An ambitious new year's resolution

[marnen]

I have made an ambitious new year's resolution for 2007, which I hope I will be able to keep. In an effort to increase the amount of composition I do, I am attempting to keep a "musical diary" of sorts -- that is, I will be trying to compose a short piano piece each day.

There may be exceptions. I don't mind stretching a larger piece out over 2 days, and I might write some pieces for some other instrument than piano. I also don't know yet if I'll enforce this on days when I do a significant amount of other composition. But it seems like an interesting project.

I'll probably put up a website about this at some point, and possibly another LJ for the project as well. But in the meantime, here's the first entry. Wish me luck!

Comments

[helloalana]

Where've you been? The parties I've been to lately have been suspiciously Marnen-less...

[marnen.livejournal.com]

Generally at actual paying gigs -- which is good, but the downside of being a working musician is that I work when everyone else is relaxing.

[helloalana]

I know how it is; my dad's a guitarist. I remember running out the door with him after an early Thanksgiving dinner because he was playing at a restaurant that night...Still, I think doing anything artistic is worth a little sacrifice. When I was getting paid to write (sort of), I was pretty much in heaven. Well, except for the reality of that specific job, which sucked.

You know what I mean. :D

[marnen.livejournal.com]

Hey there! Missed you too...we should really get together next time it's possible.

For composition, I either use pencil and paper or direct entry into Finale. Mac OS X will print anything to a PDF file...look in the standard Print dialog.

If you want to improve your ability to get stuff written down as you hear it, do some musical dictation exercises.