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Matt Westcott 2 months ago

Okay. Here's a challenge for people who think that regular feasting is a bit sissy. I've previously brought this up as "something I'd quite like to do some time", but this time I seriously pledge to do it at some point this FAWM.

At http://albums.demozoo.org/ you will find the Random Album Cover Generator, which randomly generates - yes! - an album cover, using the well-publicised technique of combining a random Wikipedia article title (the band name), the end of a random quote from www.quotationspage.com (the album title) and a random photo from Flickr's "most interesting" set. Your mission is to write that album - 14 songs, ideally in one day.

(cont)
Matt Westcott 2 months ago

* You're not allowed to keep refreshing the page until it comes up with something you like.
* Exactly what constitutes "writing that album" is for you to decide. It may or may not contain a title track, or be a concept album. However, you should make an honest attempt at deciding who the band are and what kind of music they play, and assuming their persona. Don't just write 14 of your own songs and then claim that "The Queen Must Die" by Kalashnikov Rifle is an album of classical flute instrumentals.
* Don't worry if it's a complete train-wreck. No-one has ever attempted this before, as far as I know (I've had some success writing individual songs this way, but never a full album).
* Standard FAWM rules about cheating / winning / violating the spirit of the challenge apply (i.e. it's a personal challenge; whatever you say counts counts; if you cheat then you're only cheating yourself; if it results in you creating any music whatsoever that didn't exist before, then you win).
Kim o the Concrete Jungle 2 months ago

Yeah, I've seen that generator before. What stops me from using it is the fact it just takes a random image from flickr. That's kind of problematic for me, because I wouldn't own the rights to the image I'm basing my album on.
Matt Westcott 2 months ago

(Full disclosure: I built the generator. Sorry, should have mentioned that in the original post...)

That's a fair point - I dare say it should be easy enough to add in the option to restrict it to suitably CC-licensed images. Will see what I can do.
thejestersdaughter 2 months ago

This actually sounds incredibly interesting. I don't know if I could do it, but it's an awesome idea!
loch 2 months ago

I don't think I'll use it myself, but the idea is fascinating.
Paul Milne 2 months ago

I'm totally up for this. I even got an honestly randomly generated album that kind of matches the folky ballads I tend to write anyway. So watch out for the new album from Prairie-Masker, "With Our Eyes Open".

But it won't be "ideal" - not in 1 day, that is ... so, not really a feast, but totally random!
devin 2 months ago

Matt, this app is really cool, thanks for sharing!

I tried it out, and there's a surprising correlation between band name, title, and cover art on my result:

http://www.thepondstudio.ca/AlbumCover.bmp

Looks like I have to learn some midi for this...I checked my Marshall amp, and there's no "ambient/chill/downtempo" settings
greenambit 2 months ago

Hm, I may consider trying this.
Audita Sum 2 months ago

Ooh. I might do this. Especially since the first thing that came up was "Agroscope: paper cannot be understood" with a baby in a chiquita banana hat in the background. That group is definitely a bunch of hipster beatnik dadaists. They won't be able to stick to one genre, even in the same song, as a reflection on the meaninglessness and chaoticity of life. It'll be full of teen angst and existential crises. And references to periods in art history and important philosophical concepts. Extremely pretentious.

Do the 14 songs have to be written within 24 hours or just in one sitting?
Matt Westcott 2 months ago

Good question... I think that the standard FAWM 'feast' convention (as pioneered by Tim Wille and shamelessly borrowed here) is to finish in one sitting - usually more like 4-5 hours, in fact - although the somewhat related (and older) Album-A-Day project does allow a break for sleeping: http://crapart.spacebar.org/aad/

There's no reason the random album thing absolutely *has* to be done as a speed challenge though - that suggestion is really just there as a kind of safety net, so that it doesn't turn into a long term commitment to a project you're thoroughly sick of. (If you're anything like me, an album of songs that you wouldn't have chosen to write yourself is the sort of thing that's going to be procrastinated into oblivion.)

Licensing-related tweaks to the album generator are in progress, by the way...
Matt Westcott 1 month ago

Okie dokie... I've just pushed out a bunch of improvements to the album cover generator:

http://albums.demozoo.org/

* You can restrict the choice of photos to just ones with specific Creative Commons licences - by default it will include those which explicitly allow derivative works (although not necessarily commercial use);
* The photo credit is displayed, with a link to the Flickr page;
* Various layout improvements to the generated album cover - photos are centred when cropped, very long band names don't get cut off, and on Safari you get pretty outlined text.
Paul Milne 1 month ago

Hmm, think I'd better get a new album considering I've no idea about the provenance of this photo. It's too easy to generate a new one, though, the first one I did using the improved version was "R" rated, maybe not best for a family website lol!
Paul Milne 1 month ago

Okay, my band is now called "Zenon" and the album is "judge of his work". I can work with that!
Ben Carroll 1 month ago

that generator is amazing.

i might do this, at some point this month.
Kim o the Concrete Jungle 1 month ago

Okay, I just grabbed an album cover: Nothing Can Be Done by Tiny Serotine. I might redo the album cover, because the layout turned out a bit borked, but I'll use the same picture.

