David McMullin

Composer of music in search of a spirit of wonder.

Current projects include The Luminous Mysteries, a setting of the complete prayers of the rosary for choir and orchestra, and a series of compositions custom made for individual musicians recovering from strokes.

#Composer #NewMusic #ContemporaryMusic #MusicAsPrayer #MusicInHealth

#中文
#español

(Banner image above: colorful abstract painting, watercolor on rice paper, by PC Ning. Avatar: boring headshot of me.)

compositions: https://david-mcmullin.com/music
score videos: https://makertube.net/a/mcmullin
recordings (bandcamp): https://davidmcmullin.bandcamp.com/
recordings (mirlo): https://mirlo.space/david-mcmullin

Public Key

npub1xduv2nxma3e7x0h0u250x5xp8w5c5kcz3je8kqhfnaqzx2kwlwmss4plvw

NIP-05 Address

mcmullin_at_musicians.today@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsrx7x9fnd7culr8mh7928n2rqnh2v2tvpgevnmqt5e7spr9t80hdcprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0d4hhxarj9ecxjmntqy8hwumn8ghj7mn0wd68ytnwdams9dqtdy

Publishing to

relay.momostr.pink

nostr.now

relay.primal.net

Author Public Key

npub1xduv2nxma3e7x0h0u250x5xp8w5c5kcz3je8kqhfnaqzx2kwlwmss4plvw

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Published at

2026-10-27T07:49:52Z

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Last Notes

2026-10-15 13:51:34 UTC

I checked in on my still incomplete bandcamp page and it turns out it has attracted a small feline audience.
https://s3.us-east-005.backblazeb2.com/musicianstoday/media_attachments/files/117/445/231/518/064/898/original/087f8bb322dbd3cb.jpeg

2026-10-06 13:11:21 UTC

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Really? That’s a bummer. Well, that’s why I didn’t simply boost the post without the disclaimer. I have no idea what’s really there, who made it, how, or if any of it works.

2026-10-06 12:36:09 UTC

RE: https://openbiblio.social/@v_i_o_l_a/117389438868980786
I haven’t tried any of these but it looks pretty useful.
#note1cc2…l87h

2026-09-23 22:54:53 UTC

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I think of music as a form of prayer, and I love how it can touch each listener differently, becoming meaningful by resonating uniquely with their own thoughts, ideas, and emotions. I invite you into this experience, and I hope it will—mysteriously—come alive for you.
8/8

2026-09-23 22:53:49 UTC

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Music for the four remaining Luminous Mysteries, of The Wedding at Cana, The Proclamation of the Kingdom, The Transfiguration, and The Eucharist, is yet to be composed. When complete, these will be performable either as self-contained compositions, or together with this as a set constituting a full-concert work.
7/

2026-09-23 22:53:12 UTC

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This piece sings the introductory prayers and the first decade of The Luminous Mysteries. To evoke the mental state of divided attention that praying the rosary calls for, while the choir sings the cycles of repeating prayers, solo voices, representing our distracted, wandering, half-controlled attempts to contemplate the given mystery, arise from within the choir to sing words drawn from gospel passages related to The Baptism of Christ.
6/

2026-09-23 22:52:07 UTC

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These are traditionally grouped as the Joyous, the Sorrowful, and the Glorious Mysteries. In 2002—the same year I married the love of my life, whose name means "Light"—Pope St. John Paul II proposed a fourth set: The Luminous Mysteries.
5/

2026-09-23 22:51:03 UTC

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The rosary is a traditional scripture-based form of meditation, comprising many repetitions of simple prayers, typically counted using beads on a string. The prayers and beads are grouped into five "decades," each centered on ten repetitions of the Hail Mary. The constant gentle recitation of the same words is intended to induce a contemplative state, freeing the mind to engage with spiritual mysteries: each decade focuses on a specific biblical theme, idea or event with mysterious resonance.
4/

2026-09-23 22:49:58 UTC

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In the clarity of that strange time, having narrowed our horizons to focus on simple survival at home, and with COVID raging through the world outside, something finally clicked, and in March 2020 I got started on The Luminous Mysteries. Today, the pandemic continues, but so do we. This piece is offered in gratitude for answered prayers.
3/

