Anyone doing Concept Albums this year?
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@nedgreenough Jan 2022
This is my fourth year doing FAWM and my first year NOT doing a concept album (Two about Arthurian Legends, the other being about the SCP Horror Wiki anomalies). But I was curious if anyone was planning on doing some cool concept albums this year? FAWM is a fantastic time to experiment and make some fun ones!
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@siebass Jan 2022
Ironically, this is the first year I AM planning to do a concept album. My concept is A-Side/B-side, where I take mainly the same lyrics and general progression, but create both an A-side and a B-side version of the song. I did this once in the fall on accident where one version was a real downer, and the second was pop punky upbeat (with depressing lyrics), and it was so much fun I decided I wanted to do it 7 more times for FAWM (7A's/7B's). May not be a classic win, but it's what I want to do this year.
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@odilongreen Jan 2022
My 2022 project (based on an unfortunately very true story) that knocked me out of FAWM 2021):
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@cblack Jan 2022
I'd love to do a concept album this year, but I lack a concept. I'm doing lyrics-only goth rock, I know that much... An actual unifying concept eludes me, though.
Where do people get their concepts from? The important things in my life don't lend themselves to music right now. A concept would be a welcome diversion! -
@candle Jan 2022
I love concept albums. Did them for most of my early FAWMs. Last year a concept album sort of just happened (completely unplanned, but that's the way my Muse went). Who knows, that just might happen again this year.
@cblack, generally my concepts either come from trying to tell a story (I've always looked at a good album as a novel & each song a chapter within that novel). I've also come up with a theme & written songs according to that theme, which then somehow find their own way to tell a story. So there's a few different ways to go about it, I guess.
See You In The Shadows… -
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@akokulit Jan 2022
Planning to make 3 sets of 5 songs this year. Will try to tap into my different influences with each. 1 set for my native language / folk songs, 1 set for soul, and 1 more set for quiet storm (adult contemporary pop)
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@mardeycranbleson Jan 2022
I wanted to do one sort of inspired by don’t look up and melancholia about a black hole that passes into the solar system and throws the earth out of its orbit but wasn’t real happy about the first one - lot of wasted effort so may drop it
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@mardeycranbleson Jan 2022
First song I already did I mean
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@ayehahmur Jan 2022
Not so much a *concept album* (at least as I understand it), but for the third year in a row I'm writing all my songs to a theme, which I find really useful for focusing my thoughts in terms of lyrics.
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@aeye Jan 2022
Of course :). We’re continuing our 6 year long FAWM series this year. And also concluding it. Everything’s gotta end sometime. (Then starting new next year)
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@whispermouse Jan 2022
I tried last year, and fell off the concept almost immediately, so this year I'm likely back to random songs about melancholy and whatever random words pop into my head.
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@auditasum Jan 2022
This is the first year I'm doing a concept album per se... Altho I did do a 6-song musical a few years ago amongst other miscellaneous songs. This year my concept is
P A S T L I F E D R E A M S
Songs based off past life regressions I've undergone. But also, I'm still gonna do misc challenge songs-- how could I not -
@philkmills Jan 2022
I frequently start out thinking I'll do something like that but then random ideas come along and the concept gets sidelined.
This year, I've been thinking about picking one of the Andrew Lang fairy books as source material but, once again, I don't expect that to last through the month. -
@musicsongwriter Jan 2022
I might try it. I'm hoping for something positive, motivating, etc.
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@nedgreenough Jan 2022
@cblack I found having some sort of source material helps tremendously. If there is a particular book, video game, comic, or movie you really like, you could break the sections of the story into 14 "chapters". That way, each day you write, you have some sort of outline or at least goal that each song has to accomplish to progress the story. Something as simple as coming up with all the titles for your songs ahead of time can help SO MUCH when it comes to actually writing for the concept album.
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@monty Jan 2022
I'm thinking of doing some music inspired by Louise Penny's Three Pines novels.
