Fun-A-Day 2020 and Jamuary

Discuss the many little competitions/projects that spring up amongst the Song Fight community.
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Fun-A-Day 2020 and Jamuary

Post by Pigfarmer Jr »

Lunkhead has been posting about this the past couple of years and I didn't see a thread so here goes:
Lunkhead wrote:
Mon Dec 31, 2018 3:55 pm
It's almost that time! Fun-A-Day is a challenge a la FAWM/NaNoWriMo/RPM/etc. in which folks make art* every day in January.
I found this on the internet:
There is a Pittsburgh punk tradition called "fun-a-day." For the entire month of January, fun-a-day project participants pick something and do it every day.
Fun-A-Day Inspirational Story

Jonathan Mann has also started a new concurrent and similar challenge "Jamuary" in which folks make a song every day. He's completing 10 years** (!!!!) of making a song a day today. It all started with him making a song a day for Fun-A-Day in 2009.

Jamuary


*I didn't find a specific music challenge, but we do music so music it is. Notice I said music and not songs. I'm just aiming for something musical every single day.
**Looks like this page/info is still up from last year but I'm still gonna try and do it.
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Re: Fun-A-Day 2020 and Jamuary

Post by Lunkhead »

Cool, thanks for making a thread! I'm intending to do this again, although honestly I'm still feeling a little tapped out from Novembeat even though I only made 18 pieces of music for that. I set up my analog synth pile again last night just in case. I may take the "easy" way out and use analog synth jamming as my fallback/last resort for making some music.
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Re: Fun-A-Day 2020 and Jamuary

Post by Lunkhead »

Actually a synth jam would fall more under the pre-existing Jamuary that Jonathan may or may not have known about. I think I found these guys, who are my main inspiration for my synth setup, by searching for "Jamuary" on YouTube. Turns out electronic music folks had been making jams every day in January and uploading them for some years before Jonathan started his thing.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC67ahv ... ry=jamuary

This guy Cuckoo is doing it too, he's awesome:

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Re: Fun-A-Day 2020 and Jamuary

Post by Pigfarmer Jr »

I wrote a song this morning for the FutureFest over at songcrafters.org which is my first song for Jamuary2020
A simple G&G recording.
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Re: Fun-A-Day 2020 and Jamuary

Post by fluffy »

Pigfarmer Jr wrote:
Wed Jan 01, 2020 7:07 am
Jonathan Mann has also started a new concurrent and similar challenge "Jamuary" in which folks make a song every day. He's completing 10 years** (!!!!) of making a song a day today. It all started with him making a song a day for Fun-A-Day in 2009.
Jonathan Mann has actually completed 11 years of a song a day.
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Re: Fun-A-Day 2020 and Jamuary

Post by Lunkhead »

Yes, 11 years. Mind blowing.

Glenn Case is doing Jamuary. You can follow along on Facebook and his Patreon. He's also livestreaming his process. Today, in 2.5hrs, he sat down, played some keyboard, and immediately wrote the harmony/structure for the song, then cranked out drums, then bass, then guitars, then sat down and wrote lyrics in a few minutes, then tracked all the vocals, and mixed. Boom, done. Also mind blowing!

All I managed to do tonight was crap our another live synth jam. I set my rig back up last night slightly differently from in November. I don't really like it. I don't think I've found the optimal use of my effects pedals with my various instruments. I'm still also annoyed about how the sync signal out of the volcas winds up only triggering the SH-101 only two times per quarter note no matter what I do. Anyway, here's something.

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Re: Fun-A-Day 2020 and Jamuary

Post by fluffy »

I wrote a song but I haven’t recorded it yet.
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Re: Fun-A-Day 2020 and Jamuary

Post by Pigfarmer Jr »

fluffy wrote:
Wed Jan 01, 2020 8:50 pm
Pigfarmer Jr wrote:
Wed Jan 01, 2020 7:07 am
Jonathan Mann has also started a new concurrent and similar challenge "Jamuary" in which folks make a song every day. He's completing 10 years** (!!!!) of making a song a day today. It all started with him making a song a day for Fun-A-Day in 2009.
Jonathan Mann has actually completed 11 years of a song a day.
Yeah, I made note at the bottom that it was last year's info... but I think the prompts are actually from this year, maybe. I found a second picture of prompts on his site so I'm assuming one was last year and one this year... but I'm not sure. *shrug* Either way, you're correct, that IS a long time.
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Re: Fun-A-Day 2020 and Jamuary