It'll definitely be a feast for me, because I've got plenty of other things I want to do for FAWM as well.
Ben Carroll 1 month ago

is there a way to get the album cover from the webpage? so i can have it on my computer to reference.
i've seen a few i really like, but haven't worked out how to take them, are they only available on the generator itself, or am i missing something obvious?

i usually miss things that are obvious
Matt Westcott 1 month ago

Unfortunately there's no real way to capture the album cover as an image, other than with a screen grab - on a Mac that's Apple+Shift+4, and hopefully someone can tell you the equivalent for Windows. (It would be a fairly big job to enable saving the cover directly, since right now it doesn't create an image as such, just overlays things on top of each other in the browser...)

Alternatively, if you're feeling creative you can do as Kim suggests and redo the layout in a proper paint program, based on the original image which you can get from the 'photo credit' link. That way you're free to play with fonts, colours and cropping as you see fit - not a bad idea since the randomly generated ones are usually pretty awful.

Incidentally, when I do this challenge I'm planning to generate my album cover as the first thing on the day itself, for extra spontaneity. Either way is good though!
heavyhedonist 1 month ago

oooh!
Tom Slatter 1 month ago

Love this album cover generator, Matt. I could spend hours just clicking the refresh button...
Kim o the Concrete Jungle 1 month ago

I've made a start on my Randomfeast album. Bats In Your Belfrey is my first song:

http://fawm.org/songs/41/
Summer Russell 1 month ago

Ha! I couldn't get the generator page to load, but in the meantime I just followed the steps and wound up with "Simon Enqvist - Everything Is Crap." That's almost too good to pass up.
siren 1 month ago

@summer - heehee that's delicious!

Mine is "Tidingarnas Telegrambyra – The Beginning of Wisdom". Doubt if I'll get it finished this month but I'm happy to keep it going as a project
Matt Westcott 1 month ago

Good morning all... the album I shall be attempting to write today is "A Little More Sincere" by Collins Street, Melbourne.

http://music.matt.west.co.tt/fawm2010/randomfeast/cover.jpg
(photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/51978569@N00/4336121352 )
hoops 1 month ago

lol Matt - I look forward to it!
I don't know if I can be bothered to do a whole album. Maybe a single or two.... then I have a title too
Matt Westcott 1 month ago

Strangely enough, "a single or two" is exactly what I've managed today...

8 hours to get two songs down, and I'm giving up... I might come back to the album later, but it clearly isn't working as a feast. I guess being constrained by a particular style kills all the free-for-all, anything-goes enjoyment of feasting
Roel van Veldt 3 weeks ago

Wow, this sounds like another great challenge. Well made, Matt!

[Help why don't I have more time? 8-O]

If it works, you fill find it back next week as "The Swan And The Wanderer" and "Life It May Occur". With a beautiful cover, of course.

Roel
bithprod 2 weeks ago

I was super satisfied with the first image and album name, although I don't want to be named "Philippe Clay," so I changed the artist name to my real band name. Hope that's allowed. lol

I think I'll actually put all of this year's FAWM songs on a CD and use this as my album cover, if I get a permission from the artist.
mike skliar 2 weeks ago

Strange, when I click on that link, the album title and artist name are printed over each other so I can't read either one very clearly.... anyone else having that problem? wonder whether its an internet explorer issue?
bithprod 2 weeks ago

I use Mozilla Firefox. No problem there.

BTW, the generator is kind of scary... Isn't the title "The road to achievement" kind of fitting? And the band name I got was "Germany - Norway relations" - and as we're three people who usually work together, where two are Norwegian and one is German that is.... schpooooky!
Morti 2 weeks ago

I got the name of an actual band.

http://www.morti.org.uk/fawm2010/restlessnevers.jpg

However it's an obscure US indie band that formed in the early 90s, had one "hit" (of which I can find no record anywhere but their Wikipedia page, created by someone called "TheRestlessNevers") and has since split up. So I'm going with it.
Morti 2 weeks ago

http://fawm.org/songs/8751/
http://fawm.org/songs/8836/
http://fawm.org/songs/9192/
http://fawm.org/songs/9253/

Thanks, Matt, a fine idea. I was wondering what I would do with the last day.
Magnus Løken 2 weeks ago

I think I will try this. My album title is Zoo In A Jungle by Qaisery Gate, and will probably be ethno-jazz mixed with electronica and progrock.
barbara 2 weeks ago

@mike skliar
Yes, I have that overlap issue too. Was wondering the same thing. I'm also using Internet Explorer, but I have an iMac too, so I'll go test whether Safari works any differenty.
barbara 2 weeks ago

@mike skliar
Results: yeah, it looks GREAT using Safari on the iMac! (as Matt mentioned earlier, I see, reviewing the thread)

Wish I'd been savvy to using that when I drew my cover because I would like to have saved a better screenshot of it with it lined up properly, and there's obsviously no way to regenerate it, being random and all... Still, it's been a very cool spark to the imagination. I'm grateful to Matt for sharing it with us.

My Album: "A Chaos of Desire - stir up the system"

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