2026-09-23 22:47:45 UTC

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This 20-minute composition for choir and orchestra is the first in a series of works setting the complete prayers of the rosary. I carried the idea for this project in the back of my mind for at least 20 years before beginning to compose it. When the pandemic first hit, I found myself managing a confluence of serious health issues affecting my community and those close to me.
2/

2026-09-23 22:46:29 UTC

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I’ll break the program note out into its own thread.
Program note
I like the spiritual idea of mystery—of something too profound to comprehend intellectually, which cannot be explained or grasped, only encountered and experienced. Music can be mysterious in that way.
1/
#WIP

2026-09-23 22:40:33 UTC

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And the first page of music:
https://s3.us-east-005.backblazeb2.com/musicianstoday/media_attachments/files/117/322/748/335/836/386/original/6c9248f439b9ee66.jpeg

2026-09-23 22:36:55 UTC

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Here are the front pages of The Luminous Mysteries (Part I) score, including title page, contents, instrumentation, performance instructions, program note, and texts. (Full text of each in image alt texts.)
@npub12k5…mtcf @npub1h4u…35ch
#wip #choir #orchestra #ContemporaryMusic #NewMusic #MyMusic #rosary #Christian #Catholic
https://s3.us-east-005.backblazeb2.com/musicianstoday/media_attachments/files/117/322/595/071/114/563/original/82e5f3feaae38bfb.jpeg
https://s3.us-east-005.backblazeb2.com/musicianstoday/media_attachments/files/117/322/596/383/928/093/original/dfe94b2414ebfa62.jpeg
https://s3.us-east-005.backblazeb2.com/musicianstoday/media_attachments/files/117/322/596/701/948/793/original/9b66f962b4b9eaaf.jpeg
https://s3.us-east-005.backblazeb2.com/musicianstoday/media_attachments/files/117/322/598/336/424/414/original/2cd08d19a1ffe0f7.jpeg

2026-09-23 20:04:13 UTC

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I’ve decided to call this the first piece in a series rather than the first movement of a long piece, as I had originally imagined. This is because it does stand alone, as the next pieces/sections will too, and even when they’re all done (years from now), they’re much more likely to be performed individually than all together. Still though, they’ll be designed to work together as one concert-length set.
The other reason is I really wanted to write a double bar and finish something.
2/

2026-09-23 19:51:03 UTC

Curating some “featured hashtags” recently made me realize I haven’t posted about my choral/orchestral work in progress in ages. Mostly because it hasn’t really been in progress for a while. I finished composing the first main 20-minute section about a year ago, and the orchestration and score for that were done by the end of 2025. (Not counting the minor engraving corrections I notice every time I look at it.)
1/?
#WIP #composing

2026-09-17 13:09:09 UTC

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A non-native speaker of English recently brought to my attention the ridiculous arbitrariness of “phrasal verbs” and how hard it is to keep straight things like “run into” and “run out of,” which have completely unrelated meanings, neither of which have anything to do with going into or out of anything, and neither of which involve running. I had never even noticed that.

2026-08-09 20:32:12 UTC

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The same spot a few evenings ago.
https://s3.us-east-005.backblazeb2.com/musicianstoday/media_attachments/files/117/067/432/102/094/925/original/9d796de7c97de307.jpeg

2026-08-09 20:22:06 UTC

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This was early this morning, over the marsh.
https://s3.us-east-005.backblazeb2.com/musicianstoday/media_attachments/files/117/067/388/556/906/301/original/31719690321df7b5.jpeg

2026-08-09 19:55:52 UTC

I’ve been in Georgia for the last week and a bit while my dad is in the hospital here. (He’s doing better, and they’re planning to discharge him to the acute rehab facility probably tomorrow.)
The whole time I’ve been here, the skies have been beautiful and dramatic. Here’s what it looked like earlier this afternoon when I went out for a walk.
https://s3.us-east-005.backblazeb2.com/musicianstoday/media_attachments/files/117/067/282/218/942/538/original/716fa39fb809320a.jpeg

2026-07-19 15:35:51 UTC

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Also, I have total confidence that you’ll know how to make all the right choices.

