You may have seen my video last month about taking commissions for custom compositions. I had a really nice response to that video and those commissions have been of immense help. I’m really proud of the music that I’ve recorded over the past month, from a quartet with erhu and shamisen to large string ensembles to folk duets. As I’m still inside, you can still get in contact with me if you’re in having me write something for you. In the meantime, though, I wanted to let you in on part of the process that goes into crafting the final, delivered piece.

When someone gets in contact with me, as part of our discussions I usually ask for the mood, instrumentation, and some information about the occasion or person that the piece is for. This helps me start in a musical direction. The biggest challenge for any of these compositions is the beginning, the clean slate. In this phase, I spend a lot of time staring at the honey locust tree outside of my studio window while I mess around with different ideas.

Now, it is not uncommon for me to generate a few different leads at this point. I’d like to say that I just hit the nail on the head on the first try, but that would be a lie. It does happen, not always, but sometimes. Realistically, about 50% of the time I don’t use the first idea, as if I had to dig through the first one to get to the second one. It’s a pain in the butt because I don’t always know that I’m going to shelve the first idea. Sometimes I have to develop it, to dig a long way before I can get to that better idea.

So what I’d like to share with you today is one of those first ideas. With this one, it isn’t that I didn’t like the music, I’m actually quite fond of it. However, it just ultimately didn’t fit closely enough to the mood for which I was aiming. I put a fair amount of time into this and don’t often develop an idea to this extent before moving on. With this one, I wrote the cello part first, then guitar, then double bass. Two-thirds of the way through (after I added the guitar) I started having doubts about the direction things were heading but I thought I could get it back on target with the bass part. I pulled it closer to that target but not close enough for me to feel comfortable delivering it. So I shelved the idea and went back to looking at the honey locust tree out my window.

But I’d like to share it with you. It’s challenging to put my shortcomings on display, sure, but I also think it’s healthy to some degree. If I didn’t make this video then this little trio would just end up as yet another file on my hard drive that wouldn’t be heard until I opened it up five years from now to go “oh yeah I remember that” and then shelve it for another 5 years. So now maybe it can have a more productive life than that. I hope you enjoy it ☺