I know I’m early, but I’m feeling stoked. Last year was the first year I did Jamuary and I had to bail halfway through because everybody in my house got strep throat, but even with that said I feel like I pushed myself to experiment and learned a lot - so I’m really looking forward to this year. My plan this time is to focus on/limit myself to using the Digitakt 1 with the Digitone 2, although who knows what will feel inspiring as the month goes on. I’m excited about how vulnerable you have to be to post something you made in one day that is probably pretty imperfect, as it challenges some perfectionism stuff in me, which I know a lot of other people have too. Also last year I listened to a ton of stuff people on here made which was not only inspiring but also it helped me get to know a bunch of y’all.
Also, as a Jamuary n00b, I have questions. I’ve been duckduckgo’ing around but it’s kind of unclear - is it true that @cuckoomusic invented Jamuary in 2016? And also, I didnt even realize last year that there was like a list of specific challenges somewhere, like “today make something in Bb” and “today make something at 170 bpm” or whatever. Is there like an official Jamuary website or message board or something where these are posted? I’m sure they’re not up yet, but I don’t even know where to look for them.
All right that’s it! Looking forward to hearing what everybody makes! Who else is in? Get your fingerless gloves on, let’s go (in a couple weeks)!
I might join for a day or two, since this month is usually the most hectic out of entire year (seeing family and friends and bday, beside ny and orthodox xmas😊).
Just tried creating the thread for 2026, but I see @get.up.trinity got this going! Nice one!
I’m also excited but will probably miss the beginning as I have family visiting to start the year. I’ll also likely be less active this time, but if time is available, I’ll have something up.
I still have so much content to sample from the past Jamuaries, so participating has been good for me.
i typically try to go hard and get one per day but we’ll have to see how much time i have, i’ve got a heavy class load next quarter so we’ll see what i can get out. im excited to hear what gets whipped up in this thread!
well I am down since I have a new computer on the way and plan to centralize my study setup with a patchbay to make creating beats more effective by having my favorite 12 synths in one spot ready to go.
the way i understand it is to record and share a jam of some kind every day in january. of course this is all for the creative community spirit so there arent any hard and fast rules. just jamming out in january and sharing with others to start the year off with music. some people have added prompts and extra challenges for fun
I’m deep in the experimentation phase of a few projects at the moment, and it is taking me multiple days to work towards getting a section of something done, so I’ll probably give it a miss this time. I had considered making a rompler loop designed for videogame use each day, but I just don’t think I have the energy at the moment.
Will still be jumping in and checking out everyone else’s work though. This years’ Jamuary was very productive for me.
Curious to hear opinions of past participants: what was your reason for participating and was it worth it?
Sounds like a big commitment to release a jam daily and to listen to other submissions. Why create and consume “half-baked”/“WIP” output? Wouldn’t it be better to invest time into trying to create smth more substantial and to listen to the plenty of amazing “finished”/“polished” music out there?
I’ve been able to refine my workflow with both hardware and software based on how easy it was to make something.
I find it fun.
@0xD the polished track comment is a strange one. My skip history for finished/polished tracks is far greater than listened to. Also, no commitment. Have fun if you find it fun.
It’s about practice. If you get into it, you’ll be surprised how much more fluent you can be fleshing out an idea by the end of the month. It’s also interesting practice to turn stuff on and get stuck in when you are completely lacking any ideas at all, and you just have to do what you can.
I ended up using most of what I did during this year in a large release which I really enjoy listening back to now.
Thanks! I saw that. I think I saw a comment somewhere last year implying that there was like an official master list of daily themes/challenges, but i think I just kinda misunderstood.
Anyway yes to what everyone else is saying, it’s easy for me to hack away at a song for a long time, and it’s also easy for me to mess around with noises for an evening. But it flexes really different muscles to come up with something so quickly, including the “this doesn’t have to be perfect” muscle and, after a couple days of making the same exact stuff I always make lol, the “I wonder if I can make this experiment work” muscle, which actively develops instrument fluency. Like I was doing LFO stuff last year just to see what happened which didn’t result in bangers I need to share with people but I did come up with some cool noises that I know how to make.
Idk I guess all of which is to say it pushes me out of my comfort zone which is valuable. Plus yeah I also did come up with some ideas that got released in one form or another.
I burned out half way through this year’s Jamuary due to intensive job hunting. TBH, I’m still trying to flesh out some of the jams I made in 2023 into finished tracks (because I’m extremely slow). However I think I’ll aim to do Jamuary '26 as a way to get back into a regular creating habit. It’s been too easy to stop and start this year that I mostly stopped.
So it’s kinda like doing daily sketches in a sketchbook? I can see the appeal and usefulness of that. I’ve never done anything like this before so I am curious to try. Count me in!
