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Games & Challenges

4-track cassette challenge

A challenge that requires fawmers to have a working 4-track portastudio which uses cassette tapes. Yes, some fawmers still work old school! The fawmers involved must exchange their mailing addresses. It’s important to work quickly when you receive a tape, because the postal services around the world may take some time to get it to the next participant. To begin with, fawmer #1 might record the drums, for example. They then send the cassette by snail mail to fawmer #2 who adds, say, bass and they then post the tape to participant #3, and so on. The final participant adds their part, converts the results to an mp3 file, and posts the results to the FAWM website listing their collaborators as collaborators so that everyone can add comments about how the song came about. And lo, there will be much rejoicing.

Digital 4-track challenge / multitrack multiverse

A variant of the above but using digital recorders, so the resulting files can be transferred between participants using the Internet. This allows each contribution to be forwarded to the next fawmer more quickly and (if you’re feeling ambitious) allows for more than four tracks or participants to be involved.When working on a collab like this, it’s helpful to tell the next fawmer in the process how many bpm to use and what key the song is in.

Auntie sin

A songwriting challenge in which a chain of fawmers write a song, one after another. Fawmer number one writes the thesis and posts it on the FAWM website. Fawmer number two listens to song number one and writes a song that is its complete opposite, i.e. its antithesis and posts it to the site with a link in the liner notes to the first song. Fawmer number three then listens to the first two songs and writes a third song which combines elements of both of them to produce their synthesis. Fawmer number four writes an antithesis to the synthesis, fawmer number five synthesizes the preceding two songs, and so forth for a chain of up to ten. When they post the final result, they provide links to the preceding songs in the liner notes so that listeners can compare all the songs and follow the process of creative development from start to finish (which can be a very educational experience for other songwriters). Auntie \= antithesis, Sin \= synthesis. Easy!

Comments-first challenge

A songwriting challenge where fawmers leave comments about a song before it was written. The fawmer undertaking the challenge must then write a song that fits all of the comments which have been made.

Exquisite corpse

A multi-fawmer collaboration where the first person records a minute of a music, then sends the last ten seconds of it to the next participant, who adds another minute of music that dovetails with the end of that section and sends the last ten seconds of their contribution to the next participant, and so on and so on. The results change in much the same way as the message does in the game of Telephone, and the results are almost always extraordinary. See also kaiju.

Kaiju

Godzilla-sized version of an exquisite corpse (q.v.) created over the entire course of the FAWM challenge. The only limit on the number of participants is time. Not for the faint-hearted.

Metamorphosis

A songwriting challenge invented by @beto requiring three fawmers:

  • Fawmer #1 writes the lyric
  • Fawmer #2 writes the melody
  • Fawmer #3 combines the lyric and melody

However, there’s a twist, which is:

  • The challenge organizer chooses a famous song (say, "Yesterday") and gives it to #1
  • Fawmer #1 will then write an alternative lyric to the song, and send the lyric to #3.
  • Fawmer #2 will write an alternative melody (or chord progression) to the song, and send it to #3.
  • Fawmer #3 will combine the new lyric and the new melody, making a new song, unaware of what the original song was.
  • Once the song is finished, the organizer will reveal the original song.
  • Tag songs as #metamorphosischallenge.

Important: when Fawmer #1 writes the new lyric, it should be a drop-in replacement for the original song; it should be possible to sing the original song with the new lyrics. Similarly for the new harmony/melody: keep the arrangement and all the parts, so it's possible to sing the complete original lyric over the new harmony/melody (it's OK to change the BPM).

Morph

A songwriting challenge in which fawmers write a number of songs in sequence. Fawmer #2 listens to song #1 and bases what they do on that song. Each song keeps some elements of the previous song as they are, but changes other parts (perhaps by keeping the lyrics, but rather than the arrangement being doom metal, it becomes a string quartet). Fawmer #3 listens to song #2 and morphs other parts of the song (or the same bits, it’s up to them) and so on, and so on. Which bits are kept and which bits are changed at each stage of the sequence are left to the discretion of the fawmers concerned, but agreeing a basic approach beforehand can be helpful.

Neglected gear

Write a song with a musical instrument or item of audio equipment that you don’t normally use. Dust off that kazoo; rescue your melodica from under the bed!

Play with delay

Write a song where the echo or delay applied to an instrument becomes an essential part of the composition. A common choice is a dotted-eighth-note delay. Pretty much any of The Edge’s guitar parts for U2 do this; other examples include Run Like Hell by Pink Floyd and Eddie Van Halen’s Cathedral. Be careful when attempting this live, though, as things can go catastrophically wrong.

Two-chord challenge

Write a song which only uses two chords. An example is Dreams by Fleetwood Mac.