Reminder: February Album Writing Month is still a great way to use your pedals!

[midwayfair]

www.FAWM.org

Write some songs, don't be skeered!

[Marshall Arts]

Thanks for the hint - this was the first time I heard about FAWM and I already wrote two songs. Great motivation, thanks again!

[midwayfair]

That's awesome!

I'm actually taking a little bit of time off work this year, and it's making everything so much less stressful. I've also committed to almost never doing overdubs and not messing around with a bunch of different mics. Everything except one song on electric that I added some keys to has been single take, no punch-ins, guitar and vocal with one mic each. Leaves more time for focusing on getting the writing better.

[Marshall Arts]

I follow that approach, even though my recordings sound much less professional than yours ;-) (If you want proof: @mfunky on FAWM). In my studio, I have an old notebook I just upgraded to Windows 10 and I use the free version of Tracktion for a couple of audio tracks (acoustic guitar, vocals, backing vocals using an TC Helicon Play Live Acoustic). No extra plugins, just the ones that come with Tracktion itself. I can recommend that for old hardware, it uses not a lot of ressources.

I see the main goal of fawm as a motivation to get songs written rather than to produce them. I more or less just record them to remember them, listen to them later and than decide which one I want to take to the next level (produce, perform live, play with a band etc.).

[midwayfair]

I see the main goal of fawm as a motivation to get songs written rather than to produce them.

I can go both ways on this. There are times when the production is part of the songwriting process. It's hard to write multiple instruments' parts if you can only play one instrument at a time, and words aren't everything in a song. But I spent three FAWMs in a row doing some pretty significant production, like micro-editing programmed drums and mixing tracks where multiple guitars were all double or even triple miced. It's valuable practice, but when it's just me and maybe a single guitar overdub I do have to concentrate more on making sure that the song stands on its own.