So far I’ve talked about a couple of my own musical projects, those being BHP and Surviving Myself. Today I’m going to talk about another ongoing project that I take part in from time to time called Audio Challenges.

The name you’re going to see pop up pretty much most of the time that I talk about my own projects is James Blair. If you read the posts on BHP and Surviving Myself, you know that Jim is a part of those projects. He was also a part of all but two of the bands that I’ve been in over the years (and one of those bands I had no part in writing and creating songs). Even when Jim isn’t involved in a particular music project that I’m working on, I still tend to bounce things off him a lot. In the 10 years that I’ve known Jim, we’ve done a ton of music together.

One of the things that Jim and I came up with to keep ourselves busy between writing projects is something we call Audio Challenges. The reason I’m sharing the idea in this blog is that I think it’s something that has stretched me, and if I can speak for Jim I’d say him, too, and I really recommend trying your own challenges between you and some music friends that you have.

Basically an Audio Challenge is a song (or some other audio project) that we have to create in a set time frame following a set of rules agreed on by both of us at the beginning. So Jim and I would pick a set of rules or a theme or something along those lines and we’d set a time frame, which was usually a week or so for a single song. We would then work separately on our projects, usually hiding any information about what we were doing from each other. The challenges drove us to be creative, because even though it wasn’t really a contest with a winner and a loser, we were trying to impress and outdo each other. Most of our challenges ended up being instrumentals, which ended up teaching us both how to make instrumentals sound interesting and complete, rather than making them just sound like a big jam session.

Here are some examples of some of the guidelines we used:

-Super Hero Theme Song

We had to imagine ourselves as being a Superhero, determine what type of hero we’d be, and then create theme music for that hero… something that might be played in the background of a TV show or movie when the hero appeared on screen.

-”Remember The Bridge Part”

We had a clip that we took from the beginning of a demo recording session for our band Solidify. Our singer Andrea had said into the microphone “Remember the bridge part”. We had to take that clip and use it in a song.

-8 Pack Challenge

For this challenge we went to www.acidplanet.com and downloaded the free 8 pack of sounds and loops for the week (if you don’t know, the site gives out a new 8 pack every week. They call it an 8 pack, but it’ll often have up to 10 or 12 loops and sounds in it. Usually the pack has a theme, and they give a sample song, too, assuming you have a version of ACID to listen to it on. The loops work with any program, though. You don’t need ACID to use the sounds). We had to create an original song that couldn’t sound anything like the free sample song using every loop that came in the pack. If I remember right (it’s been a long time), we also had a minimum and maximum number of tracks we could add to it besides the tracks for the loops.

-Sounds of Nature track

For this one we had to make our own version of one of those “Sounds of Nature” songs. We had to find or create some light soothing music, then surround it with sounds from nature, like animals, birds, flowing water, etc.

-Commercial

This one was a lot of fun. We had to create a 30 second commercial for a made up product, company, or event. It wasn’t really a “music” challenge so much (although we both had music in the commercial), but it really stretched our creativity in a lot of ways.

-Non Instrument Music

This was probably the most challenging one we did, but another one that was a lot of fun. We had to create a song using sounds that came from things that weren’t really musical instruments. Some of the things that got used… typing on a keyboard, a barking dog, tapping on a fast food cup, a drill, shuffling cards, pots and pans… it really forced us to think outside the box.

We’ve also since taken the idea of Audio Challenges to the next level by creating Audio Challenge albums. The idea behind the albums is that it’s a collection of rules that we have to use not only to make a song, but to make a whole CD of songs that fit together and flow like an album should. We’ve done two of those so far, and those two albums have pushed me farther musically than any other project I’ve ever worked on.

I really just wanted to introduce the idea of Audio Challenges at this point. Soon I’ll start breaking individual challenges down a little more and give examples of the songs that came from them. I’ll even see if Jim will write some of his thoughts about the challenges.

If you end up doing something similar after reading this blog, I’d love to hear about it and I’d love to hear what kind of music you ended up with. It doesn’t matter if you’re reading this post the day I wrote it, or years later… send me your own challenges! My email address is jason@creative-music.org

Related posts:

1. My Songwriting Group: Blair-Hannah-Payne (BHP)
2. The RPM Challenge
3. My Halloween Album
4. My Projects: Completed RPM Challenge