2026-07-19 15:35:19 UTC

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The challenges you’re facing are very hard, and though I’m experiencing some of my own, I’m in no position to help or offer advice. However, I want you to know that the way you approach these challenges, the way your family support each other, and the way you write about it here, gradually with more and more openness and vulnerability, are truly inspiring. Your occasional updates and Summer stories are little beacons of hope.

2026-07-04 14:07:20 UTC

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It would be very nice if music comes from laughter. There’s definitely something playful about it. (Oddly though, it’s very hard for music itself to be funny unless it has funny words.)

2026-07-04 13:17:52 UTC

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Good point—more human rhythms.

2026-07-04 12:56:15 UTC

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Heartbeats, footsteps too especially. Breathing to some degree… all of which are rhythms we ourselves produce rather than ones we find in the forest or wherever. I’m having trouble even thinking of any external ones. Water dripping is probably the most common. Ocean waves are generally periodic but with a lot of variation, not precisely rhythmic. Certain bird calls and insect sounds? What else?

2026-07-04 12:23:18 UTC

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That makes sense in terms of the percussive transient sounds, but consistent periodic rhythmic sounds are pretty rare in nature, and don’t tend to mean any one thing. Why are we so drawn to those? Maybe because they’re typically human? I don’t know.

2026-03-03 01:25:51 UTC

The way changing the attribution of an artwork affects is value and reception is strange. If a painting worth nothing turns out to be a Rembrandt, it’s suddenly worth millions. Then if it turns out to be by someone else it’s worth nothing again. Meanwhile the painting is what it is and hasn’t changed. Either it’s a good painting or it isn’t. The hero worship matters more than the art.
Re: @npub1we7…x6u8
https://mastodon.social/@CStamp/116162464420726878

2026-02-27 18:56:09 UTC

Spiritual guidance is definitely one of the things you can’t get from an LLM. The pope’s reason, because an AI “will never be able to share faith,” is pretty much why I don’t want it for music either. (Whether you choose to take “faith” there literally or metaphorically, art is about sharing something machines can’t have.)
Re: @npub1z7v…ptur
https://mastodon.social/@tiffanycli/116141356766369499

2026-02-03 22:52:55 UTC

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I’d ask the librarians at the Boston Public Library and/or the New England Conservatory library. I doubt they’d do it for you but they’d probably know who could.

2026-01-16 03:14:12 UTC

I got some email from Bandcamp today which got me to log in and see my stats. Apparently, only one brave soul (ONE!) has ever made it all the way from beginning to end of this 8-and-a-half minute piano piece.
It's extremely slow and spacey, I know, and better for live performance in a good space than for listening on a phone. But come on: it won't hurt you! Who will be the second person to endure the whole thing?
https://davidmcmullin.bandcamp.com/track/another-sun

2026-01-09 23:54:05 UTC

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Anything with a “supposititious bookworm” has to be on the right track.

2025-12-17 13:58:46 UTC

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Quick, name three important businessmen from 18th century Vienna.
No?
Okay now try composers.

2025-10-26 15:49:12 UTC

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Hey two of my favorite fedizens share a birthday—how ‘bout that!
https://sfba.social/@NorcalGma2/115441102221068442
@npub1s4k…g9yf

2025-10-20 17:40:21 UTC

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My maternal grandmother, born in Chicago in 1915, got a job as a switchboard operator during the great depression, by lying about her experience.
Her first morning at work, the first thing she did was say the switchboard is broken, we have to call the repairman.
The repairman came and asked what’s wrong with the switchboard. She said nothing—But I don’t know how to work it, and I really need this job. Will you teach me? And he did. It probably didn’t hurt that she was a good looking woman.

2025-10-20 17:32:21 UTC

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Enough complaining though. From here on I’ll make this a thread for random family lore.

2025-10-20 17:28:34 UTC

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I get really ticked off at people with a background like mine who are against immigrants. You know the type: Bigot McNativist, whose children’s given names are like McKinley and Sullivan, spouting off about keeping the Haitians and the Salvadorans out. I know a lot of different kinds of immigrants in a lot of different contexts, and I have never met a single one and thought the country needs fewer people like that. Plenty of “Real Americans (TM)” I can’t say the same for.

