Writing an album in a month with Mark Ippolito and FAWM

Singer-songwriter Mark Ippolito talked about his experience with February Album Writing Month (FAWM), challenging himself to write a full album of songs in 28 days. Check out his album on Bandcamp.

We talked about:

• William Shatner to Record a Heavy Metal Album Featuring Covers of Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, and Iron Maiden
• Our Song Talk Meetup
• The wonderfully supportive community of songwriters at the FAWM website
• The diversity of genres, instrumentalists, and approaches at FAWM
• Opportunities for collaborations between lyricists and musicians
• The organizers propose weekly challenges to prompt individual songs (e.g. write with a sawtooth melody)
• How Mark has learned to be creatively expressive to all the inputs he’s receiving
• The value of having deadlines and sub-challenges
• FAWM’s explicit statement on the use of AI in your songwriting (i.e. – don’t)
• The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin
• Our own songwriting challenges
• How Mark considers his FAWM album as demos, and open to further refinements

About FAWM

FAWM is February Album Writing Month. A global music community and challenge to write 14 songs in 28 days.