“50/90” is a challenge that started decades ago on Yahoo! Groups, with the goal of writing 50 songs in 90 days. It starts on July 4th, and goes til October 1st. These days the challenge is hosted on the FAWM website.
I know you’re probably thinking “there’s no way I can write 50 songs in 90 days!”. And yeah, it’s not easy, and usually less than 10% of participants make it to 50. I’ve been doing the challenge since 2016, and in a few years I wrote only 3 songs.
The important thing is that if you write one more song than you’d normally write, you’re already a winner! 50/90 is an incredible supportive community, with prompts and challenges for inspiration. It’s a great way to get feedback on your songs, and to practice finishing songs!
The website is live, and the challenge starts in a week… who’s up for it? 🙂
I don’t exactly have a ton of extra time to be writing right now but what the hell. I’ll join and see how many I can crank out.
Awesome! It’s a great community, and the fact that it last 90 days means you can take breaks and later do some sprints.
Right now the site is open but the challenge hasn’t started, so most of the activity is in the forums. People will usually post challenges like writing a song based on a random movie title.
On July 4th noon GMT a big button for posting songs will show up. You can host them on the site if you’ve donated $25+, or you can link to Soundcloud/Bandcamp/YouTube/Vimeo/Dropbox/Funkwhale/Bandlab/GDrive to have it embedded. Feedback on your songs will be positive, since the goal of the challenge is more to encourage people to write something than to produce a polished song; if you want critical feedback on your songs you’ll have to explicitly ask for it.
Here’s my profile there.
I might give it a go. Have done similar things in the past, only usually a month max. Also usually after one week I drop off… The last one I did was a week in May, that got me 6 (well actually more, I just did not post more) sketches for in my ‘finish one day’ folder ;)
Only I don’t do traditional songwriting but more electronic production in the DAW. Any of that happening there or is it mostly people with actual instrument skills?
Oh yeah, there’s a lot of people doing electronic music and instrumentals only. This guy does some awesome stuff, it’s unbelievable.
I started doing only electronic music, but I started participating in games, challenges, and collaborations, and I quickly got out of my comfort zone (specially the random collaborations). One year I decided to add some vocals for a random collaboration, got some good feedback, and eventually I took 2 years of singing lessons! Totally unexpected.
And of course you don’t have to do any of that if you don’t want, you can just post your songs and listen to songs in genres you like.
I did sign up, will check out that guy and also follow what you are doing.
From reading a bit on the forum it seems pretty chill so I probably will give it a go.
Only thing is that I am expecting a lot less free time the coming months. And I remember the stress of having to make something everyday from doing similar challenges. But just taking a chill approach and allowing more time between tracks might just work out fine.
Yeah, IMHO 50/90 is much more chill than Jamuary (31 jams in January) and FAWM (14 songs in February)… people take time off, and most people are not aiming for 50. I usually write a few songs in July, then I come back in September and try to catch up.
I did FAWM a few years back, and while it basically consumed my entire life that month, I got an album’s worth of new music out if it! Putting myself under a deadline really helps me stop procrastinating and actually create new music.
The last few years though I’ve been unable to do it. February is the busiest time of year for me gig-wise, and I can’t see myself playing a 6-hour show, then coming home and spending four more hours writing.
Have it any criteria what is a song? Should it be stricrtly with lyrics? Can some annoying dissonant chords produced with sawtooth waves and named like “symphony of misery” also accounted as song?
The criteria is very loose: all it needs to be considered a song is a title, everything else is optional.
There’s a lot of weird and experimental stuff. Last year I did a song that was just modulated feedback from a no-input mixer. Another year I did a song that was composed of “silences”: I used the quiet part of samples from a cathedral, a funeral, radio static, etc., to make a song that was almost completely silent.
I like the challenge because the fast pace encourages creativity and experimentation. Any idea gets transformed into a song.
There is no prize at the end and other than a few “congratulations” from community members, no point in hitting 50 just to hit it. If you write 50 songs that you consider songs, you have done it.
