@oluOnline
Doing things with deadlines is good for this sometimes! I make music, so things like #Songfight or #RPMChallenge have helped me see a project to completion when I do them on occasion. Currently I’m contributing to #DisquietJunto. The trade off is that you have to be more spontaneous and not be so precious or perfect about the result. Other than that, yeah, most of my stuff languishes away unfinished on a hard drive indefinitely.
#rpm-challenge — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #rpm-challenge, aggregated by home.social.
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I updated the song pages with more details, so I'd like to share my RPM 2026 album here now.
https://alonetone.com/Metamere/playlists/four-seasons-in-a-lifeShoutout to my peeps in the #rpmChallenge community who have helped me to keep the creative fires stoked through some difficult times.
https://rpmchallenge.com/enIt's free to download just like the rest, but if you wanted to toss me a tip for this or anything else I've shared, you can do so here:
https://ko-fi.com/metamere
Any support would be greatly appreciated. -
I took a 14 year break from the RPM Challenge... but I'm back!
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My 2026 #RPMChallenge album "This Way For Better Decisions" is now available. Pay what you want, from £0.00 upwards! 🙂
#RPM2026
https://nigenet.bandcamp.com/album/this-way-for-better-decisions -
I wanted to make some album cover art that would represent my #rpmChallenge project well, and to learn some more features of Krita along the way. It was maybe a bit ambitious of a concept, but I think it came together okay. I was having trouble getting the text-to-path to work, but it turned out it was a beta feature, so I updated and got that going. I learned to use layer styles, transparency masks, and to create and edit bezier shapes and combined shapes.
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In 2011 I made this song for the RPM Challenge and used a drum loop from @bphogan because he published a blog post.
https://rasterweb.net/raster/2011/03/09/song-surfie-don%e2%80%99t-char/
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I spent all day working on mixing the tracks for this year's RPM challenge album (https://rpmchallenge.com), so I'd like to share the poem I wrote for the track titles. Each line is the title of a song in the order they will be played. I didn't make a big effort for structure, and instead tried to describe the story arc of each track and the album as a whole. This was partially inspired by the way the band Red Sparowes did things. Text in the alt tag.
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Okay, RPM Challenge is done. I made a terrible album aptly titled "Space Farts" which you probably do not want to listen to.
I made it for me, so if anyone else listens, cool... and if not, that's okay too.
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I am only using these four things... three of which are Korg devices. I can record a whole album of weird ass noise/sounds with this, right?
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Walter Sickert & The Army of Broken Toys – HEXPHONES
#RPM #RPMchallenge #RPM2019 #Rock #Steamcrunk #Steampunk #WalterSickert #edrie #thesquidkid #Boston
CC BY-NC-ND (#CreativeCommons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives) #ccmusic
https://armyoftoys.bandcamp.com/album/hexphones -
If you can bear it you can listen to the album I created for the 2008 RPM Challenge. It’s not great but there are some things I like about it. (Not bad for recording an entire album in 28 days!)
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2026 RPM Challenge Day 2/28
My arm feels so much better today. 90% better. Maybe even 95% better. I think I’m going to be okay to play the guitar again. Assuming we don’t get more snow in the immediate future and I screw myself up again. We’ll see.
I added three songs worth of bass riffs and drum parts yesterday. It’s all just MIDI at this point and there are no arrangements or song forms or anything. Just riffs. Nothing to write home about yet. I’m up to four total. All four are in different time signatures (4/4, 7/8, 9/8, 3/4) and I’ve only repeated a key signature once (A minor, B minor, and two in E minor… I’m totally a guitar player).
I have a sneaking suspicion that some of the songs will be on the really long side this year, but I almost always have that suspicion and they generally barely hit three minutes. We’ll have to see how things play out. I also want to follow a similar plan as last year’s RPM Challenge where I played more acoustic guitar than usual, and I played a little saxophone. I’d like to do those two things again, but given my time constraints this year (and the fact that there are more people living in the house this year) I might just stick to electric guitar and headphone amps.