2025-10-20 16:52:18 UTC

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They left Ireland (a few left Holland) and came to America at different times and probably for different reasons. Sure, as conservatives like to brag, they “came here legally,” but all that meant at the time is that they weren’t Chinese. They didn’t need paperwork or visas or anything, they just showed up. They may not have received a warm welcome, but they got to work making this country a better place—just like people from all over the world are still doing today.

2025-10-20 16:41:38 UTC

This quip in response to the news of the Irish government’s new Basic Income for Artists has me thinking about my ancestors.
I’m not a genealogy maven and I don’t know a lot about my family history. I do know this though: they were all immigrants. Or children or grandchildren etc etc of immigrants. And that’s how I see myself, although I was born in the U.S. into relative privilege.
https://musicians.today/@mcmullin/115405545067228946

2025-10-19 16:11:52 UTC

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Why does it bother you that I don’t want to get sick?
How do my COVID precautions hurt you?
If you think I should just give up, get with the program, and catch it already:
Why should I?
Why do you care?
And why are you going out of your way to tell me?
What do you think you gain from this?
You are cheerleading for a disease.
Isn’t that pathetic and weird?
Isn’t there something else you’d rather do with your life?
6/

2025-10-19 16:10:31 UTC

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You can get lost in lots of complications, but what I think about this is simple:
1) COVID is bad.
2) I don’t want it.
Perhaps you disagree. You may not believe (1) or you may feel differently about (2). Fine! I don’t expect to change your mind, and I’m not telling you what to do. Live your life.
What I don’t get is: why do people want to lecture me about this? My position is not crazy and it’s not hard to understand. I shouldn’t have to explain, justify and apologize for it all the time.
5/

2025-10-19 16:05:49 UTC

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But I understand that most people just what to get on with their lives, and they have no actual malice toward me. They see me in my N95 and maybe they think it’s weird, but they don’t mind and they carry on without making an issue of it.
This isn’t for them; it’s for the angry, self-righteous, self-appointed COVID salesmen out there.
4/

2025-10-19 16:03:13 UTC

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The rant that’s brewing here is not directed at the vast majority of people out there behaving as if COVID doesn’t exist. I do wish there were a greater sense of solidarity, and a greater willingness to tolerate inconveniences for the sake of the vulnerable among us. I spent the last two nights in the ICU with one such person (not for COVID), so this is a perspective I feel acutely.
3/

2025-10-19 15:56:56 UTC

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What makes a person a voluntarily want to do propaganda in favor of a disease?
Am I the only one who finds that strange?
2/

2025-10-19 15:54:20 UTC

A couple days ago, I boosted a question about PPE to avoid COVID, and someone replied that we “need to stop” with all these protective measures, and the sooner we do, the “better we will be.” I obviously disagree: I don’t “need to stop” protecting myself because some stranger says so, and I would not “be better” with a debilitating illness.
I can’t find that comment and I seem to have accidentally deleted my response. But I keep thinking about it…
1/
#COVIDisNotOver

2025-07-21 19:11:52 UTC

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That third one looks like a royal portrait or something. But classier than any actual royals.

2025-06-23 03:52:51 UTC

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I agree with you on all counts. There’s much to be enraged about but rage won’t sustain us for the long haul. The little glimpses you share of life in your hillside refuge, of your garden and your baking, Summer and her pal—these do help spread peace.

2025-05-11 00:13:16 UTC

Ever since my in-laws told me what they call asparagus in Chinese, I’m using that name for it in English too: dragon whiskers.
#LanguageLearning #Chinese

2025-05-08 18:58:24 UTC

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And…? What’s he like? I don’t know anything about him except what I read in the NYT an hour ago, (which I take with a big grain of salt with these kinds of things).

2025-03-27 20:27:43 UTC

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I agree it’s a shame that so few people experience music as something we •do• together, rather than just something we consume. But that wasn’t what I was complaining about here, nor was it about a decline in musical education or vocabulary.
I’m lamenting the narrowness of vision that understands all music just as a passive mood reflector, and not as a sublimely powerful, transformative soul-shaking experience.

2025-03-27 18:00:02 UTC

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Now I've tried playing with it once. I'll try again later, and will probably have much more to say about it if I find the time. For now: This is at once (fascinatingly):
1) Not a bad thing for what it is, probably useful for most people and reflective of how they think about music; and
2) Emblematic of everything I can't stand about this widespread diminished understanding of what music is and what it can do.

