to be exact), and you can too!

4) Try using limits. Self-imposed limits give you a great starting point for each piece of music. You may try writing your record using only certain instruments, or you may try writing around a theme or narrative.

5) Have a plan. A loose schedule ensures that you won’t spend too much time on insignificant details. Make sure you leave some time towards the end to tweak your mixes and do last-minute overdubs.

I was gonna do 10, but then I got bored! I pass the blogging torch to you!

Dan