markopolomusic

[markopolomusic]

El Fin

That’s it for this year’s RPM challenge! A huge thanks to the folks who keep the challenge going every year and motivate folks like me to plan a little less and produce a little more. I’d definitely encourage anyone who needs a little nudge to check them out at rpmchallenge.com and join the fun next year.

You can check out my finished album and grab a free download on my Bandcamp page: https://mark-opolo.bandcamp.com/releases.

Now it’s time to get started on the next concept album!

[markopolomusic]

The final track from this year’s RPM challenge finds our character finally regaining consciousness. I imagined he would feel both a sense of relief and a sense of loss at leaving behind the dream life that had become his reality. I played off the double meaning of ‘wake’ to convey these conflicting emotions. I wanted to wrap the album up on a positive note, so we end with the character looking forward to “what’s still yet to come” followed by a cathartic drum/synth solo.

[markopolomusic]

At this point, it was getting pretty late in the RPM game and I could feel writer’s block trying to creep in. I had had a pretty euphoric experience writing the last couple songs in the serenity of Black Mountain and was not finding the same inspiration back in my home office. This is actually the second version of Pins and Needles. I wasted a couple days on the first version and absolutely hated it. I wanted to create a feeling of electric energy starting to flow as our character’s synapses started firing again. My first attempt was a chiptune inspired disaster crammed with an album’s worth of lyrics. I eventually scrapped it in favor of this more minimalist attempt at a re-awakening. The electric buzzing and the return of the heart monitor beep signify the character is regaining consciousness.

[markopolomusic]

Writing this short ambient piece was probably my favorite experience from this year’s RPM Challenge. As I was hiking up to Black Mountain, I started to notice a strange electric hum in the distance. Having hiked for a couple hours away from any traces of civilization, the sound seemed especially out of place. Eventually, I came upon the source: An air traffic control tower at the top of the mountain. I broke out the iPad and got some field recordings for a song I decided to call ‘White Noise on Black Mountain’. 

I decided a cave I had passed earlier would be the perfect place to sit and hash out this song so after spending some time at the top, I headed back to the cave. As I approached the cave, I noticed a sign warning that the cave was closed due to what I misread as ‘White Noise Syndrome’. I wasn’t sure what that was but I imagined some sort of mental condition brought on by sensory deprivation. I couldn’t believe the coincidence and decided it was fate, so I decided to chance the mental breakdown and entered anyway. Looking at the photo later I realized I had seen what I wanted to see and the sign actually said White NOSE syndrome, but that’s a topic for another song. 

Anyway, back to the fiction! This track finds our character hanging in the balance between life and death in a kind of white, formless purgatory. Towards the end, the computerized beeps and boops start fading back in to signify life beginning to re-emerge.

[markopolomusic]

At this point in February, I had caught a pretty nasty case of spring fever so I decided to take the RPM Challenge on a little road trip. One thing that drew me to the idea of recording an album on the iPad was mobility, but so far the living room was about as mobile as I had gotten. So I dropped the iPad into my backpack along with some trail mix and hit the road for Black Mountain to breathe a little fresh air into the project. The trip ended up being a productive one. I recorded an instrumental track and wrote this one, which ended up being my favorite of the bunch.

I imagined the backdrop for Electric Light Show being a club scene with lots of bright, colored lights pulsing with the beat. When the monitor beep flatlines, all the lights brighten into a blinding white light, leaving the main character floating in the middle of a scene of white nothingness. I decided to keep things upbeat to represent a sense of euphoria rather than the panic or peace often associated with a white light moment.

[markopolomusic]

Because Closed Captioning was the conceptual starting point of the album, it was pretty easy to write my way up to it with the first few songs. But now I was faced with a blank slate as far as creative direction for the album’s conclusion. I didn’t want to write myself into a corner, so I decided to experiment with sounds rather than think too much about lyrical content.

Closed Captioning had a line about darkness filling up with colored lights as a metaphor for the character’s newfound optimism. I decided to expand the metaphor on this song with a celebratory electric light show, complete with handclaps and vocoded vocals. Of course, every party has to end. I figured the only way to balance out this song’s positive vibes was to end this one with the character flatlining.

[markopolomusic]

Closed Captioning was the most fully developed concept coming into this year’s challenge and was the inspiration to create this dream-themed concept album. I already had the second half of the chorus and the chord structure. The hard part was translating what had originally been conceived as an acoustic guitar song into a synth song.

This song starts with the character conscious but still completely paralyzed and trying to find a means of non-verbal communication. Eventually, he drifts back off into unconsciousness but remains fully aware and realizes he’s able to control his dreams.

[markopolomusic]

I had started writing the next song for the album and decided to add a little space between with an instrumental tune. For this track, I started with the main chord progression I was working on for the next song and added a light bass line for balance and a simple synth jam on top.

This song finds the main character falling into a deeper state of unconsciousness so I created an ambient backdrop to represent a roomful of computers busily monitoring vitals. The prominent synth beep reminded me of a heart monitor so I decided to use it as an audio cue for the character’s condition throughout the rest of the album.

[markopolomusic]

Originally, I planned on this one being a mostly instrumental piece. I wrote the initial riff as a bass line to jam over and thought I might add some wordless harmonies on top. For the chorus, I thought I might include one line or phrase to tie the song into the storyline.

I had come up with a line I liked for another song about sleep paralysis. It’s a pretty terrifying experience I had a few times growing up where you wake up completely unable to move. I decided that theme would fit well with the ominous tone of the song.

With that idea rolling around in the back of my head, I started working on the verse harmonies. The phrase Dead Limbs popped in my head and I decided to roll with it in place of wordless harmonies. I liked how that came out and decided to scrap the jam altogether and expand on the idea in the chorus.

As the song came together, I was faced with one more difficult decision - should I spell it ‘Dead Limbs’ or ‘Dead Limbz’. Regrettably, I went with the ’s’.

[markopolomusic]

The second track picks up where the first left off - an abrupt awakening. I started writing the first lines over the opening melody of the first track, Fall Awake. That was all well and good until I tried to actually sing it. I spent a little time trying to make the two pieces work together, but eventually decided to spin off a separate melody.

Lyrically, the song starts off with the album’s central character waking up in a panic and having a hard time separating the nightmare he was having from the reality he’s facing. I wasn’t really sure what that reality was while I was writing this song, but I knew it was going to be less than ideal. That realization is punctuated with some harsh synth sounds around 0:20 right before he starts drifting back off to sleep.

With the next couple songs, the storyline starts to become a bit clearer.

[markopolomusic]

For the first track of this year’s RPM Challenge, I wanted to start with some pretty formless synth sounds. The goal was to represent a peaceful sleep drifting into a nightmare and eventually an abrupt awakening.

I started with a basic, peaceful preset then started adjusting x and y orbit settings and frequency. I knew I was on the right track when the song hit borderline unlistenable around the 1:45 mark. Finally, around 3:30, the song drifts towards its resolution.

In retrospect, I have some regrets about the most difficult listen being both the longest track on the album as well as the opener, but maybe that’s part of the charm? Either way, it more or less captured the feel I was going for.

[markopolomusic]

Sleep Study - RPM Challenge 2017

For this year’s RPM Challenge, I decided to try to stitch together a handful of song fragments I’ve had floating around my head for a while. I really only had a verse for a couple of songs, half a chorus for another and a couple vague ideas for some ambient transitional pieces. But the point of the challenge is to create something from scratch during the month of February so if anything I was ahead of the game.

Instrumentally, I decided to limit myself to only using an iPad and vocals. Animoog was my main instrument app with a hint of vocoder using Voice Synth. Cubasis 2 was my DAW of choice.