Post by Lunkhead »

The prompts in that image currently on Jonathan's Jamuary site are for this year. He borrowed many of them from Song Fight and Nur Ein.
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Re: Fun-A-Day 2020 and Jamuary

Post by ken »

I signed up for Weekly Beats for this year. I've already started my first song.

https://weeklybeats.com
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Re: Fun-A-Day 2020 and Jamuary

Post by Pigfarmer Jr »

Another G&G song for Jamuary 2nd. I'm gonna have to break out and do something out of my comfort zone before too long.

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Re: Fun-A-Day 2020 and Jamuary

Post by Lunkhead »

ken wrote:
Thu Jan 02, 2020 10:51 am
I signed up for Weekly Beats for this year. I've already started my first song.

https://weeklybeats.com
Oh wow, that sounds cool. I look forward to hearing some new songs from you!

I busted out another synth jam tonight. I set up my Korg SQ-1 sequencer as a way to sequence sixteenth notes on the SH-101 vs using its internal sequencer. (The SQ-1 sync stuff works the same as the volcas, what with it all being Korg.) It's a trade off of a lot of control and being able to have a really long pattern, but, the new rhythmic options immediately inspired me. Unfortunately I ran out of 1/8" cables and so had to take my PO-30 out of the setup, lol. Oops! Time to swing by the Starving Musician in Berkeley again this weekend and buy moar cables!

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Re: Fun-A-Day 2020 and Jamuary

Post by Future Boy »

Oh hey cool I also decided to do Jamuary this year and will be mostly doing synth jams on my modular setup (but hope to get in at least one songfight). I've been posting videos on youtube and instagram (@damikyu6u). Here's my Day 2 jam, which I think turned out pretty good and is almost like a proper song.

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Re: Fun-A-Day 2020 and Jamuary

Post by fluffy »

so wait people are mostly just doing instrumentals? Huh.

All this sounds great.
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Re: Fun-A-Day 2020 and Jamuary

Post by ken »

Lunkhead wrote:
Thu Jan 02, 2020 9:51 pm
Oh wow, that sounds cool. I look forward to hearing some new songs from you!
fluffy wrote:
Fri Jan 03, 2020 12:55 am
so wait people are mostly just doing instrumentals? Huh.
Yeah, don't get too excited. I'm going to write instrumentals using Reason. I hope to play vibraphone as well, but for now, totally in the box all MIDI.

Maybe we can cross collaborate one week?
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Re: Fun-A-Day 2020 and Jamuary

Post by Pigfarmer Jr »

Weekly beats... ARGH!!! I did a song a week in 2010 (I think it was 2010) and it was wonderful and awful all at the same time. This sounds interesting, but I have SO MANY THINGS I wanna do. This is exactly the type of thing that I should do to stay motivated throughout the year, but.... I WANT to, but I'm afraid.....

Edit to add: Very little non electronic music on there. Probably not the place for me, although it's tempting.
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Re: Fun-A-Day 2020 and Jamuary

Post by Pigfarmer Jr »

Third song - Another acoustic and voice... *shrug* This time a video on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/TCElliottMusic ... 181667960/
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Re: Fun-A-Day 2020 and Jamuary

Post by Lunkhead »

Ha, I did a live stream of me making practicing then recording my jam on Facebook.

Here's what I made:

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Re: Fun-A-Day 2020 and Jamuary

Post by Pigfarmer Jr »

A fast mix on a song that a friend and I wrote yesterday. Recorded today. Will tweak eventually.

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Re: Fun-A-Day 2020 and Jamuary

Post by Lunkhead »

I saw Star Wars tonight. Ugh. Anyway, after that I had to make some music so, I made another live synth jam, same setup as last night but slightly different approach.

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Re: Fun-A-Day 2020 and Jamuary

Post by Pigfarmer Jr »

I'm not a huge synth guy, but I've very much enjoying your synth jams, Lunkhead.
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Re: Fun-A-Day 2020 and Jamuary

Post by Pigfarmer Jr »

This was started a week before Thanksgiving.. spent about five hours on it today (should have just started over as I re-recorded almost everything) and it's finally done. *sigh

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