I thought it might be nice to scratch some notes down here so that my write-up will be easier next time.

Today’s random note composition was # 296. There were some odd bits and then a nice 5 note phrase. I figured out that it was in Ab minor. After that I had a really hard time trying to understand what the palette of diatonic chords was. Seeing E and B and having to call them Fb and Cb was really confusing.

I re-spelled it as G# minor instead of Ab minor, but was still stuck.

Then I transposed the whole thing up a half step but by that point that just sounded wrong! And I was more than an hour deep. So I scribbled something down and called it a morning. I visualize the piano lab at the community college and picture the prof shooing us out after 90 min. “Just write it down and go to your next class”

I feel embarrassed / ashamed that a key signature with a lot of accidentals is such a road block. I remember telling my piano prof. that for me it’s like the circle of 5ths was on an island with the key of C up top in the sunshine and as you add more sharps / flats you go into increasingly deep water until finally you’re in the sunless depths with Cthulhu. She snorted at me. I guess for her it’s like using the entire alphabet — no reason to be afraid of the letters W X Y and Z?

I hate trying to read music with sharps and flats, but I have to admit the physical sensation of grabbing a cluster of black keys is very cool. I like the sound of playing all 5 of them at once.

What Scale Has All Black Keys? Exploring the Mysteries of the Pentatonic Scale

The black keys on a piano correspond to the notes of the G-flat major pentatonic scale or the E-flat minor pentatonic scale. These scales are derived from the G-flat major and E-flat minor scales, respectively, by removing the fourth and seventh degrees of the scale.

I’m going to guess that there are other flavors of pentatonic scales depending on what note is “home”.

Random observation — it’s 4:30 pm; I really want to build some sort of daily routine. Right now I’m wide awake, creative, want to keep going — but it’s time to put on my other hat. I’m trying to get out of my office / off the desktop computer by sunset. It seems like if I’m still working in my office by 7, it gives me brain spins and next thing I know it’s 4 am.

As of today I did my random note composition, made some observations here, checked in with the Discord peeps (asked how “real musicians” feel about the bottom half of the circle of 5ths!), and sent an email to a friend. I read my emails of the day. I had coffee and a salad. Time to say goodbye to desk work and shift focus.

I like this picture of me in my studio.

To the far right, you can see one of the giant sheets of graph paper that I use for music notation paper. Those are what I use at the piano.
The computer monitor is displaying the piano roll window in FL Studio. The small midi controller is connected to FL Studio and the large midi controller is connected to my 2 Korgs. The Korg Minilogue XD is new as of this summer and I’ve barely explored it. The 05R/W is from 1995. Happy 30th birthday, little Korg!

To my left is my giant chart of the Planet Project, arranged for a year of work.

On the wall directly in front of me is a bulletin board with reminders like “Software wish list” and a format for music file names.

As for the plants. Jay Allen in his “Stop Writer’s Block” class talks about setting up your work environment in a way that is conducive to your creativity. In his studio he has a ceramic head which he has kept in his office for many years and had brought along to each place he’s lived. (I think he said he found it in a dumpster somewhere?) In my case there is a plant that my mother-in-law bought for me in 1981, an epiphyllum. We have cuttings of this plant all over the house. I love it. It is quirky and tough and sometimes produces gigantic fragrant white flowers that stay open for only one night. Another workdesk inhabitant is Sea Onion (Bowiea volubilis). The ones I have on my desk are descended from one that I got for my 8 year old, close to 20 years ago! And finally, there’s a cluster of bromeliads. All the members of this plant collection tolerate neglect, and have phases of dormancy and phases of growth.

Just like my music.

I’ve been getting to know some new musicians over on Bluesky. Here are some!

Isaac Io Schankler

And also here

https://aerocade.bandcamp.com/track/the-moonlight-sonata-but-the-bass-is-a-bar-late-and-the-melody-is-a-bar-early

Telebasher

Mannfishh

Garett Schumann

This work was presented for the first time on the evening of Sunday, November 3 at an event held in and around Burton Memorial Tower. The unique program welcomes attendees into the belfry of the Charles Baird Carillon where everyone enjoyed a communal ‘headphone listening experience’ featuring new ambient electronic music created by Sara and myself alongside accompanying carillon improvisation performed by Julie. The result was a performance that bound individual and group resonances together, that transformed internal and external listening into a memorable, collective experience. This video presents my contribution, “O Beata Maria”, as a standalone stereo electronics composition, accompanied by photos from the November 3 event taken by photographer Eleanor Daftuar. The colorful graphic on the title image was created by designer Brendan C. Page. “O Beata Maria” is a multi-layered synthesizer arrangement of the first half of the motet ‘O Beata Maria’ (1551) composed by sixteenth century African-Portuguese composer Vicente Lusitano. The original work has six parts, and I used a suite of VST software instruments, reverb, delay, and granular synthesis effects to render Lusitano’s original music as a sparkling, aural tapestry of 48 individual layers. Overall, my arrangement begins by exploring delicate differences in timbre and speed (24 of the layers are rendered at 54 BPM, the other 24 at 55 BPM), then reverb effects dominate the mix, and, finally, granular synthesis.

