Jimmy Webb, that cornerstone of American Songwriting who wrote many famous songs such as “By The Time I Get To Phoenix”, “Up Up and Way”, “Wichita Lineman” and countless others of which I would redirect you do his website, also topped off his career by writing a book on songwriting back in the late 90’s [...]

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photo credit: MUAZ BAHAJJAJJ
One of the cool things about dealing with words and music is the workflow is so much less complicated and portable than the usual trappings of instrumental writing I have for myself.  Within that personal world, I would always be thinking about the end result – the orchestration, dynamics, voicings, different [...]

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The weekend – primarily locked down in my own writing…a life story I am sending a friend of mine.  And during this time I downloaded Rachmaninoff symphony #2 and #3.  The 2nd is the Rattle/ LA recording and it blew me away.  The slower tempo.  I could hear so much of the counterpoint – parts [...]

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photo credit: toomooroo
The idea for a book continues to intrigue me, and I am starting to imagine its structure more and more.  Sometimes, the ideas come to me while driving, and I am struck also by the possibilities that it might work – not only in structure, but also practically, by being able to [...]

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photo credit: Atilla1000
Finally, finally, I have a chance to surf the piano keys and improv a bit last evening – starting off as a review of materials and general ideas for a chamber work, and then into free floating through a general idea for some arbitrary orchestral piece.  Somewhere in there I had time [...]

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After umpteen months, I finally finished this book.  What the user is presented is 100 chess positions and two questions per position.  It takes about 20 minutes to work through each and they are ambiguious as hell.  When you get done you add up your score and the results are broken down into different categories [...]

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  photo credit: Rob Inh00d
Sitting in the waiting room of the Subaru dealer while I received an oil change, I was reading an old Smithsonian which had some letters of Vincent Van Gogh.  I was floored by the reading and shocked that I knew nothing about them at all, or knew they existed.  The oil [...]

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Purchased Ivory piano samples on a Glyph drive, and I have to say I am totally impressed, not just with the technology, but with the sound which is very realistic and very flexible. 10 velocity layers. The player barely gets to 7-10% CPU when playing 32 voices with the pedal down. The [...]

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