The music industry right now. It’s not good.
Author: Zach Sprowls
“How work took over our lives”
Video Rec from Jared Henderson
This isn’t the first time I’ve come across someone making the connection between Protestant theology and our society’s perverted view of work. The first time was several years ago when I first read Oliver Burkeman’s book Four Thousand Weeks. I thought my experience was unique, but it seems not.
Video Rec: “12 Years Of Synth Advice In 12 Minutes
Basic synth advice I wish I had received years ago.
P.S., notice the beaut in the background 🙂
New Composition: Growing Up
Studio Log | Ep 102 | Feb 27, 2025
Last fall, I was approached by a label based in Barcelona, Spain, called AD21 Music to write and record a song for Piano Day that would be included on a compilation album of theirs.
(For the unaware, Piano Day is an international celebration of the piano held on the 88th day of the year [for the 88 keys on a piano]. This year it falls on March 29.)
I’m not a big label guy (as I mentioned in my last post), but for several reasons – reputable label with a long history, other composers already signed on that I’ve long wanted to connect with, excellent contract terms, and just plain desire – I decided to do it.
The album doesn’t drop until March 29, but I can share my song with you here. It’s called Growing Up. It’s a tuneful little waltz. My sister said it reminded her of the Married Life theme from the movie Up. I guess it is in a similar vein – nostalgic, charming, dramatic. I hope you enjoy it!
And here’s a little background on the song:
Looking for Some Nice Quality Accidents
How my new synthesizer is helping find new ways of working.
It was my birthday last weekend. After years of drooling over Moog synthesizers, I finally treated myself to one. Nothing beats a Moog’s deep, ever-present bass and lush, evocative pads. As a modern composer who writes for film, loves electronic music, and tries to blend the old and the new, having a Moog is a rite of passage. After years now of trying to mimic Moog sounds (unsuccessfully) on software synths, I’ve finally joined the family.
This model, the Matriarch, is 100% analog and semi-modular which, besides meaning nothing to most non-nerdy people, is the reason I got it. It’s old school. It doesn’t have modern features, like being able to store sounds. What you see and what you create with your fingertips is what you get. The semi-modular part simply means that I can re-route the circuitry in a literally endless number of ways, creating sounds and evolutions that are totally unique and will be totally lost forever as soon as I turn a knob (if I don’t record it first).
While this limitation might seem like a liability, I find it to be a feature.
I’m making a lot of changes this year, all in a direction from the virtual toward the corporeal: from social media to hanging out face to face, from streaming music to attending live shows, from my phone’s screen to physical books, from Netflix’s shitty programming to actual DVDs that I foraged at secondhand stores, and, in my music, from the safety and controllability of software and MIDI programming to organic and unpredictable hardware.
It’s a learning curve for me. I was taught to play what was written and to compose with notation. Everything controlled, precise, repeatable, and practiced to the point of no mistakes. I’ve had to learn on my own (sometimes the hard way) how to rely on my intuitions.
And that’s what I want to get better at: relying on my intuitions. I think Rick Rubin addresses this topic brilliantly in his book The Creative Act. He calls it “experimental faith” and “innate instinct rather than learned behavior.” I’m currently reading Alan Watts’ The Way of Zen. He’d call it the “peripheral vision of the mind.”
He also said in the same chapter: “superior work has the quality of an accident.” And that’s what I’m hoping for with this new, tactile instrument – some nice quality accidents.