This is a new work for edited stock footage and music that I released on 11/19/23. I composed and produced the score using Reaper and the free VST instruments Sitala (bass drum), Podolski (arpeggiating synth), Helm (bass synth), Surge XT (spacey lead, secondary bass synth), Emergence (granular synthesis effect on the spacey lead), Oril River (reverb on one track of the arpeggiating synth).

Evan Pincus

William Lang

“they’ve adapted themselves to their chosen resonant chamber over time”

One of my ongoing problems is how to organize my music folders. I like storing things by date, but that means when software like FL Studio, Reaper or MuseScore go looking for files, they are not in the expected place. They tend to store things in “documents”.

This is something I need to do some reading on, but in the meantime here are my music folders that I’ve generated in the last 2 weeks. Many of the jpgs here are screencaps taken while wrestling with software. I annotate the screencaps with things like “CLICK HERE” lol. It’s one of the ways I express my frustration with learning new software; each jpg represents another bit of blood, sweat or salty salty tears.

12/31/24

1/2/25

1/8/25

Update on the Random Note project

From Friday 12/27 to Thursday 1/9 — numbers 282 through 292

Discuss the music manuscript

This is Random Note Project 285.

Finish the Planet Project in a Year: One Minute Sections X 50

none yet as of Thursday

Software & Hardware to develop the timbres and textures

learning Kaivo, a softsynth plug-in that does physical modeling and granular synthesis
It is “modest” software (not as in-depth as something like UVI Falcon or Phase Plant)
Costs ~ $100
I was really attracted to the manual! Lots of pictures
Up til 6 am trying to get it to talk to FL Studio
workaround — installed a “plug-in wrapper” called NanoHost. Free!

learning Midinous
this is “indie” software; support the creator on Patreon or buy on Steam!
It is for node-based composition. Loops, random note generation
It creates midi that can be fed into soft synths or hardware synths
I want to use it to create interesting semi-random arpeggiated textures

Software to enable file-sharing

I started working on MuseScore. I watched some explanatory vids and tried it out
I can’t download MuseScore 4 until I upgrade my computer (Windows 8 vs 10)

Inspiration (parasocially) ex. videos, Skillshare classes

Jay Allen Skillshare — Precomposition, Destroy Writer’s Block for Good, MuseScore 4
Benn Jordan — This is where I heard about Midinous

Inspiration via interactions with human beings

Talked to my therapist Patricia, who is a musician
setting up lessons with tutor
talking a friend into getting a DAW so he can use Midinous
joined a Discord server

Format for lesson hand-in–

A written page
A page of music manuscript (Finale or MuseScore)
two .mp3 files

The written page will cover

1. Update on the Random Note project

2. Discuss the music manuscript — questions about music theory. What is the name of that chord? How could I make the voice leading better? Questions about the manuscript. Is there a clearer way to write this? How do you do X in MuseScore?

3. Finish the Planet Project in a Year

One Minute Sections X 50
transcribe (handwritten)
think about the big picture
Software & Hardware to develop the timbres and textures
Software to enable file-sharing
convert work in FL Studio into stems in Ableton Live
convert personal notation to MuseScore
Inspiration (parasocially) ex. videos, Skillshare classes
Inspiration via interactions with human beings

Several years ago I had music lessons (via Zoom) with a friend whom I had met at the community college. We started out working on music theory, and I sent him long pdf documents describing what I had worked on. During the summer of 2021 I said “OK, I’m going to finish the rough draft of my Planet project before you go back to college; I’ll post progress videos!” That worked really well. I can think of several times I was trying to meet a deadline and had to abandon something that wasn’t working, and try a different approach. The time constraints forced me to be creative in different ways. My tutor was very helpful. He had a welcoming, curious attitude towards my work. I appreciated his feedback, although sometimes I ‘appreciated’ it by taking the exact opposite of his advice. His feedback helped me to clarify what I was hoping to accomplish with each section of the music.

Here’s that summer’s work.

After 2021 there was a period of time where it was hard to work on music. We were packing up the house to get ready to move, and I spent hours searching for a new home. Moving took place Summer 2022. Dad died that fall, Mom died 6 months later. Summer 2023 was spent planting the young trees we had brought over from the old house. Christmas 2023 we had a flood in the basement which catalyzed the decision to have a barn built. The barn was conceived that spring and born in late August.