2025-03-25 21:12:25 UTC

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I was afraid I would object so strongly to the approach they describe here that I’d be boiling mad, but it’s actually pretty interesting, and it probably works; I’d be curious to try it out. It seems reasonably well thought out, but the whole thing is built up from premises and assumptions about music that I don’t share, and even actively resist. For just that reason, though, it’s clarifying as a thought experiment.

2025-03-10 12:54:52 UTC

“We’re facing an unsustainable rate of reinfection for an unsustainable percentage of the population with a virus that carries an unsustainably high risk of long-term damage.”
From: @npub12sa…2fym
https://ottawa.place/@Cassandra/114135523324806653

2025-03-05 00:03:30 UTC

Great t-shirt, worn by a woman on the oncology floor. Big letters across the chest:
“Yes, they’re fake. My real ones tried to kill me.”

2025-03-03 12:18:32 UTC

When I hear “content” I think:
The bottle exists to carry the wine.
The wine does not exist to fill the bottle.
From: @npub19rx…l577
https://elekk.xyz/@someonetellmetosleep/114096283629250040

2025-03-03 01:43:54 UTC

Why am I still wearing a mask in 2025? For exactly the same reasons I wore it in 2021. Because nothing has changed.
Except maybe the way people look at me. But funny looks don’t transmit viruses. Inhaled aerosolized particles do.
From: @npub1262…3uss
https://mstdn.ca/@ducky/114094800072331423

2025-02-21 01:51:05 UTC

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That first happened to me about 30 years ago, in my early 20s.

2025-02-05 22:51:57 UTC

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I would like to apologize to you on behalf of all the good dogs and people of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. And we hope that guy gets lost on his way home—we don’t want him back.

2025-01-25 20:55:14 UTC

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This is a really interesting question. My sense of direction and comfort with spatial relations are pretty good, and as it happens I rely a lot on visual representations and images to make music. To get a sense of the big picture, I sometimes literally draw pictures, and I use techniques like linear-reductive (quasi-Schenkerian) graphs to keep track of long-range pitch relationships.

2025-01-16 20:04:05 UTC

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I can’t blame someone in their 80s for not feeling like it’s a viable option to hunker down and wait it out for a few years. I could certainly respect a decision to accept the risks and live how they want to for however long they can. But I don’t really see such a rational risk calculation; instead most just deny there is any risk.

2025-01-16 18:43:32 UTC

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I don’t have them over much, which creates its own awkwardness. Mostly they accept my choices for my situation, but they think their situation is different, and that their choices don’t affect me, for some magical reason.

2025-01-16 13:54:52 UTC

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The occasional funny looks from strangers don’t bother me much, and I’m fortunate that no one in my life has been unfriendly about it. But I have retreated from most of the activities that used to make up my social life, and that is isolating.

2024-12-14 16:33:38 UTC

Almost everyone has decided that they would rather suffer permanent brain damage than the social stigma of being the only one around who doesn’t want brain damage. I don’t get it.
Please be that one masked weirdo who still cares. It will give the second, third and fourth weirdos permission to care too.
#CovidIsNotOver

2024-12-12 22:12:10 UTC

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“most of my work is thinking about my work. a small portion of my work is acting upon the results of my thinking”
This applies in a wide range of jobs. Time spent letting something marinate before you come up with a solution is hard to account for when tracking targets and metrics, and it’s also hard to plan around, but it’s often a step you can’t skip.

2024-12-06 15:57:32 UTC

Any #oboe players out there? Here’s a piece waiting to be premiered, played beautifully in this demo recording by Jennifer Slowik:
https://davidmcmullin.bandcamp.com/track/votive
More info and PDF score here:
https://david-mcmullin.com/compositions/votive/
@npub1eus…vl8u @npub1qcn…qevp #BandcampFriday #musodon #OriginalMusic #NewMusic

2024-11-30 13:23:00 UTC

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There are a lot of similarities in the ways that words and music work, probably because both deal at least implicitly with sound. What I was talking about there is like how you can sometimes completely change the tone, pace or meaning of a paragraph by changing just a punctuation mark or two.

