A Collection of Bits and Pieces

FAWM 50/90

No, That's Not a Secret Code, 10 August 2024

In 2004, a group of friends got together and challenged themselves to write 14 songs in February. The called it FAWM, or, February Album Writing Month. The goal was to write 14 songs in 28 days, which nominally gives you two days to write each song. It was a way to kickstart their songwriting and get out of a creative slump, I suppose, and it worked. The following year they opened it up to the general public.

I learned about the event in January of 2006 and joined up. In the years since, I've hit the goal more often than missed it. A few years I didn't participate, and a few others I had stuff going on and couldn't focus on music and only posted a few songs. In other years I've written far more than fourteen. After nineteen years, if someone wrote 14 songs each February that would add up to 266 songs. My personal count from those annual February excursions comes to 321 songs. So, yes, I'm a big fan of participating in this annual songwriting event.

A few years after 2006, they began a summertime version called 50/90. In this case, the goal is to write 50 songs in 90 days, between 04 July and 01 October. It's more ambitious in terms of total song count, but being a marathon instead of a sprint some folks prefer it that way. I have only participated a few times and I have never, ever, hit the goal. But if I'm writing songs for myself during the summer it's a nice way to keep track of them.

So far this year I've only posted five songs. I'm working on the sixth song, right now. I have the basic musical bed and the next step is finding out if this is going to be a song with lyrics or not.

Since I expect to be writing more about the songs I'm working on these days, I thought it would be helpful to begin with this brief overview of both FAWM and 50/90. There is a lot more that I'll be saying about the songwriting process and how these events fit in with that as this blog progresses.