music

Sineposts

Now here’s a track that’s certainly adequate. I’ve satisfied the requirement of Song-A-Day by writing, recording, and posting. It’s more involved than many that I’ve done before, and maybe even better produced. So why am I negative about it? Because it’s not what’s in my head; it’s not living up to its potential. Now, often when I have this feeling about a piece, it’s a failure on my part. It’s missing something, but I don’t know what, or I do know what but don’t know how to do it. That’s not the case here. My negativity is entirely the product … Continue reading

Lynn

There is no way to write what needs to be written today, what should be written today. I have no words adequate to convey the tempest of love, grief, happiness, sorrow, gratefulness, and numbness that are all raging within me. We meet people every day. Most of these meetings are short-lived and have little impact on our lives: a quick wave to a neighbor, a “pardon me,” to a stranger at the store. Many are routine parts of everyday life, whatever that means at a particular moment in time. We don’t remember the majority of the people we’ve met in … Continue reading

Relativity

One month. Four weeks. 28 days. 40,320 minutes during which the 30-odd Song-A-Day participants that gather on any given year write music. A lot of music. More music than many of us might have thought we had in us in total, much less annually. And yet, here we are with thousands of songs and recordings behind us. A famous quotation about the theory of relativity, often attributed to Einstein, but probably just a good anecdotal joke by a reporter goes like this: When you sit with a nice girl for two hours you think it’s only a minute, but when … Continue reading

Blue Saffron

This track is largely a continuation of yesterday with two significant distinctions. First, I had at least some nebulous idea of where I was going and how I was going to get there. Second, where everything in Agnostic Prophet came from software, Blue Saffron comes entirely from hardware synths and drum machines. That’s getting to be a pretty blurred distinction, though. Many modern hardware synths are little more than dedicated computers that run software synths. Where you draw the line is subjective, and the online arguments about one vs the other are as predictable as they are pointless. I’ve never … Continue reading

Agnostic Prophet

To quote one of my songs from last year, “here we go again….” For the last couple of years, and this one was no exception, I tried to talk myself into starting my writing on January 31. I typically write in the evenings, normally finishing and posting my track in the early hours of the morning. 2:00 AM is routine. The problem is twofold. First, and this is just a bit of ego, people have missed a lot of my tracks because they don’t show up until the next day. While having other people listen to the music isn’t a … Continue reading