During the Spring of 2024, I felt like I had enough brain cells left over to start a new music project. The goal was, every morning I would toss 15 dice, and then create something using those notes. Three of the dice are blank, and 12 have the chromatic solfege syllables written on them.

Music notation is still very awkward for me, so I write music down in a kind of hybrid notation on giant sheets of graph paper. Here’s the accumulated work so far!

And here’s the work for the past 2 weeks

It’s compositions 282 through 292. In 2 weeks that’s 11 compositions and 20 pages!

Another idea I had was to go back to Skillshare and see how many classes were available that were taught by my favorite instructor, Jay Allen. I’ve watched many of them already, but I was feeling completionist and wanted to march my way through all those classes, taking notes.

Here’s page 1 of the classes he has available — there’s a total of 9 pages!

The first class I started listening to was one of Jay’s new ones, called “Precomposition: The Secret to Creating Great Music”. It was great to be ‘hanging out’ with Jay again — he’s so chill — the Bob Ross of music theory. Apparently it was a good video to start with, because it started a whole wave of creativity. Because of Jay’s class, I realized that I really wanted to finish my Planet Project. Meanwhile in December, many creative people I follow on Bluesky were posting their “projects of the year”. It was so inspiring to see the results of their persistence. I posted on Bluesky that I wanted to do something similar in 2025. To represent the project in visual form, I created a giant chart

Here’s a schematic of it

The chart is a place where I can work on many of the things Jay Allen talks about in his Precomposition course, and also helps me keep on track with deadlines.

I talked to my tutor about setting up lessons again. I’m concerned about inundating him with writing the way I did in our lessons several years ago. He teaches at a public school now and his time is limited. I told him that I would hand in 2 written pages and 2 mp3s per lesson, and it would be great if the deadline was on Saturdays at noon — though we can have the online lesson whenever best fits his schedule.

I started work 2 weeks ago and realized that if my turn-in time is Saturday at noon, I sure don’t want to be up at 2 am Friday night pulling things together. So here I am on a Thursday afternoon figuring out what to say for the turn-in date.

Here are several videos I have really enjoyed lately.

Here Adam Maness talks about modal interchange and then his particular slant on it. His team calls it “Cush Chords” — a name they made up to describe the vibe.

For example — he takes a simple chord progression I ii iv V

You could simply change the chords to what they would be in a different mode (ex. aeolian or phrygian). Instead what he does is, think about what key the phrygian is equivalent to? Then after playing the 1 in the original key, just change the chords to the 2, 6, and 5 of the new key. The result keeps the same “shape” as the original chord progression.

It would be good if I worked through some examples.

Another couple of videos had to do with Chromatic Mediants. My random notes of the day gave me a composition with some crazy chords, and I couldn’t tell if they were chromatic mediants or not.

Here Michael Keithson talks about how there’s Chromatic mediants in a strict sense and in a looser sense; he likes to use both. He’s a new resource to me; I’m glad I stumbled on him.

David Bennett gives an example (around the 10 minute mark) where he says “Is this a chromatic mediant, or would it be better to think of it as a secondary dominant?”

Now for something completely different — here’s Jameson Nathan Jones talking about sound design with Phase Plant, a soft synth. He steps through the process of creating a sound.

I really enjoy Nathan’s music. It’s the sort of genre I would like to work in (he calls it ambient with classical overtones). Usually I react to skilled musicians doing “my sort of thing” with envy and resentfulness. Ex. Venus Theory’s music makes me feel discouraged –“Why should I even be trying to do this. I should just sell all my instruments and give up”. So I watch VT’s videos, and avoid his music! But I don’t react that way to JNJ. It’s as if, VT does such an epic job that it seems like there’s nothing more that can be said, and I might as well just sit down and be quiet. There’s no room for me. Like trying to have a conversation with someone, but their knowledge and eloquence is overwhelming. But with JNJ I feel like there’s room left for me to add something. Like “yeah! Not only that, but, this too!”

I’m not sure why I have that reaction — doesn’t make a lot of sense.

OK, one more set of videos. I’ve been oblivious to Wicked (both the musical and the movie). But I saw an interview with Kristin Chenoweth talking about her experience with Ariana Grande (Chenoweth met her when Ariana was a star-struck 10 yr old!) Then I watched a video on the movie by Eric Voss, my favorite interpreter of what’s new and hot. That led me to several interviews with the composer, Stephen Schwartz. Turns out he also was the composer for Godspell! That was a favorite of mine in the 70s.