This is quite an inspirational piece for me as a songwriter.
So … there’s this guy, Jonathan Coulton, that decided to write a song a week for 1 year. He would post a new song every Friday that he recorded in his very modest home studio. He dubbed the project “Thing-A-Week”.
He started out not really knowing what would happen. Then, one of his songs got Slashdotted. He started getting covered by bloggers. Then some of his songs (licensed under a Creative Commons copyright agreement) were picked up for movies. He was then asked to write a theme song for MTV.
His project was picking up steam for sure. Magazines and larger news organizations started picking it up.
He makes some decent money off the project too … check it out:
Coming up on one year, Jonathan talks with Garage Spin about his experience.
It’s quite fascinating. Below, I have posted a couple of quotes from the article which resonated with me:
On how he came up with the idea.
“The idea came from a co-worker at my long lost day job as we were discussing my impending unemployment and what I was going to do with my time. It sounded totally insane and impossible, but I had a lot of pent up creative energy, so I figured I’d give it a shot. And the more people paid attention, the harder it was to stop.”On what happened when he had no inspiration for a song.
“The most surprising tracks for me are the ones that were done under extreme pressure and still turned out pretty good. There were weeks where I had no ideas until the afternoon of the day I was supposed to post a new song. And there were plenty of sad songs that came out of the horrible desperate feeling that I would probably never be able to write a song again.”His response when asked if he has been approached by labels:
“I haven’t ever been approached by a label, which sort of surprises me. I mean, I know that I’m a little too niche-y for the big guys, but I imagine there’s got to be some indie label who’d like to make a million dollars off me.”
The rest of the article is a must-read, and available here.
Jonathan’s Website. This site has all his songs from the project as well as a very informative F.A.Q. with his home studio details and more.
Direct link to his Thing-A-Week songwriting project songs.
3 Comments until now.
Great idea. I’ve been trying to write a song a week, but haven’t made an effort to post them on my website. Will do from now on!
I find that just by getting in the habit of writing, the muse flows more freely. I also write 3 pages every morning. Sometimes it’s drivel, but other times I go off on a theme that becomes a song.
Check out my site, jeffsongwriting.com for my latest songs.
If you have nothing to do during November, you could participate in NaSoAlMo, or the National Solo Album Month. The idea is to write and record at least a half hour’s worth of songs in November. That’s about one song every 2 or 3 days.
http://www.lacunae.com/nasoalmo/
Mahlzeit, great find. Looks cool. Kinda reminds me of the February Album Writing Month project as well. (http://www.fawm.org/). Maybe I need to put together an article covering these various projects. There’s alot out there! Thanks again, DM