What A Year 2010 Has Been

This has been the year of the iPad introduction, the passing of JD Salinger and the results of another census that will inevitably redistribute seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. We said goodbye to Eddie Fischer and "hel-LO (again) Betty (White)!"

I have more irons in the fire than I've ever had before and time seems to be just flying. I've continued to write music with my co-writer and I've spent less time on the three women script (but have actually found some time to work on it). It seems as though it has been especially challenging to complete projects this year. We took a trip to Juneau AK last month and had a lovely time. Definitely plan to go back - much more hiking to do than we had time available. So I guess the challenges applied to my travel as well this year!

As the year of the golden tiger winds down, I'm feeling as though I want the year of the metal rabbit to be the year of wrapping up open projects in writing and music. Since the year of the rabbit is traditionally associated with family and home, artistic pursuits and diplomacy, I'm hopeful that will be the case.

The year so far is a lot like a whirling dervish, with speed, nonlinear travel, and chaos. Is that what's supposed to happen in the golden year of the tiger?

I have been writing songs with my songwriting partner. Some are pretty good and some are pretty awful. I believe the more I write, the better they will be. I ended up upgrading my ancient notation software to Sibelius First. It's an impressive program so far, but I will probably end up needing full Sibelius before it's said and done. Mostly because Walt Aldridge turned me on to DADGAD tuning and my compositions haven't been the same since because I love writing in that open tuning and I want to be able at some point to use a hex pickup to directly write into Sibelius. Sibelius First can't handle anything other than standard guitar tuning. :(

That said, I haven't forgotten about the three woman script (who am I kidding? As if those characters would let me!) and I've been sneaking little bits of it in here and there. It's just that the things with deadlines turn into the squeakier wheels. As long as I'm moving it forward, I consider all of it progress.

So I've let six months go by since my last post. There's a reason why I wasn't a section editor with editorial deadlines for very long. No, I never missed one of those deadlines, but I don't think I'm cut out for editorializing on a regular, frequent basis. At least, not in print.

The three women script is temporarily on hiatus while I work out some things in my head with the storyline. Meanwhile, I've been playing music, doing a little traveling (which was a tremendous help to one of the other scripts I'm writing - nothing like actually visiting a place you've written a scene about), and now writing some music.

My partner decided to write song lyrics and asked me to write the music. I have almost no experience with this: years of piano lessons in elementary school, self-taught guitar in high school plus two unfinished songs written during that same time, one semester of music theory in college and a piece of jazz music I wrote on a lark about ten years ago.

I gave myself a refresher on music theory courtesy of several websites on the Internet, have done basic chording for the four sets of lyrics I've been given, and fired up the Notation software I purchased about ten years ago when writing that piece of jazz music. I was grateful it ran on Windows Vista but had to order a cable that to covert MIDI to USB since the midi to serial/parallel (can't remember which) cable that came with my keyboard years ago won't connect to my laptop.

Next, to put the chords I've written into the Notation software, flesh out the melody and add whatever embellishments it needs. I promised to have at least one song done by this Wednesday. Well, done in the sense of a first draft. I promise to post on my progress.