The 5090 songwriting challenge begins this Saturday. The idea is simple, write 50 songs in 90 days.

Here is a little pre-challenge song that I wrote and recorded in 15 minutes:
Download

Worms and Cold Bones

Time with a mouth of pitch and black earth
And ash where the book of love lay
collapsed me down here with worms and cold bones
and I’ll wait while years become days

Made a promise
But hearts never keep their course.

Dressed all the wounds with linen and runes
and laid me down inside my box
spatter of earth and the ringing of spades
And I’ll wait while years become days

Made a promise
But hearts never keep their course

My composition tutor said you should always give a piece of music a title. Who am I to argue?

Here’s some more improv. It is called ‘Hooks’.

Download Hooks (an improvisation)

It is Sunday. I have been improvising.

Everything one take, guitar and synth and a drum loop:

Download Sunday Improv

Unbeknownst to Pete, I’ve recorded loads of backing vocals for the Dance at the End of the World.

Not all of them will be used in the final song.

Here are some of them:

Download Dance and Sing, the World is Ending.

It ain’t so bad, it ain’t so bad.

Download Dance, dance, dance.

Today I took delivery of the Sonuus G2M midi converter.  I was inspired to purchase one by the wonderfully talented Matt Stevens.

It allows me to play synth parts with my guitar. This pleases me:

Download It Never Seems To Rain (Improv)

It’s been a week of tweaks at www.wellwrite.co.uk. Following on from my to-do list, I have completed the following:

• Re-done Stand and Clap.
• Re-organised the Fan’s Area (for which you can grab yourself a free password).
• Re-organised the Songs for the End of the World page
• Re-recorded parts of Trampoline Song and Never Seems to Rain
• Poked Pete about getting more songs finished.
• Compiled a little behind the scenes video for the filming of Measure of a Man.

What with finally having a version of Stand and Clap that I like:

Download Stand and Clap

I thought it appropriate to share a few of my favourite atheist-related websites.

I know the idea of atheists working together is kind of silly – after all we have nothing in common but an absence of one belief – but the religious seem to be increasingly vocal, and something does need to be done.

What? I’ve no idea. But I’ve lived in London my entire life. For the first decade and a half of that life, every time I went into the centre of my own city, there was a danger I would be killed by a bomb set by Catholics. These days, it’s Muslim bombs that are a worry. Religion creates dangerous in group morality, and it literally kills.

Plus its so silly.

So here are a few atheist websites that I like:

Richarddawkins.net – The website of Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion. Often called ’strident,’ but only by the humourless. Dawkins is actually a very funny, if dry-witted, writer.

Another common criticism is that he doesn’t attack the kind of religion that normal people believe in. This attack is only ever made by people who don’t believe but won’t admit it, such as the egregious Madeliene Bunting. This woman has a habit of simply lying about what Dawkins has written.  For example, in the article I linked to she says Dawkins aims with the God Delusion to convert theists into atheists, even though he states in the book that he sees this as unlikely.

The Good Atheist An atheist blog and podcast.

Think Atheist A pleasant little social network for atheists. Full of Americans who understandably feel more of a need to organise as atheists.

The Secular Web run by the amusingly titled ‘Internet Infidels’.

A Guide for the Godless A free internet book that deals with meaning in a godless world. Interesting read, but I’d be more interested in seeing someone explain meaning in a world in which god exists. The nearest I have seen to this is pagan religions where the gods aren’t all nice. Monotheism with a morally good god seems absurd, but maybe someone will get round to writing about it sensibly one of these days. They’ve only had six thousand years, to be fair.

There you go, a small biased, incomplete selection. Any others?

I was never happy with the original guitars and vocals for our pro-atheism, superstition-is-the-equivalent-to-slugs-in-the-brain-and-will-kill-us-all anthem ‘Stand and Clap’.

So here it is again, but better:

Download Stand and Clap

We’re not far off having a finished album, but there’s still plenty to do and with possibly only weeks before the world ends we need to get a move on.

Things I need to do include:

• re-record the guitars and remaster Stand and Clap
• Figure out what it is I’m not happy with in Sugar and Dust, and fix it
• Poke Pete into sending me his parts of the next songs so we can get them finished.
• Fix the bits I don’t like in Trampoline Song
• Rejig the Fans’ Area to make it more attractive and useful cos at the moment it’s just a big list. A list of good songs, but a list nonetheless.
• Figure out how we’re going to warn the world of the coming apocalypse (and also tell them that we’ve got an album about it they might like to hear).
• Book more gigs.

At some point, some none or all of these might get done.