Weeknotes: February 17-20, 2025

Monday February 17

Composing for hire remains a novel pursuit for me. I enjoy the challenge, but do it so rarely that I have to fight against my deep-rooted tendencies. I tend to overcomplicate things. Even when I'm writing instrumental music, I'm thinking about the overall structure and pacing of the arrangement, treating it more like a song than the mood-setting backdrop it sometimes needs to be. This piece I'm currently working on should flow unobtrusively behind a voice-over, but I'm struggling to keep it simple. 

Repetition with very subtle dynamic shifts is what's called for, but I keep inserting rests, a bridge, and dynamic dips and swells. The first version I submitted had all those things and when I watched the rough cut, I was a little embarrassed; the piece itself is nice, but the extra parts felt obtrusive and showy. I then tried a version with a shorter rest and truncated bridge and it played a little better on the fine cut, but still wasn't right. 

This morning I spend a couple hours on an edit that removes all chord changes outside the primary loop, but still has a sort of "bridge" moment about two-thirds of the way through. Why don’t I have it in my to kill that bridge? It’s not a pop song. 

Wednesday February 19

I light a candle at my desk and listen to an advance of an upcoming avant folk album by Cornish musician the Worm, which will come out in July. I'm a habitual evening candle person, but was recently hipped to the joys of a morning candle by my friend Jesse. Just because I'm at work doesn't mean I can't enjoy a cozy vibe. 

On a break, I try to wash the bulky wool "Lebowski Sweater" that I wear around the house on drafty days. Midway through the cycle it breaks the washing machine which will no longer drain. I haul the sopping sweater, which must weigh 25 lbs wet, out of the cold gray water and dump it into a plastic laundry basket. While I'm bailing out the tub with a takeout container Islay runs past me barfs up the entire meal she'd just eaten. The day quickly degrades into a chain of irritations, disappointments, and broken spirits. February has not been kind.

Thursday February 20

In my dream I drive out to Detroit to buy a holistic medicine called Dr. Herb's. It's just a box of teabags with a 3 lb barbell in it which causes the flimsy bottom to drop out. The guy I'm with has to go run an errand and leaves me in charge of his wiry little terrier whose name is Pocket Coffin.

In the afternoon, WEMU plays a mix of jazz standards and jazzed up versions of pop songs. I hear "Nature Boy," "Always Something There To Remind Me," and Kurt Elling doing a version of Joe Jackson's "Steppin' Out." The campus parking lot is wild and lawless. A blue SUV careens toward me in reverse and I swerve from its path at the last minute to Cole Porter's "Anything Goes."