Journal

This journal is a daily account of my creative work. It's intended to be accurate, not entertaining. If you decide to read it you'll see how I actually write and compose. It's also freewritten, quite unlike my other writing. The ideas I express here are thoughts going through my head rather than definitive views or even solid opinions. So don't take them too seriously. To prevent AI scraping, older entries require a (free) subscription.

Listen to my most recent piece here:

August 14, 2025 - "Returning Snowbirds"

Going to have to change my journaling schedule as the podcast recording is running late into the night and I'm too tired to write by the time it's done. In any case, we just recorded chapter 4 of DBL and it went quite well, better than the previous chapters I think. Perhaps we needed to do the first three as warmup. Episodes are turning out to be around two hours on average. We are pressing on, and will record chapter 5 today. I hope my throat can handle this schedule.

Reviewing the previous podcast and making a few edits to DBL took up the rest of the day. Unfortunately the edits didn't take due to the server problems that I've previously discussed. So, DBL is frozen as is until I have the time and energy to change servers away from GhostPro. Which may not happen at all, because I am already trying to do too many things at once.

Hoping to do some work on "Snowbirds" tomorrow (today now).

August 13, 2025 - "Returning Snowbirds"

Fairly exhausting day as the podcast, which is already taking longer than I expected, took this time even longer than I expected. Three hours of recording. Hopefully this is the longest single episode, but still. When you factor in prep time, revision, and post-processing, it's going to amount to a full day's work for each episode and if there are thirty episodes, which seems likely, we're talking about a month of work just to produce the recordings.

With this amount of labor I hope there is a payoff of some sort as I have already sunk a ridiculous amount of (completely unpaid) time into creating and promoting DBL, and didn't realize the podcast was going to take so much additional work. I'm very grateful to have found a co-host who's willing to stick it out with me.

Fortunately I'm still managing to make progress on "Snowbirds," and the three-minute coda is about half done now. But, I am expecting slow going over the next six weeks while the podcast recording is happening simply due to time limitations and the fact that I need a little rest each day to be sharp enough to perform well on mic. It seems my dream of having enough time to fully devote and properly myself to music is going to have to wait a while longer to be fulfilled.

August 12, 2025 - "Returning Snowbirds"

Okay day today. I feel like my concentration is fine and my mind isn't wandering but somehow my productivity isn't where it should be. I need to rethink my time management because what works for writing prose doesn't work for writing music. Composing is very taxing, much more taxing than writing nonfiction and also more taxing than writing fiction. Your whole day really needs to be built around creating composing time where you're at your maximum mental powers and have good energy to force your way through tough problems.

Despite this, work on "Snowbirds" is proceeding reasonably well. I am a little worried that the "coda of the coda" is too simple and lacks bite. There are certainly nice passages in this coda that would fit well into a symphonic novel but the question of how well they will flow from the pop song preceding remains open and I am probably going to write here every day for a month that I'm worried about this until I can finally hear it all together. And hopefully it works but who knows!

At this point the last two pages of the coda are finished except for some touchup that will need to be done after the earlier parts have been put together. Working backwards is causing the tempos to not flow perfectly but they're just going to have to sit that way for now.

The coda consists of six poems, so I am about one third done with it now. Tomorrow I think I will keep working backwards and write page 4.

I am also a little worried about leaving loose ends in page 5 and 6 that might take longer to tie up later. Normally I would avoid this. But since I don't feel I can do the final polish until I hear them in a longer context I guess this is how it will have to be.

I've never written anything backwards from the end before.

The suspense continues.

August 11, 2025 - "Returning Snowbirds"

Very happy with how this piece is sounding as I continue arranging. On the other hand I am not getting enough focus time in right now. Something I need to improve going forward.

An interesting development today is the return of winds. I haven't made significant use of the wind section since The Forest of Lost Memories, which was several years ago now. But in solving the harmony issue I mentioned yesterday it occurred to me to abandon the strings and whip out the trusty bassoon+horns combo for harmonies. This fixed the "big buzzy gray string sections not working in cluster chords" problem and was also suitable for the section at hand. Then I started thinking of more ways I could orchestrate with winds the way I used to. Not that I've gone super wood heavy like I did in some early works. Just closer to a traditional symphonic balance, with reasonable touches of wind color.

My worry now is: what will happen when I finish the coda and get back to the vocal body of the song? Integrating woods with pure orchestra writing is easy and a matter of course, but getting them to make sense in a pop song is a much harder thing. That's why my recent orchestrations have been so string heavy. Double reeds especially tend to not fit in a pop context. So, whipping out the woods here is risky. Very risky. And, once again I won't know whether it will work for a few weeks, even though I can already tell that the coda in itself is going to be good - very much in the vein of my symphonic novels.

The suspense deepens.

August 10, 2025 - "Returning Snowbirds"

Ok day today. Plodding along with arranging. I am actually not very accustomed to translating a piano score into an orchestral one as in the past I haven't worked that way and instead used a much looser outlining technique. The reason I started writing much more detailed piano outlines is that songwriting in an orchestral context is new ground for me and the arrangement can get very involved, especially when you consider the difficulty of producing a pop mix that squashes it all together. If I were writing purely orchestral works or sparsely arranged songs I would be more confident in my control and not feel the need to outline so tightly.

