I’ve been working on my CD. I just finished the fifth track the other week and went back to the fourth one and cranked up the quality by a factor of ten. The fifth piece was a bit of a revelation to me. I created the structure before I wrote a note of it. That’s no doubt an exceedingly common practice, but it’s the first time I did, and man… there’s no looking back now. It worked like magic. It left me free to work on any part, any time, even though I ended up creating it sequentially. When I went back to the fourth piece, all the problems with it popped out on one hearing, and I knew exactly what I needed to do. The result is spectacular. Now I just have the other three to work on. I just listened to the first two. One is fine; the other can use some serious work.

On the piece I finished today, #4, I got to do some real orchestration. It’s pretty simple, but miles away from the single melodic thread stuff I’ve done up to now. Huge fun. And for the first time, I’m confident I have the makings of a really cool album. I’ve yet to decide if I’ll run the tracks into one another and make one huge structure. We’ll see.

I received Ott’s latest the other day. Sadly, I’m not as impressed as I thought I’d be. The track, Rogue Bagel, still stands out as the best. I have to get Simon Posford’s latest now.