This year I took my music / artistic career more seriously, learning more about the art of songwriting and working on the art of building a strong release.

Learned much about 80s style mixing and have been focusing on a style that I feel I can truely call my own. I feel like I've come a long way the past few years as a vocalist, but mostly in the way of compiling and editing vocals. I've noticed editing vocals improves your pitch perception all the way round.

I think I'm drawn to the 80s style mainly because its uplifting music, and I'm so sick of all the negativity I have to deal with, plus I've listened to so many glitches and cuts and noise over the past decade that I crave more melodic substance I guess.

I wanted to do more WB submissions this year but I kept writing music that I wasn't sure if it would make it on a label.

One thing thats cool about music these days is that the genres are so fractured I think its easier to just be yourself musically and focus on making great art.

I like the idea of it as a bi-anual thing.

This is a good thread, this one. I like to test stuff out as well. This year started out with me promising not to throw lots of energy at the project, but I shudder to think how many hours have been sucked dry in the process My humble plan was to test out patches for my iOS project, but then I got into all sorts of other stuff like modular and aleatoric experiments. It's addictive! Hoping for at least a year's respite like last time...would be a crying shame if it never returned though.

I've always tended toward the explorational, but I think I've sharpened up my structural focus this year--even if I'm not sure what I'm doing in the beginning, some idea develops during the process.  The one-piece-per-week-no-matter-what approach has helped with the ability to get stuff out, getting me over that "I don't know where this is going; I'll just stop" thought.  So maybe less vague improv and more deliberate architecture, even when the architecture is intuitive.

The direction I've taken has been more of an exploration in what I can actually do with the double bass (looping, solo, extended technique, electronic manipulation).
Apart from detouring into 'sound deconstruction' for the middle of the year, I composed some dissonant pieces that I would not normally have done and quite enjoyed it.

The summary of the weeklybeats experience will become apparent next year when I actually have more time to develop pieces I believe.

My stuff has just got weirder this year. I didn't feel like I wanted to just knock out 52 tracks in my usual style but to try out ideas and things that I didn't know whether would work or not. As such I've started to veer more towards noise based glitchy soundscapes as the year has got on. I've even tried out a couple of four to the floor tunes which I normally don't like at all. My first few tunes are pretty typical of the type of thing I was writing in the last couple of years before WB.

any particular direction?  yeah getting stuff started and complete!  At first it was rather daunting writing the music through the week then taking 1-2hrs on a sunday afternoon to write and record lyrics.. Lyrics used to be extremely exhausting.  Whilst I've had many misses through the weeks lyrically there's plenty of stuff i can re-work at a later stage to some satisfaction.  But the foundations are now there.  I've also started to add more things underneath main guitars etc that you don't really hear but if you drop them out its rather noticeable, a bit of synth works here and there to underscore parts. 

and yes it has also set a particular sound/tone for a number of tracks that will likely go on to be included into an album, albeit everything shall be re-recorded with blazing amps, pounding drums, etc come that time. 

didn't have much chance to really listen and comment on many tracks by others as it's been an extremely busy year so getting the time to get this stuff done really has shown me how to organise and get things done when the time presents.  Although when i did get to listen to tracks i was quite amazed and jealous of the synth abilities of many here, definitely not my forte and its something i want to be able to incorporate a lot more into my stuff. 

next year?  i'm thinking i will do something along these lines again, if WB is here, then this is where i'll be.  Although next year I don't intent on writing 'typical' songs with lyrics as i did this year.  I would like to concentrate more on synth, soundscapes, experimentation, and the odd typical song here and there.  I'd like to be able to mould those sorts of things into songs at some stage.

most defiantly need to start up my own page/blog to start getting stuff out there. 

what a great year to write music!!

I'm not sure if WB in its current form will continue. I understand the hosting is probably quite expensive by now.

I'm about where I'd expect to be. I've done a bit more rhythm/melody based stuff than I was expecting to, but compared against my compositions for the last six or seven years, it's about where "jazz" would have fitted in, previously. So that's pretty consistent.

I did start delving into Open Music, finally, which I meant to start doing in 2012 but just couldn't get my head around it. So that's cool. I've also done a bit less notated work than I thought I might. I've planned a few but not got around to articulating them.

Do you feel you have gone into any particular direction this year? Like, would you say you're more experimental now or more melodic or more confused or anything? Or just different?

Personally I feel that I'm slightly less mainstream (although still pretty mainstream, I know) because I've experimented more with different song formats and composition techniques. Also I started playing lute this summer, that was kinda a change.

The feedback from you all was (and is) wonderful. To be honest, sometimes I am missing some negative feedback, but I think it's better to err on the side of positive online.

My music has changed this year, I think, partly because it's been heard by more people than any other year.

I'm not sure yet if I will continue with WB next year. I am considering (a) posting a classical piece each week or (b) a one-take improvisation. Both of those projects would help me preparing to play live, because that's really what I want to do.