Sunday, January 26 Today is a red-letter day in the project. In 7.5 hours I completed song no. 10: “There’ll Be Sad Songs” by Billy Ocean. My tenth song was supposed to be “Mná Na h’Éirann” by Sharon Corr, but I moved up that add-on song I was given a few days ago. I’m sure…
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Saturday, 25 January 7:30 p.m. It’s been a sluggish couple of days, but not without results. I started scoring Mel C’s version of “Both Sides Now” yesterday and finished it today. I don’t know if anything I ever do is perfect, but this score was as close to perfection as I’ve gotten so far, at…
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Thursday, 23 January Woke up this morning, rolled over, and felt the bed flip over onto the floor. No, it wasn’t another earthquake like the one we had a few days ago (only 6.3). As I found after a trip to the doctor a couple of hours later, I’ve got a nasty bug on the…
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Sunday, 19 January 9:30 p.m. This time seems to be turning into journal hour. I had a fairly productive day, scoring Sharon Corr’s “We Could Be Lovers” in three and a half hours, writing an article, and transcribing a piano part – about 8.5 hours all told. Though I didn’t wake up at 4 or…
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Saturday, 18 January I’ve been so absorbed for the past few days that I forgot to submit my bimonthly article to New Zealand Musician Magazine. Hopefully they won’t notice and let it slide until Monday. But I’m always forgetting little deadlines and such when I’m this committed to a big one. It’s only about quarter…
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Friday, 17 January Checking in exactly the same time as yesterday at 9:42 p.m. Scored another song in one day: Leo Sayer’s “More Than I Can Say.” I asked for this song especially from the Music Director, and was pleased to get it for two reasons: first, when I listened to it while vetting the…
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Thursday, 16 January 9:42 p.m. after a long day. It’s good to get back to this journal after a few days off, somewhat enforced. After leaving Collingwood, I dropped in on a composer friend of mine who lived not too far from there, around the Tasman Bay area where the weather was a bit nicer.…
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Thursday, 9 January It’s 4:20 a.m. as I start this journal entry. Usually around this time of the morning, I like to be starting my workday. But in fact I’ve just finished up a song. It’s all due to the previously mentioned logistics forced upon my schedule by vacationing in this place. This morning, I…
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Tuesday, 7 January, Part 2 After re-scoring the Keating yesterday, I sent the whole thing along with the Tubular Bells score to my MD, and got a good response back. That’s what matters, really. A thumbs-up at this point in my career is more about the relief of saving me from rewrites than it is…
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Tuesday, 7 January, Part 1 I’ve been slack about my journal for the past two days, and finally catching up today. Well, I did finish the Ronan Keating song “When You Say Nothing At All” in one day on Sunday the 5th, but strangely it was a lot more of an effort than the awesome…
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