2024-11-30 02:36:59 UTC

Fussing with the seams:
Any place in a composition, at any level of structure, where something ends and the next thing begins, if I make the slightest little adjustment to the length of the gap in between—or if there’s no gap, to how much they overlap—I’m always amazed what a dramatic effect that can have on the overall momentum, energy and shape of a piece. I keep relearning this but it surprises me a little every time.
#composing #ContemporaryMusic @npub1qcn…qevp @npub1eus…vl8u

2024-11-14 15:43:59 UTC

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What I can do, though, through concrete acts of care in daily life, and through music too, is demonstrate a way of being that is alien to those who seek power and division.
My music has no monetary value and no propaganda value. It does nothing to advance any political agenda. But I believe it has spiritual value, and it connects to something more important than money or power. And that belief—that this still matters—is itself a kind of political statement.

2024-11-14 15:17:47 UTC

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This doesn’t mean I’m withdrawing from politics personally, or that I think I’m unaffected and above it all. I’m just being deliberate about what my engagement will look like. It won’t be a constant state of agitated hypervigilance that achieves nothing, and it won’t be arguing with strangers online. It won’t be subordinating my music to specific practical political objectives—I don’t think it would help much for that anyway.

2024-11-14 14:01:09 UTC

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I’ve been thinking about this recently too, and I get where you’re coming from, but I don’t think that’s my calling. I must be the other kind of artist. I’ve been pulling my thoughts together and I should write a proper explanation, but for now let this be the short version:
No. Donald Trump does not get to determine what kind of music I make. He’s already drained away more of my attention than he has any right to, and he’s not getting my music too. Just no.

2024-10-09 22:08:20 UTC

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Out of curiosity, how did you become a Detroit fan in Northern California? (I grew up in CT as a Mets fan in the 70s-80s and kept following them when I moved to NYC in the 90s. When I moved to Boston in 2000 I starting cheering for the Red Sox too. Which was an easy transition, since it’s just another way to be against the Yankees.)

2024-10-03 16:18:52 UTC

“If we just got rid of all the _______ people, everything would be better.”
How many times a day do you see some version of this?
Is there any way of filling in that blank to produce an idea you would assent to?
You cannot make the world a better place with that kind of thinking. We know where it leads.

2024-10-01 21:19:04 UTC

The only zombie movie that could be remotely plausible anymore would be one where 5 minutes in, everyone just says well it’s endemic now so who cares.
#CovidIsNotOver

2024-09-22 20:18:21 UTC

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I do miss New York sometimes.

2024-09-22 20:15:50 UTC

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At that point, the window shattered, and his metal stress ball rolled, gently jingling, to a stop on the far side of my room.
And that's where you all came in, a few posts up-thread.

2024-09-22 20:13:57 UTC

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The guy looks up, sees me in the window laughing, and makes a reasonable but incorrect deduction.
Now he starts yelling and throwing stuff. The first shot hit the wall outside, but hard enough that I knew he meant business. So I closed the window and backed away.

2024-09-22 20:11:33 UTC

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As I opened my 3rd-floor window and stuck my head out, I saw something fall from somewhere above me, where an upstairs neighbor had evidently read my mind.
An egg went splat, dead center on the guy's windshield. Bulls-eye. This, I admit, struck me as pretty funny.

2024-09-22 20:07:30 UTC

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This will make more sense if I tell the whole story. Someone had double parked, trapping the guy's car in a curbside parking space in front of my building. So he started honking the horn. Incessantly, and for a long time. It was around midnight.
When I couldn't take it anymore, I went to the window to see what was going on, contemplating, as I approached, what might be effective things either to yell or to throw at whoever's making all this noise.

2024-09-22 17:11:57 UTC

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The policeman gave it back to him and sent him on his way. I didn’t even get a souvenir.

2024-09-22 16:54:53 UTC

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In New York 30 years ago somebody broke my apartment window with one. We called the police and showed them the metal ball this guy threw from street. Guy says yeah that’s mine, it’s for stress. I said I don’t think you’re using it right…

2024-08-29 16:03:23 UTC

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If I were a defense lawyer I would be thrilled to learn that the police reports were written by a hallucinating chatbot. Even if they’re accurate and have been checked by an accountable human, it would still give you something to work with toward reasonable doubt.

2024-08-19 15:44:16 UTC

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“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”
—Mark Twain