I wish I could say things are going swimmingly, but they aren't. Things are a bit slow, but at least I know why. The maine reason is because of drumline (not complaining, though, because I just got my band camp pay check for $500). Bandcamp starts the 19th so practices have been getting crazy with pre-camp and rookie camp and all that. Furthermore, because the durmline is a bit below par this year, I had to rewrite all the music for the snares and basses, as well as reformat the music for cymbals. This along with 7 hr-a-day practices, you can imagine I don't have much time for composing. That said, I still have some official CD updates and some other random ones.

First come the specific CD updates.

CD I: 10 Contemplations for String Orchestra. I now have 10 songs lined up for this CD, however, it might turn back into 9 because I'm considering scrapping the song piece based on a twelve tone matrix and turning it into a short piano solo piece. That's the only real spot giving me trouble. 3 are mostly done, with just short bugs to be worked out, 1 is still being arranged, and 6 are on their way, and I know ppretty much where I want to take each one. The new song is being arranged from a percussion ensemble I wrote a while back.

CD II: 10 Contemplations for Recorder Choir. The bad news regarding this CD is that I went from 4 songs lined up to only 2. The good news is that the 2 are both ones that needed to be arranged, 1 of them is already finished, and the other is about half done.

CD III: Challenging Piano Solos. Not much new here. The twelve tone matrix I was working on for the string CD will probably end up here, so that might change, but other than that, things are pretty much at a stand still.

That's all for specific CD updates; here are some general or other ones.

Over all, things are progressing smoothly. Unfinished songs are slowly moving along, and songs to be arranged are being arranged and rearranged quickly. I'm getting better and better at arranging, which is good considering that a lot of my music is rendered from older stuff. Things seem slow now, but once I create a beginning, a middle, and an end of a song, the rest falls in and is usually completed in a couple hours. That is to say, the first step of writing the music (getting it from start to finish) takes the longest for me, but once it's there, the rest falls in quite flawlessly. After that comes revisiting for aesthetics and professional look.

The drumline collection I started up is moving along alright. I have about 22 cadences to be reconfigured and cleaned up. Some of them are from a long while back and might not make it into the final cut, but once 'm done with this collection, I should have 2 CD's, one with 10-15 easy/medium to medium cadences, and one with 10-15 medium/hard to advanced cadences. I have also considered that I might need to write optional parts for 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 bass drums on most songs, as well as parts for quads, quints, and hexas. This will take a lot of time and work, but as I am not in so much of a hurry on this small project, it should get done sometime next year.

I ran across my old SIbeliusMusic.com account and got a few ideas. First I will be wiping it clean of all my music (of course after getting a few lost songs off of it), and then will be using it to sell individual printable copies of my works. I figure that with createspace.com I can sell a CD and a set of scores separately, the CD for 10$, and each song separately for a few dollars each. This way people can either buy just the CD or they can get the CD along with only the scores they want/need. Then I will be selling individual songs from SibeliusMusic.com for the same price as the individuals at create space. The difference there is that at SibeliusMusic the buyers can look at ever single score I've uploaded right next to each other, as well as listening to each song before they buy it. I might decide to do something different, but the more places I have featuring my work for sale, the better. More on this later (don't want to ramble [too late]).

General equipment and software update.

Still haven't gotten the sound sets configured the way I want, and can't find how to use the drumline sounds I desire. I'll contact Sibelius Help or maybe just go to the technical website and post a thread there (of course after searching for what I need).

Anyway, that's all for now. I'll post another update in a few weeks since not much will be happening soon because of drumline. So stay tuned (all six of you).