In any case, translating piano chords to the orchestra is not always straightforward, and I've run into a few minor problems of that sort today. Particularly "cluster chords," as I call them, where the extensions are in the root octave rather than their usual position, sound different for a large string orchestra than they do on a piano or even solo strings. The buzziness of the big string sections makes them less intelligible, whereas on the piano they're actually quite limpid. Thus, some of the passages that sounded clear in the piano version may be too dissonant in the orchestration or otherwise a bit off from the meaning I intended. Not quite sure what I'll do about this yet. Possibly the right dynamics can improve it or possibly the chords need to be re-voiced.

I also revised the one questionable poem in the bridge, which I think is good now, and changed the final chord, which may still need more work for the reason just mentioned.

My real worry right now is that this song will turn out to suck. Having spent such a long time working in a piano version that is very far sonically from the final product, and also planning to create a final product that's different from anything I've done before and indeed anything anyone else has done before too, there is an uncomfortable chance of failure. There are still weeks before I'll be able to tell if the all-important vibe of the song hits right. Possibly it was a mistake to work this way and especially on such a long song when fumbling in a new direction. Well, time will tell.

August 9, 2025 - "Returning Snowbirds"

Some good things happened today. As usual it's my day to call the fam and get out of the house, so I didn't get a lot done. However what I did get done was very promising.

Rather than go for a run as usual I decided to change pace and went backpacking off trail. I rarely do this but it worked out today with a good ramble and I was only lost momentarily. I returned home more refreshed than I have been of late, as I have been athletically lethargic since my fast, even though it was some time ago now.

I started arranging the coda music of "Snowbirds" from the big melody at the center. For weeks I have only worked on this song in a piano outline and had almost forgotten the orchestra. Those patient weeks of dry sketching in piano clinks are now delivering. When I finally whipped out the big strings to play the central coda theme, the sound was huge and magnificent and I was very pleased. Whether it really delivers depends on whether the song as a whole fits and works, but taken on its own, the coda music is excellent and reminiscent of my music for The Forest of Lost Memories, though simpler in keeping with this pop song.

A challenge for "Snowbirds" is going to be mixing all of the parts together convincingly, because the opening of the song is still intended to start in a harpsichord-driven chamber style, and the ending is now for a big orchestra. However, I laid the groundwork for this combination already in "Emergency Call" and by building on the mix style I developed there I should be able to get the job done. My spring reverb was the key to getting everything to fit there and I hope that trick does the trick again. Of course, once again everything depends on whether this song really works when it's all put together with the voice. And I'll be in suspense on that for a few weeks... which is rather tense!

I also backed up DBL. I still need to go over this backup for errors but I first want to create a complete offline working version of my entire site. Then I can deal with moving to a new server at some later date. I am still having the server problems and haven't been able to correct a few stray sentences I dislike. I've even had trouble saving this journal lately so I am going to split it off into two pages soon and archive the earlier entries.

So, as I said, not much done today but everything is looking quite promising.

August 8, 2025 - "Returning Snowbirds"

Today I finally declared the outline done after one or two more minor tweaks. This final outline is file number 147. There is still a questionable poem but I can deal with that later. I then moved the components into the full score but have not begun orchestrating yet. I am planning to arrange the coda first because it's freshest in my mind and I have a positive feeling about it.

I also wrote a closing/retrospective piece looking back on the genesis of DBL. I added this to the "30 favorites" article. It is the closest I've gotten to writing anything autobiographical and hopefully the closest I will get. The reason I wrote this now is that I was thinking about the interview segment of the podcast which I consider necessary to introduce myself to longtime readers who have never heard my voice before. In thinking about this, I decided I wanted to keep it as minimal as possible while still conveying the necessary information for readers to feel comfortable and have context. I decided that writing down the essentials would be the best way to get them to the forefront in a controlled fashion and avoid a rambling sharing session, which I don't want. I think it succeeded in this and it gives helpful context without being too personal. Ideally the interview segment will be a reiteration of the points I've made here.

An annoying task that I'm going to put off another day is backing up my website. The server problems that relented momentarily are back even more consistently now and I should at least make preparations for pulling the plug. But I'm sick of the whole thing. I remind anyone reading this not to use GhostPro hosting.

August 7, 2025 - "Returning Snowbirds"

Good day today even though I didn't get that much work done. The couple weeks I had off from music cleared my perspective and I was able to hone in on the small remaining errors in the outline for "Snowbirds" and correct them in short order. This makes me wonder whether there might be some advantages to working on two pieces at once. This would slow perceived productivity but it's possible the ability to step away from each one for a while would have benefits.

So, the coda now sounds excellent and the outline is done in all respects except for one of the two poems for the middle instrumental bridge, which I think could be improved. I am going to take another look tomorrow morning and make sure I'm not overlooking anything. However, I expect to move on to arrangement and orchestration tomorrow. Finally. This outline took a very long time.

To be clear, the next stage isn't just orchestration as there are still counterpoints to be written; I don't include these in the initial outline unless they have a fundamental structural importance.

I am going to share just the instrumental coda outline with you here, you can hear it below. Total running time for the song looks like it will be around 7:00 so this is the last 2:30 of the song.