Novice albums

  • Ornette Coleman and Denardo, Ornette at 12

  • Sun Ra Orkestar, Strange Strings — each member of band plays an instrument on which they had no practice time

  • Wire — British punk band, signed up for a gig that was 90 days away, hadn’t played instruments or written any songs before, art school kids, treated it like a project

  • Half Japanese — two brothers who couldn’t play their instruments

  • Beat Happening — drummer plays a clothes hamper with blanket on top of it

  • Entire post-punk in Britain, hardcore in US genres, circa 1979-1984

  • The Ramones — not actually novices

  • The Frogs

  • Loren Mazzacane Connors (early/Daggett years), Glenn Gould — can’t stop themselves from moaning, etc. in a non-musical way, e.g. haven’t trained it out of them

Concept albums

  • The Frogs — concept album re: gay couple, commentary on homophobia in punk scene

  • The Magnetic Fields, 69 Love Songs

  • Pink Floyd, The Wall

  • Sufjan Stevens, albums about states

  • Iron & Wine, Woman King EP

  • Culturecide — record songs off the radio and then play over it

  • Setting poetry to music

    • Maryann Gendron does Dorothy Parker

    • Allen Ginsburg does William Blake

  • Beyonce, Lemonade

  • Millie Jackson, Caught Up — about being a mistress to a married man

  • Beach Boys, Pet Sounds

  • Beatles, Sergeant Pepper

  • Brian Eno, made deck of cards with chance operations on it so if you got stuck in the studio you would pull out a card and do what it said to get unstuck

  • Prog Rock albums (e.g. Bo Hansen re: Lord of the Rings)

  • Preggy Peggy and the Babymakers, A Short Visit to the City that Bleeds — recorded in and around an Enterprise rental car parked on 34th Street in Baltimore, MD

  • Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn, Ginger Brooks Takahashi & Friends, Songs from the Black Mountain Music Project — two friends hide away with instruments for a month

**Collaborative composition ideas **

  • Field Recordings

  • Whistles

  • Mugwumps

  • Mouth Sounds

  • Two Notes

  • Two Notes each sampled from existing songs

  • Poetry to Music

  • Ransom Note/Exquisite Corpse Lyrics

  • Recreate Existing Album in set amount of time

  • A la 69 Love Songs

  • Grades of school

  • Non-places (waiting rooms, lobbies, bus depots)

  • Kids Lyrics Songs

  • 10 things we like

  • 10 drugs

  • Songs about friends

  • After dinner mints — like lunch poems, recorded in some sliver of time we have together