Found out about this challenge recently, and it might just be something to do.
Basically, a whole bunch of people have pledged to produce an album in 29 days, in the month of February. It doesn’t matter how you do it, what style your music is or even how professionally (or otherwise) you create the music, your goal is just to prodce a 10-track album (of at least 35 minutes) in the calendar month.
From that, you can send the music on CD to a central point, who will then put all the music online and give you an automatic audience.
Apart from the variety of music that will be produced, this may be something fun to do just to get myself thinking about music more, and producing something decent with the gear I’ve got (which isn’t much, but I’ve amassed a few things over time).
Using mostly open sourc tools, including multitrack music recorded Ardour on Ubuntu, various instruments including my old electric guitar and whatever audio I can record, I think I can do something. Naturally, it wouldn’t be “professional” in the truest sense, but it would be creative, original, and not too bad in quality terms (I hope!)
Much of this can happen of course because of the massively lower cost of recording decent music these days. Nearly anyone can have quality instruments, quality digital recording gear and other peripherals for a surprisingly low cost. It won’t necessarily be pro level, but those with pro talent can certainly shine through.
Music has always been a side interest for me — never the main thing but always something I’ve liked — but this project would be a good way to focus that interest and produce something. I can’t let it get in the way of my writing (maybe I could even make it related?), but it would be another creative project worth looking at.