9/26/21 fire up the DAW and record literally anything. Try to make it intentionally unprofessional. Try to make it a teenager’s best attempt at video game music that minimally functions. It has to be long enough – at least a minute. It has to loop smoothly, but it can have a real end and beginning near the seam. If it has chords, they have to be not in the typical order, but also not in the typical atonal arrangement – it can’t sound like 1950’s old music with wrong notes – it has to sound like you’re trying to make functional harmony and failing, and sort of falling in love with the mistake.

No recorded instruments, everything synthesized and in equal temperament, unless there are solo vocals – those can be recorded but record the shortest possible clip and play it over and over. If there’s a chorus it must be the synth chorus.

It has to have some sort of beat. The beat can’t have errors – it must be a real, danceable beat in perfect time, so use the auto features to line everything up precisely – better yet, use loops included with the software and layer them with synth pads and licks using “snap to grid”.

Then make a game to go with it that’s too hard and too short. Also make the controls annoying. Do your best, but don’t spend too much time.

9/25/21 maybe start taking caffeine again in the morning since it’s hard to find time and energy to work in the afternoons when I only see the kids for a few hours after school. Don’t want to pit my commitment to music against my kids. It will lose every time. For almost a year I followed Beehoven’s routine of having a certain measured amount of caffeine early in the morning. It built up in my system to where I couldn’t sleep at night anymore. I stopped and was fine for a while, actually switched to listening to things every evening, another Beehoven used to do. Now I don’t seem to be able to get up in the morning before I have to do things for the kids or listen to things in the evening. As a member of the Triforce podcast put it, “Swim. Swim for your fucking life.”

2020? 2019? Look up all my friends who are musicians and listen to their recent works