As some of you might know, it’s National Novel Writing Month, a challenge where writers write a whole novel through the month of November. Well it’s also National Solo Album Month. The participants must write and record 28.99 mins of music in a month. Having participated in the 24 Hour Comic Book challenge last year, I support other artists who seek to push themselves to new levels.

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So, for the purposes of NaSoAlMo, what exactly is a solo album?
An album of music you have written, played and recorded entirely by yourself*. The shortest inarguably awesome album that a lot of people have heard** is the first Ramones album, which is 29:09 long, so your solo album must be at least that long. Beyond that, its form and content are up to you.

Good luck to all the song writers.

Always looking for new ways to keep producing my art work, I am attracted to a variety of on-line sources that have helpful tips and techniques. While listening to a radio interview with the creator of National Solo Album Month, the Oblique Strategies Deck was mentioned. Oblique Strategies are the product of musician Brian Eno and painter Peter Schmidt. Both needed a way to encourage ideas and work, and to dispel being blocked. So they took notes they had written for themselves and made them into a deck of cards. The deck is subtitled: Over one hundred worthwhile dilemmas

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The Oblique Strategies are a deck of cards. Up until 1996, they were quite easy to describe. They measured about 2-3/4″ x 3-3/4″. They came in a small black box which said “OBLIQUE STRATEGIES” on one of the top’s long sides and “BRIAN ENO/PETER SCHMIDT” on the other side. The cards were solid black on one side, and had the aphorisms printed in a 10-point sans serif face on the other.
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But I digress. Perhaps it’s best to attempt a description of their intention and function.

The deck itself had its origins in the discovery by Brian Eno that both he and his friend Peter Schmidt (a British painter whose works grace the cover of “Evening Star” and whose watercolours decorated the back LP cover of Eno’s “Before and After Science” and also appeared as full-size prints in a small number of the original releases) tended to keep a set of basic working principles which guided them through the kinds of moments of pressure – either working through a heavy painting session or watching the clock tick while you’re running up a big buck studio bill. Both Schmidt and Eno realized that the pressures of time tended to steer them away from the ways of thinking they found most productive when the pressure was off. The Strategies were, then, a way to remind themselves of those habits of thinking – to jog the mind.

The cards where re-tooled in 1996 to be more general and less focused on one task. Here are a few interesting samples.

To use a web random generator, visit the official Brian Eno site, –GENERATOR HERE

I have not played a RPG (role playing game) for many years now, but if I did I would want to have a little miniature world to enhance the game. World Works Games can give you the parts you need to create a miniature world. The catch: you have to make them yourself.

The company allows you to purchases and download the kits. And then you just have to print out the parts on cardstock, cut them out and glue them together.

The company, of course, makes the kit for the obligatory castle.

But they also make kits for a pirate world, including full size sailing ships and villages for the scoundrels to sack (shown). They also make kits of alien worlds and modern urban settings.

And if you want a few free models, Wizards of the Coast (Formally TSR Games) has them to download at the bottom of THIS page.

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