Ever Put Together An Album In A Month?

By Casia (Lyricist)

March 2009 – Ottawa, Canada – I recently had the opportunity to work with a group of internet musicians putting together an album in one month.  It was hilarious, let me tell you, and a great learning experience!

Through an internet collaboration site called Kompoz, we met almost everyday in our on-line studio to organize and put together a minimum of ten songs or 35 minutes worth of listening for the RPM challenge.  The RPM is an annual challenge in support of “Album Month”, which is the month of February.  It’s not a contest and there is no money involved.  The idea is to challenge yourself and get inspired and motivated to make some  very cool music within a very strict deadline.

It was easy enough to find an interested group, the hard part was coordinating people from all over the world, in different time zones who do music part time, as they have a real-life to take care of as well.  Our group of 29 musicians consisted of individuals from the U.S., Canada, U.K. Sweden, France, Spain, Italy and the Bahamas. 

The first week into the album I was getting a little nervous as there wasn’t much activity.  The lyricists were busy writing and we had a few “musical concepts” dribble in and that was it.  So, I started sending out e-mails to people as I was determined to make this happen, I hate to fail hahaha!  Mainly, because this would be my first album and it just HAD to happen in my mind.

Our studio post was filled with questions as nobody was sure how to proceed and who was responsible for what and nobody wanted to step on anyone’s toes.  Needless to say, we started duplicating effort and people were asking the same questions.  Long story short, once we assigned a project manager and got past the initial hurdle of decision-making everything went pretty smoothly.  It was quite a ride! 

I was fortunate enough to have eight of my lyrics presented on this album so I spent all my time following up and getting everyone moving.  It took a big chunk of my time.  I probably spent six hours a day for the whole month of February getting this project together, but it was well worth it.  We managed to get some really good songs together that I’m very proud of.  We called our band Kompozite, named after the collaboration site.

So, what have I learned from all this?  Well, when you set your mind to doing something, you should just do it and not think about it because in the long run you’ll be thrilled that you did.  Number two, it’s a fantastic way to make friends and connections for future collaborations as you get to know each other pretty well.  Number three, and probably the most important, don’t worry about bugging people too much because if they are committed to the project, they’ll actually appreciate it because everyone has so many other things going on in their lives they can’t always remember or can’t keep up without a nudge.  Number four, just be nice and joke a lot because you’ll feel better and the project will definitely be more fun and run smoother.  Finally, it’s a good idea to get a woman to be the Project Manager because they’re better at multi-tasking – hahhaha – only joking, or am I J.  The album jukebox will be available by the end of the month.

Written by Casia (lyricist).  I can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it / http://ourstage.com/fanclub/casia

In the interim, you can listen to our RPM songs for the band Kompozite from this link:  http://www.kompoz.com/compose-collaborate/siteId-1043/topicId-3114/messages.forum.minisite