As far as lyrics go… I haven’t written anything yet but it’s safe to say that a running theme might be something like fuck fascists. You know… the usual.
So that’s where we stand after two days. Hopefully I’ll be able to carve out some time to make a little progress today on day three.
#Guitar #Music #Recording #RpmChallenge #rpm2026 #SongWriting
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2026 RPM Challenge Day 1/28
So I have this arm injury thing right now. I think it’s going to be okay. I am way better today than yesterday, and yesterday was better than the day before. I just haven’t been able to play guitar at all because I haven’t been able to move my arm. I think that by the time the RPM Challenge will require me to record guitar tracks I will be well enough to get by, but the idea of this whole thing crashing and burning before I even start is a real thing.
On top of the injury, I am traveling for the entire last week of February. That means that all of my tracking needs to be done before I leave home on February 22nd. I can make time for mixing while I’m on the road, but not for recording. This year’s project is under a serious time crunch. I don’t think a double album is in the cards this time around. I think I might just get to 10 songs or 35 minutes (the minimum requirements for success) and stop. We’ll have to see.
Day one was yesterday and I noodled out some MIDI bass and drums for one song idea. I have a weird sort of theme in mind as far as song forms and arrangements go. Nothing stylistically or lyrically or anything like that. Just an idea of how I want verses and choruses to be related. This first song idea fits that theme. Other than that, nothing to report on day one.
Let’s hope my left arm starts playing along soon. I don’t want to break my streak of success. I’ve pulled this off every year since 2012 and I really don’t want to stop now.
#Guitar #Music #Recording #RpmChallenge #rpm2026 #SongWriting
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I start a new #RPMChallenge tomorrow, so here are a few words on last year's album... #RPM2025
https://blog.nigenet.org.uk/2026/01/30/another-album-rpm-challenge-2025/
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Walter Sickert & The Army of Broken Toys – THE CUTTING HORSE
#Country #RPM #RPMChallenge #RPM2020 #Rock #Steamcrunk #Steampunk #altcountry #rpmchallenge #walteralicesickert #waltersickert #Boston
CC BY-NC-ND (#CreativeCommons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives) #ccmusic
https://armyoftoys.bandcamp.com/album/the-cutting-horse -
RPM Challenge 2025: DONE! https://fenchy.bandcamp.com/album/pennyfarthing-ep
Synths and drum loops, with my iconic, if not always pleasant, voice on top. 2025 has been one of the most years of all time, and it's caused some thoughts and feelings that I have turned into music.
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I didn’t think I’d get *anything* across the finish-line of the 2025 #RPMChallenge…
…but here is my creation from February: a 3-track single 🥳
In more ways than one, “The New Normal” is a bit of a departure from the music (esp. song-based) that I’ve produced in recent years. For one, it’s consciously electric-guitar-driven: the title track is the first I’ve “tracked” with my new 12-string electric, and is quite “rocky” for me.
“Pay what you like” at Bandcamp: https://tawalker.bandcamp.com/album/the-new-normal
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Penultimate RPM Challenge 2025 Update: Finally got all the vocal recording done that I think I need. Need to listen to the final arrangements and see if any tweaks are yet to be made (there will be tweaks). After that, it's Bounce to WAV/MP3 for the last time, upload to RPM, and then I'm done!
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RPM Challenge 2025 Update: got lyrics and vocal recording takes for 3/4 tracks. Not sure about them all yet, but it’s progress. February is almost over so I gotta hustle now.
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Flying home on Monday so no streams that day. Not sure what we'll do on Wednesday's twitch stream. Maybe some RPM clueing up, maybe writing. We'll see. I'll play the songs I played at my showcases at FAI for the Warble, and we'll play Yakuza 3 on Friday. #music #livestreaming #guitar #folkmusic #yakuza #singersongwriter #progfolk #rpmchallenge
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RPM Challenge 2025 Update: I've got my 4 tracks for my EP, and they're all at about the length I want them. Lyrics are slowly coming, but no vocals have been recorded yet. Finding the time to work on it has been difficult lately, so progress stalled a bit. Still have over a week to get it done, so I'm still hopeful.