User:Wathira

8in8 was a collaboration between three musicians and a novelist who endeavoured to create eight songs in eight hours. It began when singers/songwriters Ben Folds and Amanda Palmer had the idea to create an album completely independent of a record label. They presented their idea at the Rethink Music Conference in Boston, which took place on April 25-27, 2011. The theme of the conference was Creativity, Commerce, and Policy in the 21st Century, and Folds observed that social media had made it possible for recording artists to reach their audiences without the necessity of a record label. In order to demonstrate the possibilities of the unrestricted creation and promotion of music on the internet, Folds and Palmer recruited fellow musician Damian Kulash to join them on their endeavor, as well as Palmer's husband Neil Gaiman, an award-winning novelist. Their goal was to create an album of eight original songs, and the entire process was to take eight hours from the writing of the first lyric to the recording of the final song. They began at four o'clock in the afternoon on Monday, April 25 and planned to finish by midnight, and then present the album the next day in a panel at the conference. A camera crew was there at the studio in Allston, MA to capture the creation of the record in a live webcast that viewers could watch at http://partyontheinternet.com/.

Neil Gaiman was the primary songwriter for the group, and he posted questions on his Twitter account to prompt his followers to tweet their answers with the #8in8 hashtag, a keyword that allows Twitter users to follow a conversation. The first prompt he gave was "Name a historical figure you care about," and soon tweets began to fill Gaiman's Twitter feed with names of different historical figures. The majority of tweeters named Nikola Tesla, the Serbian engineer and inventor who pioneered the use of electricity along with Thomas Edison. Gaiman wrote the lyrics for the first track of the album, "Nikola Tesla." His wife Amanda Palmer wrote the music for the song and sang the vocals on the track, since he had written the lyrics from the point-of-view of a woman. While they worked on "Nikola Tesla," Gaiman tweeted the second question, which was "A way that Love Goes Wrong?" Ben Folds and Damian Kulash read the answers on the Tweeter feed and each chose an answer they liked to develop into a song. Folds chose the phrase "because the origami" and Kulash chose "one tiny thing," and they developed them into the second and third tracks of the album respectively. The third question of the evening was, "the first name of the person and the place in the world of your most memorable kiss," but none of the answers developed into a song on the album. While Folds and Palmer recorded "Because the Origami," Gaiman and Kulash worked together on the "One Tiny Thing" lyrics and music respectively.

The fourth question Gaiman posted on Twitter was "Tell me something strange that happened only once." The answer he chose to make into a song was "A squirrel committed suicide in the toilet of a house I was staying in," and the song became the fourth track on the album. He wrote "Twelve Line Song" about the squirrel and Ben Folds wrote the music, then Folds performed the vocals with Kulash on background vocals. After eight hours, 8in8 had only recorded four songs and missed their midnight deadline, but they persevered nonetheless. Gaiman and Palmer wrote the song on the fifth track about a woman they had seen from the car on the way to the studio. She had been screaming at her reflection in a hand-mirror she held, and Palmer sang "I'll Be My Mirror" about her. Meanwhile, Gaiman was pondering the first question he had posted on Twitter about historical figures, and he had received a request to write a song about Joan of Arc early in the evening. He decided to write the song since Joan of Arc had been his second choice after Nikola Tesla, and he wrote the whimsical "The Problem With Saints." In the song, Joan of Arc comes back to life and resumes her fight against the English six centuries after the war ended. Since Gaiman wrote the song from the perspective of an Englishman and used the English slang word "hols" for holiday, he decided someone with an English accent should sing the song. Therefore, Neil Gaiman the writer and graphic novelist made his recording debut when he provided the vocals to "The Problem With Saints," and Ben Folds accompanied him on the piano.

All in all, although the 8in8 collaboration did not reach its goal of eight songs in eight hours, it produced and distributed an album completely without any help or interference from a record label. The music went straight from the studio and onto Amanda Palmer's website, where all visitors to the site can listen to the songs for free or download them for the minimum price of one dollar. Through teamwork, determination, and more than a little creativity and imagination, 8in8 made six songs in twelve hours and made viewers around the world privy to their creative process. Its efforts demonstrate a new dynamic between the artist and the audience through social media like Livestream and Twitter, in which the creators can instantly share their work with consumers and consumers can likewise have instant access to the music. On Tuesday, April 26, the members of 8in8, tired but triumphant, strode onto the stage at the Rethink Music Conference and presented twelve hours' work to the live and online audiences. Later that evening, they performed songs from the album and ended the journey they had begun not more than twenty-eight hours before. Their album is called "Nighty-Night," which Amanda Palmer missheard when Neil Gaiman said "8in8."