088 - The Chisler

Plus the future of this blog

I don’t have much to say about this piece other than I was thinking of the rising third at the beginning of the slow movement of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier sonata when I started it and the chisel is because I recently purchased a round tipped chisel tool for a lathe - now I just have to get the lathe to go with it.

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Perhaps it’s general burn out, perhaps it’s environmental / political factors, perhaps it’s just random chance, but for whatever reason engagement with this blog has dropped precipitously over the last couple of weeks to the point where I’m beginning to question the wisdom of continuing to devote as much of my time to it as I’ve been doing these last few years.

While I never expected it to take off and become some kind of viral phenomenon, I did think it’s uniqueness (and I’ve yet to find anything like it) would cause it to at least grow at a minimal but steady rate. That hasn’t happened. Subscriptions have virtually stopped and daily engagement from those that do subscribe is also way down. If this blog was an economy it would be labeled as suffering from stagflation.

This project started as a simple daily compositional exercise to train my ear. At that time, as I wasn’t sharing it with anybody, I had no real concerns about how good or bad each tune turned out, just as long as it was plausible. Since I started publishing though, that has changed, and now I do spend extra time tweaking pieces, adding extra voices, occasionally arranging one in Ableton, and every so often writing another piece if I’m not happy with the outcome of the first one. While this has resulted in an immense body of short works, my other compositional activities have suffered as a result. I have an orchestral piece that has languished for some time now and my electronic music production has taken a big hit.

For the most part I enjoy this routine, but if it’s only making inroads amongst a handful of people who remain interested, I’m going to have to re-think my approach to this project.

If you like what I’m doing and want to see it grow, one way to help would be to share. I put a share button on the bottom of each post. I get reports about these buttons as well as likes and comments. As of today the share button has never been used, and that’s not hyperbole. I guess I should say if it has been used I’ve never received a notification.

I’m going to keep eyeballing the daily stats and if things don’t improve I’ll be making some changes. Perhaps not publishing daily, but including longer pieces. Not sure yet. If anything’s going to happen I’ll let you know.