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Today I did some writing after my daily talk with my assistant and it worked in that I got to the piano and was writing. I have a tiny clock on my piano and I checked the time - it's over 3 minutes so I think I won't need to expand it the way I thought I was going to...

I'm not a 9-5 person. 9-5 jobs are really uncomfortable for me. But I do notice that when I'm working at home (which presents a host of challenges) my best functional hours tend to be from about 9-5. Most every morning around 8:30 I have a Skype chat with my awesome...

Getting back into this after a week off is going to take some time. I won't loose the ethos but it's a little foreign to me. Specifically I'm having trouble playing it musically on the piano. And I"m full of wrong notes! The piece is very close to being mapped out. I...

For the last many days I haven't been composing. Damn it! I had too much pressure doing other things and I just didn't have the calm to compose. I hope to reverse this soon. Most of the stress is over with now. In fact, I'm going to work on this a bit right now.

I think one idea is that the dominant note of this piece is the low C on the piano. Everything goes up from there, and this makes it near impossible for me to go there from a Dc and have this be any sort of real arrival. So I figure my second to last chord, which...

I was able to recall the melody for this section, so I'm all set there. Now I have to write the harmony. That shouldn't be too bad. I"m still a bit ill as ease that my right hand has nothing to do yet except for the little tunes it has here and there - like 4 bars. I...

So far today I've had a case of the nothing. I didn't have any structured elements to today, such as a piano lesson, and that sort of kept me from fully waking up. I am going to see if I can get anything out tonight. Bad news for me - I lost the melody I wrote the...

Fire can be seen pretty easily as a piece where sections are clearly defined by key, and key is savagely defined by my bass riff. So C1 F Bb and Eb are essentially done, leaving only Db and C2. for Db I think I'm going to write a fugue that's a lot like the prior one...

My printer won't work soI can't print my piece! I am going to need to print this off a USB at Staples to get my score to the piano. Right now I did some work directly on the computer. I'd give myself an F for this work because it's approximately %50 correct and %50...

I have a pretty good idea for a loose map of what's to come for Fire. I think it's important not to make a tight plan - you need to let the sound tell you where it needs to go, so if you logically map it you are in trouble, if it's tight. but I think I'm allowed to...

My tune for the third chunk of my piece is now done. Now I have to harmonize it. Usually that's not so hard. It takes some time to do it, but your not generating the material from nothing - which is what you are doing when you write the tune. This takes much less...

Today was better. I put in something close to an hour. I think if I want to do what I'm saying I want to do this should go up to about 2 hours a day. Right now I'm building endurance. So I don't know when I'll get to the 2 hours a day, but that would be pretty legit -...

Yesterday I dropped the ball. I only composed for about 3 minutes. Shame on me! BUt in these three minutes I made an important discovery. My basic bass move is sort of an and ONE (two) AND ONE two, which isn't that unusual but a little different that your typical ONE...

Today I cease to be 42 and am now 43. When I find out I've gotten by another year with all ten fingers and ten toes working I feel grateful. I've been through a few really really dangerous medical situations - most particularly a situation where I had massive internal...

I was looking over my last melodic passage and my handwriting was too sloppy to see what it was. So that was the end of that. But I went to the piano and got a new section and wrote it out almost in real time. Very fast, and it's totally legit. I figure one thing that...

I can tell my hunger for composing is growing. Here's my situation: I've been up for a few hours - I woke up really early this AM - and now I want to compose at the piano. But I can't! I have to avoid waking people up. This is leaving me in a state where I so clearly...

The idea of bringing Fire to Oratorio as a possibility is adding great clarity to the writing. It's doing two things. This first is that, if we are to do it in this concert if there is time, I have to get it done really soon. That is focussing for me. Second, now I...

I have successfully used the clock to send me to the piano bench for 30 minutes, composing or not, and it has helped. Now I"m finding that things a re different because I am getting into a grove of visiting the piano several times spontaneously. I don't know if this...