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@emplate Jan 2022
I've been thinking about making a concept album for several years, but it's always been difficult to come up with a theme/story. This December I got a book about Finnish paganism as a birthday present (I'm born on December 23) from my spouse and when I dived into it during the holidays, I started to feel very inspired by it. By now, I have loads of different themes, song titles, notes and a rough storyline written down. I might draw from other mythologies as well and won't aim for scholar-like precision, as I'll adjust stories and myths how I see fit. But the story will be based in ancient Finland, before Christianity, when giants and trolls roamed the lands, animals and the nature communicated with man, shamans made their spirit journeys and the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead was thin.
I'll write the lyrics in Finnish, I see no other option with this kind of concept. The main musical framework will be black metal (not a surprise for those who know me), but I aim to incorporate other genres, like neofolk, ambient and post-punk as well, as FAWM is definitely time for experimentation! All in all, I'm very excited about this and can't wait to get to work. -
@dukongp100 Jan 2022
If u want pointers.. an u dunno where to start / a concept can be social commentary , a theme , an fictional story , an impression or interpretation, opinion,, on something
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@plumptunes Jan 2022
Not this year. Could be fun to try next year. Having done a couple in the past, I did find it to be a pretty efficient way to write songs. Especially if you map out all the songs beforehand. They end up kind of writing themselves. They were with a co-writer who carried a lot of the lyrical burden, which also made it easier. But even from a musical standpoint it made it pretty easy to come up with stuff.
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@mikeb Jan 2022
During last year's FAWM, I started writing songs for a rock opera, 6 of the 19 I did are aimed at it. This year I hope to get more done, but I have no time table for this album, may take me the rest of my life!
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@lastnightilie Jan 2022
I've had this idea for a while, but I don't know if I'm going to do it this year: a concept album about grieving as an atheist. Each track title would be a cliche that theists use when someone dies (Gone to a Better Place, Everything Happens for a Reason, etc.)
My grandma died a few years ago and I found it incredibly frustrating that family members would say things like this to me, but it would be socially unacceptable for me to question those cliches or to talk about my own beliefs about death during their grieving process... even though I was grieving just as much as they were. I couldn't relate to anyone else in my family and it was very difficult for me. I don't know if other atheists have experienced this, but I've never heard anyone write about it at all, let alone a whole album. I think it might be more difficult to come up with ideas now that I've gained some distance from the situation, so I might (morbidly) have to wait until after someone else dies :/ -
@yam655 Jan 2022
I engage in a lot of concept albums. One of my favorite concept albums is "Putting The Crap Back In Crapcapella" -- It's an album of lo-fi songs about... well, "toilet humor." They answer questions like, "if you can sing about pooping, why can't you poop about singing?" (At some point I want to hook up my bathroom so that it will randomly play a song when a person is in the bathroom.)
I've done other concept albums, and I have a few in the works. They're really easy to do with a fully improvised approach, as the concept of the last song is easily carried in to the next.
This year I'm starting things off with a concept album of lofi acapella called "Transphobes Don't Like Pronouns." That's more of a D1 project, though, as I'm an overachiever. The first track will be about finding a new deity if your existing one doesn't recognize your identity. (That's going to be my FirstFruits song.) -
@jwhanberry Jan 2022
I've acquired a sample pack of "Abstract Beats". Each one has a 4 bar drum/percussion beat and individual stems for each part and a single shot for each sound. My "concept" is to use them as starting points for my pieces. They will be in the FAWMtronica style and may or may not have some lyrical content.
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@billwhite51 Jan 2022
i am writing lyrics from the perspectives of different characters and hope to find collaborators who will make the characters come alive with their music and voices.
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@stewdean Jan 2022
Well, last year each song mentioned a part of London, it was more of a rough theme and each song came out radically different! It's good to have a starting thread for what you're doing. In the year I started but failed at FAWM I was writing songs about vocations! This year I've yet to find a theme, but I want to keep things more guitar-based as I found those songs quicker to record.
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@frozenlonesome Jan 2022
This year will be my 9th FAWM and as in previous years I’ll be using/mangling audio samples from public domain films to layer in with ambient string-fuzz, astral funk and generally pleasing electronic noise.
