Hi. I’m Hark. I took part in Jamuary for the first time this year. I was lurking these forums a bit during the challenge but have finally created an account.
I wrote up a blog post with some of my reflections on the experience: Thoughts on Jamuary 2024 :: Hark. Overall I enjoyed Jamuary and took a lot away from it. I’m planning to join in again next year and hope you’ll also take part and have some fun making jams and getting creative.
Did you take part in Jamuary this year? What did you think of the experience? What did you learn?
I did take part in Jamuary, both this year and last (2023), and I enjoyed it both for warm up for FAWM (February Album Writing Month) - which I’ve participated in since 2018, and for the relaxing, no worries way in which I sometimes make music. I plug in the machines, nudge them along and when I come up with something that sounds cool, I hit record. There were a few problems this year that I encountered due to my aging DAW I still haven’t upgraded, and opted to mostly use a small digital multitracker to record with. Usually I just did a stereo mix into it, but there were a few things I did multi-track. I like the whole - “use a different set up” idea for Jamuary even if I didn’t always use different gear. That forces you to be creative, but the freshness of some new device in front of you can not only help you to learn, but sonically it’s refreshing. I did also just post my tracks from Jamuary as an album on Bandcamp - why not?!
Now, since I’ve done FAWM longer than Jamuary, I have used Jamuary as a warm up and then I hit the ground running in Feb. Both this year and last I made over 100 tracks in Feb and I’d say that could partially be because of exercising the recording muscles in January, but also due to the community of FAWM. Both being something a collective is doing simultaneously, but not necessarily together musically is inspiring. I’m going to go watch the link to James Blake now. Thanks
This was my first year taking part in Jamuary and I loved it. I think it was a much needed challenge. It pushed myself to finish something and held me accountable. It also helped the ol’ self esteem a bit. I feel more confident that I can make enjoyable music and it led me to try live performances. I’ve got one youtube concert under my belt and I’m building up another liveset for another performance soon. Once I’ve got a few of those done, I hope to use that as a portfolio of sorts to try and get real live gigs. Being more of an ambient guy, it’s a niche genre so I don’t know how successful that will be, especially living in a small town.