“The first one was a struggle. Making the video was harder than making the album. I was fully expecting that it was going to be a train wreck”: How guitarist and YouTube sensation Rob Scallon manages to write – and record – a full album in one day

Being a YouTuber is a relentless job – but being a guitar YouTuber means keeping up both your guitar and your content chops, lest your audience gets bored.

Rob Scallon, who’s been on YouTube for 17 years and racked up more than 2.58 million subscribers, is the first to admit that videos can be a hit or a miss, irrespective of how much time and how many resources go into executing them.

“The First of October had a terrible first day,” he tells Guitar World, referring to the one‑day‑a‑year band with fellow YouTuber and multi‑instrumentalist Andrew Huang. The band’s whole purpose? To write and record a ten‑track album in one day.

“I remember telling Andrew, ‘You win some, you lose some, and we lost today.’ And now it's the most anticipated thing we do every year.”

As Scallon aptly notes, “Behind the scenes is a lot of video production, because not only are we making an album in a day from scratch, but we're filming a video. The first one was a struggle; making the video was harder than making the album. I was fully expecting that it was going to be a train wreck.”

Album in a Day 2024 (w/ Andrew Huang) - YouTube

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He continues, “We were going to make the worst album ever, and that’d be why it would be a really fun video, but we made some songs we really liked, and we found that making a ten-track album in a day was actually achievable.”

Scallon does admit that, given the circumstances, there wasn’t a lot of pressure on them to make a good album, but notes that such an exercise forces them to cut straight to the chase.

“You can't spend time thinking, ‘What's my amp setting?’ When you get rid of that part of the songwriting process, you actually make better music,” he says matter-of-factly. “It’s like throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. Not everything needs to be a masterpiece.”

In 2022, the YouTube megastar launched a signature range with Schecter, comprising six‑, seven‑, and eight‑string models available in both left‑ and right‑handed setups.

Guitar World’s full interview with Rob Scallon will be published in the coming weeks.