Monday, January 1, 2018

2018 Musical Projects

An-other year means an-other post of all of the music projects I'm going to (try to) do this year.

But first, here's how I did on my projects from last year.
  • Classical Music Queue - I listened to a classical piece on my list everyday.
  • Musicological Analyses - I posted one every Monday, aside from the Monday that was also Christmas.
  • Notation - I did pretty poorly at actually posting notation, but I certainly wrote out a lot of parts in notation.  In June I started a project in which I wrote out a line of notation everyday, which I kept going until about November.
  • Scales - I kept up on practicing my scales, and although I occasionally fell a couple days behind, I always made up for what I neglected.  I'm trying to get into the habit of playing through a scale on an instrument before I start playing anything else.
  • Lyres, Harps, and Cymbals - Every week I posted a recording of a hymn tune, an analysis of the Biblical texts of a hymn, and a (usually short) musicological analysis of a hymn.
  • Cover Projects - I kept up with my listening schedule, learned some parts for each project, and wrote about various aspects of the music.  I was more active on some projects than others, but I expected that.
    • Pendleton Sounds - Originally my Beach Boys project was limited to Pet Sounds and SMiLE, but around March I opened it up to include all of the albums.
    • Manufactured Monkees - This was a bit of special case in my Cover Projects because 1) I had a project-within-a-project to learn a bass part to a song on Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. every month and 2) I wanted to watch the episodes of The Monkees on the 50th anniversaries of their original air dates.  I watched the episodes on their original broadcast dates (although I think I might have been a day late on one), but I didn't do so well on learning bass parts.  I learned only one complete part ("Words") and sections of the bass parts for three other songs.
  • All the Times We Had - I listened to the album every week, but I didn't end up learning a part to every song.  I learned at least one part (or one section of a part) for nine of the eleven songs.
  • The Well-Tempered Clavier - I listened to a prelude and fugue from the Well-Tempered Clavier daily every week until I ran out in early December.  I listened to at least one other Bach work every day for the remainder of the year, so now I've listened to Bach every day for two years (2015 and 2017).
  • Piano Practice - I did practice, but I didn't do it very consistently.
  • Music Biographies - This was almost a total failure.  I started books about Sam Phillips and Jimmy Page in January, but in order to focus on FAWM in February, I stopt reading almost entirely.  I got so far behind in the books I was already reading that it seemed ill-advised to start even more.
  • FAWM - As always, some of the songs I wrote are (in hind-sight) not that great, but I did write some I'm happy with, and I made it to fourteen.
  • Mendelssohn's Symphonies - I listened to one every week day in April.
  • Funk & Wagnalls' Family Library of Great Music - I did listen to all of the records, but I wasn't able to do it daily.  I went to a graduation ceremony on 13 May, so I didn't get to listen to the fourth record until the following day.
  • Odessey and Oracle Reading List - Complete failure.  As I mentioned above, I got extremely far behind in my reading after FAWM, so I didn't even attempt this.
  • 50/90 - I wrote a handful of songs for 50/90, but after the first month or so, I ran out of motivation and ideas.  It seems that's been the case for the last few years.
I didn't make a big deal of my last goal, which was "a nebulous project" of "regularly learn[ing] parts to songs," but I stuck to it tenaciously.  I ended up learning at least one part every day (even if that part was as small as a single phrase).  I guess I'm glad I did it because I learned a lot of parts, but I certainly don't want to do it again any time soon because it took up a lot of time and energy I'd rather spend elsewhere.

---&---

This year, I'm cutting back on my number of projects because for pretty much all of 2017, I was neglecting other projects (mostly reading) in order to work on my musical projects.  Like I mentioned, I basically gave up reading for a month in order to work on FAWM, and I still haven't recovered from that.  Most of what I'm cutting are the scheduled listening projects: Collection Audit, the Classical Music Queue, my annual audit of the Funk & Wagnalls' records, and my Cover Project Listening Schedule.

I'm putting my musicological posts on hiatus for an undetermined period, possibly for the foreseeable future.  Of all of my musical projects, they do seem to get the most attention, but I'd rather spend my time and energy working on more focused projects, like Lyres, Harps, and Cymbals and my cover projects.  Besides, it seems like I write about the same sort of features all of the time, just in different songs.

I'm sure I'll still write out some things in notation this year, but I don't intend to post any here.  Although I don't have a specific plan, I'd like to organize the parts I've learned for my cover projects, and that might involve writing out notation and posting it on one of those blogs.

Scales - I quite like practicing a scale everyday, even if it's sometimes a bit tedious, so I'm going to continue doing that.

 Lyres, Harps, and Cymbals - I'm going to continue with the schedule I've established: a recording of a hymn tune on Sunday, a post tracing the Biblical sources of a hymn on Wednesday, and a musicological post about a hymn on Friday.  I have a back-log of musicological posts to write, but I recently started prioritizing posts about hymns for the current season of the church year.

Cover Projects
Like I mentioned above, I'm discontinuing my Cover Project Listening Schedule for this year.  In some ways, that determined which project I workt on during the week.  I'm sure I'll still do some work on the projects, but I don't expect it'll be as much as I did last year.

Instrument Practice - I don't have a set schedule (I probably should), but I'd like to practice piano and flute with at least some regularity this year.  I'm never as good at piano as I'd like to be, and since I just started learning flute last year, I'm not very good at it yet.

FAWM and 50/90 - I do these every year.  Lately, it seems that FAWM goes fairly well, but I give up on 50/90 after about a month.

I have only two new projects for 2018:
  • Alone in the Universe - As part of my 10538 Orchestra project, I want to figure out at least one part to every song on Jeff Lynne's ELO's Alone in the Universe.  I have the deluxe edition, which is twelve tracks, so I'm going to focus on one track every month.
  • The Village Green Preservation Society - It'd been on my wishlist for years, and last August, I finally got a copy of the Kinks' Village Green Preservation Society.  I got the three-disc deluxe edition, and I plan on listening to the first disc on the 10th of every month, the second disc on the 20th, and the third on the 30th (since February doesn't have thirty days, I'll listen to the third disc on 1 March).  I want to figure out parts for each of the songs too.
Really, my main goal for 2018 is to catch up on my reading (and also continue slowly earning money so I can eventually buy a Nord Electro 5D).  With my musical projects, I'd like to strike a balance between being overwhelmed (which I was for much of 2017) and feeling like I'm not doing anything.