It's my fifth year of FAWM, and I'm considering challenging myself to something I've always wanted to try - a concept album. I am extremely intimidated by the idea and have no idea how to go about it. Anyone tried this? Where did you start? Do you have any tips?

I haven't done one yet but I've been wanting to and even had a running theme that I kept adding ideas to. Who knows if this will be the year, but I'll look forward to, and celebrate, your attempts!

This is so much of what I do these days. Though mostly outside of FAWM, but I do know there's a number of people around here that do concept albums as part of FAWM though.

For me, concept albums are all about storytelling through music, so it's all starts with finding that story / theme. Sometimes I find it from a past song, or from inspiration from another work of art. These stories don't have to be like a book. Eg, mine tend to be abstract, characters never have names, time is loose, etc. But there's progress, conflict and resolution of some kind, told through the music and/or lyrics.

Once you have your story, how you tell it is up to you. I tend to have very solid structure, but that's not required. You can have musical or lyrics themes that that reappear and grow throughout the story. Lyrics that tell the entire story, or have accompanying liner notes to help listeners follow along, or even just imply a story through the lyrics and the emotions of the music. There are plenty of tricks you can use, but none are required, and it's all up to you.

Otherwise, only other thing I'd recommend is to write more than one! You'll definitely find issues with the first one you write, so learn from them, and write another, then another, then another... then realize that you're hopelessly addicted and that normal albums just don't cut it for you anymore.

For my first FAWM in 2016 I did a concept album: 14 instrumental songs, each one with a hard-to-translate, emotionally-positive word as the title (for example, "gökotta: to rise at dawn in order to go out and listen to the birds sing”). And in each song I tried to capture the feeling of the word with sounds.

It was fun, but to be honest these days I'm happier all over the place, doing random collabs and weird experimental songs. I think if were to do the same again I would have to do the concept album AND more stuff, because I really like the randomness of mid-FAWM, the impromptu challenges and unexpected collaborations.

I'm definitely doing a concept album. I find it so much easier to do it that way, instead of trying to come up with 14 different, unrelated ideas.

Thank you all for your insights!!!

I did one once, and came up with the idea after I had recorded a bunch of things - then on my way to work one morning I thought SLAVE ROBOT EMANCIPATION STORYLINE!! At first, they're just robots and don't understand. Some fall in love, some become angry after understanding how humans used them. They eventually leave earth, taking pretty much all the technology with them because they'd all become interconnected devices and finally, collectively sentient. At least this is how I thought about it, but it was a way to tie all the songs together. I even made a fake commerical for "Toaster Oven Genius" which knows what you want to eat before you do.

That was all before FAWM.

There are a lot of good suggestions here. When I first started FAWM back in 2010, I strictly did concept albums. I found that it was the best way to focus my creativity & get to 14 songs. Since about 2015, I've just let my Muse have free reign & she hasn't led me astray. However, this year, she's changed her tune (sort of). She wants to do a concept album again, so I'm in the process of piecing the idea together.

I have to agree with @deadhead, the first thing you need in order to get going is a story or a theme. Once I have that, I usually brainstorm song tittle ideas as well as ideas about how the story is going to flow from song to song. But don't be afraid to deviate from this initial "plan". Follow your Muse. Don't let the planned structure hinder your creativity.

My concept album for FAWM MMXXIII is tittled: "Confronting The Shadows" & I'm hoping to explore some of the imagery & metaphor I've teased over the years with my whole "Candle" musical concept.

See You In The Shadows…

all my albums are concept albums because i am old school and think in terms of albums. i often wind up spending more time on sequencing the albums than on the writing and recording process. my theme this year is structuring several views of civil unrest in the modern world from an isolationist perspective around four battle-scarred ruins of historical import.

I did concept albums for my first two fawms, and they gave me such freedom as no time spent wondering what to write about. I had the concept firmly in mind before fawm started. The last few years I haven’t done them. The interesting thing for me is that I can remember every single one of my concept album songs, but have forgotten so many of my randoms from the more recent years. I think I want to do one again this year, but I’m also experiencing some burnout just now and so haven’t come up with any thoughts.

