Ben Folds will be taking part in a demonstration of do-it-yourself music creation and publishing as part of the Rethink Music conference in Boston later this month.
The project teams Ben up with collaborators Amanda Palmer and Damian Kulash of OK Go, and author Neil Gaiman for a spontaneous session of music writing and creation. Eight songs are to be to be written in eight hours, released the next day and performed live for the conference.
The conference, to be held April 25-27 at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston’s Back Bay district, is sponsored by the city’s prestigious Berklee College of Music.
The collaboration event takes place on Monday, April 25. The group will work writing and recording from 4pm until midnight on Monday, webcast live on the Rethink-Music.com site. They will be released on Tuesday, April 26 at 10 am through bandcamp.com, with the proceeds from the first week going to a fund to bring music education to underserved teens through Berklee. The stated purpose of the demonstration is to show how record companies are becoming superfluous in building “buzz” and distributing music.
Ben is, of course, no stranger to this type of composition, having done a similar mashup with author Nick Hornby as a prelude to the recent Lonely Avenue album. He and his band also put together alternate versions of many of the songs on Way to Normal as a teaser for the fans, again in a day or two. Of course, he’s also known for making up songs on the fly during shows, often based on something shouted by an audience member.
Ben has posted details of the project on his site. Also appearing in separate events at the conference will be Pandora chief Joe Kennedy, Lyor Cohen, who heads Warner’s recorded music division, and US Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), ranking member of the House Judiciary committee and an expert on copyright law.
[…] As we told you earlier, Ben’s in Boston, getting ready to team up with Amanda Palmer and Damian Kulash to write the songs to Neil Gaiman’s lyrics in their project to write and record eight songs in eight hours as part of the Rethink Music conference. Â The whole thing is being webcast live. The team is seeking suggestions for song titles as well as a band name and will be watching the hashtag #8in8 on Twitter (see our right sidebar for a running feed during and after the event). It’ll be released Tuesday morning and available for purchase. No TweetBacks yet. (Be the first to Tweet this post) […]