Kompozite - Album In A Month

The answer to that question is an astounding YES! It can be done. Through one internet collaboration site called Kompoz, one group of 29 internet musicians met daily to kompoz and mix and write and organize their ideas to produce an album of 11 rock songs (or 35 minutes worth of listening) in the month of February for the RPM challenge.

Just what exactly is the RPM challenge? RPM is an international challenge organized by "Wire Magazine" and devoted to motivating musicians to create an album every February to kickstart their creative processes for the year. Over 665 bands worldwide actually completed their albums involving over 2,000 artists. The scope of new music ranged from '60s style R&B instrumentals to rock and gangsta, electronica, punk and even A Capella. Participants were a mixture of new artists, popular local musicians and guys and gals just getting together who used to jam together on weekends.

What you don't hear about too often though, is a group of highly talented "Internet" musicians collaborating on-line to produce albums. One such album is called "Kompozite". It's an album of 11 rock songs created in February specifically for the RPM. This international group of collaborators come from the: U.S.A, Canada, U.K. Sweden, France, Spain, Italy and the Bahamas. Several of their songs have already been streamed on various internet radio sites and have been given "kudos" from many interested fans.

It was late February when I was browsing through the Kompoz forums checking out what was "goin' down" when I noticed a new group was posted called the RPM Challenge - create an album in a month. Well, I was lucky enough to be at a very prolific phase in my lyric writing and thought this would be an excellent opportunity to get some of my lyrics put to music and get an album done at the same time. I immediately jumped on board and was counting down the days so I could begin writing like a mad woman! Most of the time I claim just to be "plain mad" hahaha!!

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.

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! 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. We were all being extremely polite you see, as we had never met before. 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 it took a big chunk of my time. I'm sure I spent four to five hours a day for the whole month of February, but it was well worth it. We managed to get some really good songs together that we are all very proud of.

So, what have I learned from all this?

1) 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.

2) It's a fantastic way to make friends and connections for future collaborations as you get to know each other pretty well.

3) Probably the most important, don't worry about bugging people too much because if they are committed to the project, they'll actually appreciate the nudge 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.

4) Just be nice and joke a lot because you'll feel better and the project will definitely be more fun and run smoother.

5) 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.

Listen to some of Casia's personal songs here on her radio station at indiemusicworks

You can download the whole album from the Kompoz site, just click here