To reinforce what others have said, having a story line or at least an outline.. maybe a story arc is a better way of putting it, beforehand is incredibly helpful.

Adjacent challenge: Tim Wille once did 10 5 song EPs for 50/90. Each EP was by a different "band." I've found that concept to be incredibly helpful to come up with more ideas toward the end of FAWM or 50/90.

A concept album really is about a unifying idea that connects all the songs together. This can be a story, but can also be an abstract...eh..concept ;-)

For example, Pink Floyd's The Wall is a story (rise and fall of an authoritarian government), whereas their Dark Side of the Moon is about an idea (mental illness).

Frank Sinatra agruably made the first concept albums, and these were only loosely so, like "songs for lovers", "songs for bachelors", "songs for having a beer" etc. So the rules can be as strict as you like.
Must it be a story? You decide!

If you want a story, consider that the typical "hero's journey" schematic (monomyth) has 12 story-beats, which pretty much equates the number of songs on a typical album.

But if you find that you come across a momentary obsession with a subject or idea during February, you can try putting that into writing too. Is there a singular thing in your life and/or interests you can tell 10-14 different things about? That may be the seed for a concept album :)

Personally, I would write a rough story out and work out what songs I'd need to cover all of it - maybe a song per scene?

My first fawm was a giant concept album (and it had an expanded universe of a novel and a film collab) called GRAVITY WING. Scifi.
I've done some manner of conceptualization for each FAWM since. Highly recommend the narrative path if you go concept! Write a poem or story. See where it takes you. Or, draw some pictures or take some photos and see if a theme emerges.

I was once a part of a concept album where every song was based on a painting by Picasso. A story was written to envelope all of the paintings and the songs ended up being a sort of soundtrack to the story in a round about way.

I’m glad you opened this forum. I have wanted to invest time into an overarching theme and narrative. This seems like the year to do it.

I've never done one, but I have a more-than-vague idea of writing the music for a musical some FAWM, which is essentially the same thing! One year (maybe this one?)

Thanks for this thread, @skylermf, and all who commented--There are some great insights here.

As it so happens, my bandmate + I are working on a concept album this month as well. It's based on a book, but I'm excited to write songs that can follow a particular arc, hold up whether you know the arc or not, and eventually translate to a possible stage/theatrical setting (but not in any sense of a traditional musical).

I look forward to following what y'all are doing on this thread as well.

in 2021 50-90, i did a five album radio play in five acts called The Dark Room. Since it seemed to me later that 50 songs might be a bit too much to swallow, i made a condensed version for free downloads and called it Tourist ticket https://billwhite.bandcamp.com/album/the-dark-room-tourist-ticket

My first FAWN I took a stab at a Sci-Fi / Time Travel concept that spawned from a piece @fuzzy did (itself based on a FAWMers post) that about a dystopian society and how Mary-Kate and Ashly Olson were key to its ultimate collapse. I put a ton of work into figuring out the story beats, but 5 songs in it just got too hard to translate into lyrics that could stand alone as songs.

Last 50/90 I did one where each song tied into a step in making a French Omelette. That went a lot better.

I don't think I've ever done a "real" concept album, but I get phases where different slants on the same imagery keep turning up in different songs. My 2018 FAWM was full of rivers and outer space, for example.

In 2020 I seriously made a solo album based on my best ideas in ten years of FAWM. Some of my friends said they didn't even have a CD player in the house anymore, a younger friend in Berlin didn't even know what to do with the term "album", she couldn't relate it to "music" because she only streams. I myself had grown up with music albums, this way of listening has shaped me more than anything else. I'm very glad I made mine, it's coming out pretty well too. However, I already realize that this form has fallen out of time - and as far as future music releases are concerned, I'm already at a bit of a loss. Music no longer has a carrier stage - how and where should I present songs? Not every song is suitable for video, apart from the fact that the effort overwhelmed me. FAWM is a wonderful niche, but has only comparatively few people in the living room. 😀

I discovered FAWM last year right around the same time I was diagnosed with Cancer. I spent February researching my treatment options and writing songs. My album is inspired by what I was going through that month.

This year, I'm telling stories of road trips (so for 3 based on real life and one "fictional").