Artists met in the WMUC studio in January to produce 10 songs in 72 hours.
Jan. 9. Sometime between 1:30 a.m. and 3:30 a.m.
It was the last 12 hours – the home stretch. Sophomore communication major Kayla Taitz was standing in the WMUC recording studio; once she laid down the hook for “Good Day,” she could finally go home. She looked up to see project coordinator Kevin Alexander staring at her.
“How would you feel about recording your own song?” Alexander asked.
Taitz was surprised. She already had parts in two songs planned to be released from this 72-hour quarantine of musical collaboration. She said she had to go.
Alexander needed that new song. One of the artists had violated his contract regarding drugs and alcohol, so the project – a 10-track collaborative album featuring a bevy of local musicians which will be released tomorrow – was short on music. He walked into the next room where he found the Legato Music Group, five musicians from Baltimore.
“Within the last 36 hours, have you all written a song strictly for a female?” he asked.
“I think I have a first verse and a hook,” one of the group said.
“I think I can come up with a rhythm,” another chimed in.
Alexander brought Taitz to the other room. By that time, the Legato Music Group had already developed a structure to their song. Taitz ended up recording the track, “Eyes Met.” The entire process, writing included, took two hours.
“I was actually afraid to touch this track because it was so beautiful in its organic state,” Alexander said. “When it was being recorded, I looked back at everyone and was like, ‘Oh, shit.'”
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It was late November. Alexander, a mixing engineer and owner of Freeline Music Group, had just spent 10 straight hours in the studio with Ike da Kid, a local rapper and 2010 alumnus of this university. Ike was exhausted.
“This is one of my longest sessions,” Ike said. “I don’t know how long you’ve been in the studio, but…”
“96 hours,” Alexander said automatically. It was one of those numbers he had memorized, like knowing there were 24 hours in a day, or seven days in a week.
Then Alexander realized that most modern artists have never been in that situation. In today’s world, where new music is being released every second, artists under contract have a limited amount of time in the studio, with extreme pressure to produce usable tracks in that window. At the same time, artists are becoming even more self-sufficient, sometimes working as producer and engineer as well as vocalist or musician.
A half-formed question had been nagging Alexander for the past three years. At that moment, it became clear: What would happen if he brought the songbirds and mixers and writers and rappers of College Park together and challenged them to create 10 songs in 72 hours?
The general public will be able to hear and see tomorrow, when a documentary of the experience – along with the album – is released.
In addition to the album and the documentary, the 72 Hour Project will release music videos, although the conversation is just starting on those. There might also be a sequel (perhaps a 96-hour project?), but Alexander hopes the project will spread to other campuses first. Several artists have asked if he will help them record an album in a day.
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Jan. 6. Sometime between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m.
Alexander had scheduled several sessions where everyone would come together and present their material to the rest of the group. Not every song would be included in the final “album,” so it was important to bring the best work. Rapper Yamil Martinez, whose stage name is Eyedeal Bayano, recalled sitting in a big room with different beats playing in every corner. He looked to his left, and suddenly, there was Ike da Kid “spitting the best freestyle” he’d heard in the past five years. Ike didn’t stop for at least 20 minutes.
“People just stood there,” said Bayano, a 2010 alumnus of this university. “You didn’t really have a chance to talk. That on its own inspired me on my other verses, my other songs. It was like the big dogs are in here; this ain’t no kitty kennel. I was like, ‘Oh, shit.'”
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A little more than a month after Alexander’s conversation with Ike, 30 to 35 people took over CR1, CR2, CR3, the studio, the live room, the sports broadcast room and the lounge of WMUC. The planning committee had created contracts – a one-page agreement that covered everything from the location to drug and alcohol regulations to copyrights. There was Chick-fil-A, veggie platters, water bottles, tea, honey, cough drops. Eventually, there were 15 to 20 Domino’s pizzas, which was too much food, even for that many musicians on a deadline.
People left the building whenever they wanted, but many kept working through multiple nights, snagging a few hours of sleep when they could.
“People were laid out like dead cicadas,” Bayano said. “We made pillows out of everything, all over the place.”
Most just didn’t want to go to sleep. Fueled by the presence of a deadline and the pressure of the guy in the next room making better music, each musician created combinations of styles they had never predicted they would make – from an Andy Milonakis drum beat in the exotic “Wild Boyz” to pianos mixed with rap on “Falling Slowly.”
“It was like, ‘Oh, you can make a track, but I’m gonna make a track better than you,'” said producer and senior linguistics and Spanish major J’Nae Morrae, who made “Wild Boyz.” “We’re competing against each other, but at the same time, just making our craft better than it was before.”
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March 7. 9:17 to 9:31 a.m.
It was a simple tweet by planning committee member Amber J. Simmons: “Last night I had a dream about a lot of my artist friends. I know they were there, I just don’t remember what happened. It was fun though.”
Johnny Graham, an artist on the project, knew there was more to Simmons’ dream. He tweeted back: “that wasn’t a dream, it happened in real life, like 2 months ago. it was called the 72 hour project…”
mcfischer@umdbk.com
