11/16 bliss www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le1k...

I would pay handsomely for Pedro Pascal's voice in my GPS as long as after informing me of the optimal route he would always add "This is the way".

William Bolcom straight-up trolling me with an A♭♭ dominant seventh chord (the key signature at this point is Oops! All Flats)

A sign that you're playing too much Blue Prince: you get excited when you see this while walking down the street

Writing lyrics is usually kind of a pain but sometimes you get to rhyme soapbox with roadblocks.

Attention all musicians: the chance that I will buy your record goes up by around a factor of 10 if an excerpt of its sheet music is on the album cover.

An inordinate number of my dreams take place in restaurants.

Love to sight-read music in A# minor

RIP Tom Johnson, an incredibly original and vital voice in modern music. If you know one piece by him, it's probably "Failing"; if you don't, now you do: www.youtube.com/watch?v=GM9N...

The six most common answers on r/piano, in no particular order: 1. The time signature's fine, that's a triplet. 2. That staff has two voices. 3. It's a turn. 4. It's cancelling the previous accidental. 5. I can't tell unless you provide the clef and key signature. 6. Is that from musescore.com?

Today's belated discovery was Dopesmoker by Sleep, and it's glorious, the For Philip Guston of stoner metal. www.youtube.com/watch?v=cq1o...

I can finally confidently claim that I've memorized all the Bach Inventions. Biggest unexpected benefit: I always have something to do with my mind when it's not otherwise engaged. On to the Sinfonias?

A bandmate just reminded me of an old customer review of one of our CDs: "It doesn't get any better than this. ★★★★☆"

Carry-On: Snakes on a Plane but it's luggage

I knew a bunch of these dots individually but was unaware of many of the connections. A great intro to an amazing cluster of creative scenes.

Doing editing passes on my text writing usually means cutting material. Doing editing passes on my music writing usually means adding repetitions.

Sometimes a song needs to be 8 minutes long. shrubbies.bandcamp.com/track/memphi...

I went to look up the original music to Jingle Bells to see if it had a secondary dominant under "one-horse open" and boy was it not what I expected. Full score at drive.google.com/file/d/12gOf...

I've been managing to do okay for the last few weeks but I don't know what's going to happen when I run out of Nero Wolfe novels.

Reading through a bunch of scores of da capo arias and it feels kind of passive-aggressive that they all end with "Fine."

5 authors whose books I will buy without reading the synopsis: - Andrew Crumey - Steve Erickson - Thomas Pynchon (hoping for one more!) - Jack Vance (I mean, I bought all of them) - @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social Not counting mysteries/procedurals since that feels like cheating.

The way John Fogerty sings "Put me in coach" always makes me think that he's buying an airplane ticket.

Today's #A-Haydn-A-Day symphony is #45, the famous "Farewell". What jumped out this time was the brutally square opening theme with a full stop after 16 measures. I can hear him taking a deep breath and saying "OK, even this I can turn into a masterpiece."

Alpacas are what happens if you make a new animal and forget that you had "snap to grid" enabled.

Every indoor photo of this house looks like a terrible jigsaw puzzle picture. www.zillow.com/homedetails/...

Since this topic is going around again:

In case you needed any more proof that all the social media energy has now moved to Bluesky, this morning I found myself in the midst of a heated but polite debate on Bruckner tempi.

It seems to have fallen to me to commemorate the 25th anniversary of The 3 Way. www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pT3...

Apparently I'm the first person to ever say "Hepokoski" here. Anyway I'm finally reading Elements of Sonata Theory and the combination of technical bespoke jargon and hand-wavy vibey interpretations is actually really charming. Maybe it's a hermeneutics thing.

This one was working for me

Working through my feelings with more Scarlatti. 100 to go.

I voted

I guess it has fallen to me, the humor columnist, to endorse Harris for president wapo.st/3UqHWRM

I endorse Kamala Harris for president.

Trump’s closing message is a full blown hate campaign against black and brown people. Historians will look back in astonishment that this terrifying reality wasn’t the subject of wall to wall coverage and commentary in weeks leading up to this election. He’s not hiding anything.

I will never get tired of reading about people who were inspired to become musicians by playing Guitar Hero or Rock Band www.theguardian.com/music/2024/o...

RIP Robert Coover, a true original. My dad read The Universal Baseball Association waiting for my birth (he wasn't allowed in the delivery room back then). How many times have I read it? I have tunes to all the songs and sometimes forget whether some old-time player is real or from that book.

Not at all a fan of win probability graphs that make it look like 90% is four times as good as 60%. Please fill in both sides of the curve with each team’s color!

Been watching some PBS and I'm pretty sure that no word is more improved by pronouncing it with a British accent than "murder".

1967 Poland was pretty groovy. Add some Michael Stipe vocals and this could be my favorite R.E.M. B-side. www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tfl...

I have finally reached the midpoint of my project to play every Scarlatti sonata (or, as it is called in this household, "deedle deedle"). Only another 277 to go!

I have no idea how Toccata Classics makes money (although I just helped, a little) but their catalog has hundreds of mostly-obscure works by mostly-post-1900 composers and I have yet to be disappointed. Latest happy discovery: Ronald Center ("the Scottish Bartók")

Dibs on the statue theme from the Turangalîla Symphony.

You read Pynchon enough, you start writing tunes to all the songs 🚀

The Bantam mass market paperback served me well for my first few reads. Pretty good value for $5.95! #gr 🚀

The world atlas is consistently different in my dreams. The Middle East doesn't really exist but everything between Africa and India is land, divided into vaguely rectangular countries with disputed borders. There's no Antarctica but many islands in its place, popular vacation destinations.

I'm kind of glad I didn't listen to any recordings of the Bach Inventions while I was learning them but boy are some of my tempi non-standard. Most pianists seem to take C minor twice as slow and E major twice as fast as I do. I thought at least a few musicians would hear it my way!

I asked my wife why she only fills up her water glasses halfway and she said "I get bored".