Pushing buttons is how I made almost all of this album. It's also how a lot of us make a living. It's also how various forms of media keep us engaged and enraged. Used volca Keys, volca Sampler, and Korg Monotron to make most of the noises…

Our niece came to visit one night during February and helped me test out some new synths I'd picked up for RPM Challenge (volca Keys and Sampler 2). We added a nice drum track from the old Suzuki RPM-40 drum machine my dad gave me several years…

Messing around with electronic doodads - tape loop, drum machine, looper pedal, other effects pedals, and then DAW plugins on the drums. Edited about 5 minutes of noise down to about 2:45.

Another lovely song from Leum. He's prolific, that one is! It was fun to collaborate on lyrical tweaks for this one, working together to tighten up a solid draft into a rich, compact song. For recording, we used a couple of condenser mics…

Mike's fun rockabilly follow-up to Scammers, Spammers, and Cons from a previous RPM Challenge. We recorded the drums, bass, one rhythm guitar track, and a scratch vocal take live off the floor, then added the other guitar tracks and a clean…

Leum Monroe - Lyrics, songwriting, vocals, acoustic guitar Margaret Bibb - Vocals Kevin Craig - Recording, mixing

Leum Monroe - Lyrics, songwriting, vocals, acoustic guitar Mike Anders - Vocals, acoustic guitar Matt Appleberry - Electric guitar Kenny Tannehill - Bass, background vocals Nick Peshman - Recording Kevin Craig - Drums, recording, mixing

June 17th, Leum brought to the studio a lovely, plaintive reflection on lost love. He recorded a solid first take, accompanying himself on acoustic guitar, then invited the rest of us to fill out the production as we saw fit. Margaret added some…

Leum dropped off these lyrics at the April REM Challenge recording session, to see what other folks would do with them. At the first May recording session, we scanned through the lyrics and decided to try to put them to music. Robbie had a couple…

When we assembled at the studio for our first REM Challenge 2023 recording session, Nick offered up a MIDI guitar piece he had been working on. Kevin, being chronically underprepared, did not have any decent sounding guitar VSTs installed on his…