Found an amazingly odd film for 2022, Attack From Space (1959).
https://archive.org/details/Attack_From_Space -
@gmcgath Jan 2022
This year I'm looking to do a song cycle on "Promises broken, promises restored" on the zig-zag history of freedom in America.
@lastnightilie : I like your idea very much. -
@bootlegger Jan 2022
Is be surprised if I don't stumble onto some kind of concept or theme. I usually do. I might go more autobiographical than random fictional story-based like I usually do though. Could be interesting. Or scary. Or both.
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@jsmalls Jan 2022
@lastnightilie I LOVE that idea for naming tracks after common religious platitudes surrounding death, I hope you get around to making that happen at some point.
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@skyezor Jan 2022
I AM I AM! I'm so excited for it. I'm writing about old crushes, early relationships and encounters from when I was younger. As someone who's been married for the last 11 years, I'm super stoked to dip back into my old catalogue of heartache and discovery and wilder times.
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@smileymn Jan 2022
Last year I wrote songs about X-Files Episodes (around the second and third season). The year before that I wrote a song cycle based on every MCU film (about 22-23 or so at the time).
This year I'm going super weird and doing kind of a rock opera titled "Mustache Medicine," more inspired by Zappa and avant garde jazz, will feature a lot of weirdness across the board, but a through composed narrative with characters and everything. -
@nuj4x Jan 2022
I might take a shot at a concept album.
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@whisperedcandles Jan 2022
It’s been a few years since my last FAWM, and I’ve never fully done a concept album before, so I am considering it for this year. I have two potential concept album ideas, but I might just start the month making a song for each and seeing which rabbit hole I go down. Or who knows, every other FAWM I’ve considered a concept album, I’ve always ended up down a different path entirely. So all this to say, I like the idea of a concept album, so maybe this year will be the year, lol.
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@improvyssey Jan 2022
Last year, I did a 28-chapter "improvel" in which every day, I improvised (on a variety of instruments) a chapter in a sort of musical novel. I called it The Feather and the Book. This year, clearly, I need to improvise the sequel. I haven't got a title yet, so we'll have to see what happens tomorrow.
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@radiobenedetto Jan 2022
I'm going to attempt a concept EP. I don't think I'll have the time to get to 14 this year so I'm going for cohesive quality over eccletic quantity. Theme is still coming together but it will be the semi-autobiographical true invented history of a character yet to be named. As one does.
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@panch Jan 2022
Pre FAWM I have been writing songs for a concept album called The Hermit's Journey, about a hermit who leaves his hermitage for a year to observe the world he's locked himself away from all his life. Each song is based on a person the hermit meets on this journey. I'm about halfway through so may write some more during FAWM to include in the final album.
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@frequencyoffree Feb 2022
I am going to make one album about the 9 dimensions. and the remaining 5 songs will be single releases.
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@crumbleboy Feb 2022
This is my first year doing FAWM (I'm a philly psych-folk songwriter goes by Crumble Boy) and I am attempting a concept album centered around Ovid's Metamorphoses. The epic poem is broken into fifteen books so I want to do one song to represent each book. The songs will play on the symbolism and imagery in the myth rather than being strict retellings, much like Mountain Goat's Life of the World to Come (but written by a hellenistic jew). Each song will be accompanied by a quote from the epic poem and I am not attempting to write the songs in order, I will be moving around the Metamorphoses as I go along. If finished the album will be called "That Word for When One Thing Turns Into Something Else". I have the first track posted now if you want to take a listen (based on Acteon's transformation and subsequent demise as a stag). Can't wait to look through here and see what other grand ideas people have for their month.
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@kendrakinsey Feb 2022
@lastnightilie great idea, and I totally relate. I also find this in books I read which always gets to me
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@hmstreetteam Feb 2022
I will be trying to focus on the concept of path of least resistance for at least 8 of my songs this year.
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@emplate Mar 2022
Oh by the way, here's my full concept album if anyone has interest and patience to sit through the whole thing :D
https://fawm.org/songs/137634/
