This is becoming an obsession, trying to hit my daily word target. I didn’t write anything yesterday - couldn’t be bothered - but today I feel like I need to produce enough for today, yesterday, and the day before when I only wrote c.260 words. I really want to stick to this 500 words-per-day minimum.

That being said, I’ve hit a dry patch with my writing. Maybe it’s not such a great idea to force myself to write when I don’t have much to say. On the other hand, just like with musical composition, I shouldn’t have to wait for inspiration in order to put words down on screen (again, I nearly wrote “words on paper”). In any event, the main purpose of this freewriting blog is to make it easier for me to be able to produce text when I have to. Whether or not I want to is an entirely separate question.

And yet, nothing much is coming to me today. Maybe I should write about something other than writing. I have a Skype interview next week for a job at Berklee, maybe I should write about that. In fact, except for the fact that this in only a part-time gig, this teaching job is one that I have worked toward for years; teaching African American music history at one of the premier music schools in the world. After that, if the gig doesn’t turn into full-time employment, I should have enough juice to trade up to a tenure-track job. I would be very interested, though, in staying at Berklee full-time. I would love to be around that kind of energy again. I could easily find a teacher for lessons in musicianship and/or guitar, making my musicianship that much more a part of my professional skill set.

I really need to get back to working my way through Schoenberg’s Theory of Harmony. I have a feeling that this book is a motherload of musicianship. What I need to do is play all of the exercises at the piano, not just write them and move on. I’m not a big fan of Schoenberg’s music, but I can see through what I have already read of this book that Schoenberg arrived at his serial compositional methods once he had reached the limit of his understanding of the tonal universe of music. I reject the idea that tonal music is played out, though. In fact, serial composition and atonality in general seems to have fallen by the wayside. It may be good for developing unique compositional structures, but much of it just sounds like crap to me.

But some tonal music also sounds like crap to me. I don’t like simplistic. I have no patience for music that is devoid of voice leading. I particularly can’t stand guitar parts that are only root position barre chords. My favorite thing to do in a band is to sit back and rock the voice leading, sticking to three-note chords, for the most part. I like being an anchor with the drums and bass. This is my role in a group: brick-layer. That’s the way to rock it.