I often forget about this silly feature in Finale, but Nikk’s blog reminded me. You can have Finale count the items in any given music file.

I’m on measure 290 of about 300 total measures in “Turbine,” and as of now, the piece has 30,513 notes. WTF?! The thought of entering 30,000 notes, one at a time, over three weeks — it makes me realize why I haven’t been getting out much and my leg muscles are beginning to atrophy. I think there are only about 2000 or so notes to go…

I’m still rather buried in the orchestration of “Turbine,” but I’m beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. My goal was to finish the orchestration and make the score somewhat presentable in time for the Midwest convention in Chicago — which starts a week from Tuesday. Since the piece was originally due to be delivered around November 1, it seems that the least I can do for the commissioning consortium is show them the piece at Midwest — 6 weeks late.

I’m on measure 270 of 298 total measures, so hopefully I’ll make it in time. These last 25 bars have about eleventy-seven gabillion notes (it’s the end of a piece called “Turbine,” so it’s not like I’m going to end it slow and quiet), and it’ll be close, especially because I’m heading up to CSU Stanislaus from Wednesday through Friday. Stuart Sims is performing both Redline Tango and Sasparilla on Thursday night — the first time that’s happened! I’m really excited about the trip. Stuart’s program is really strong.

Then on Friday night, an old friend from Juilliard is coming to visit for a few days. It’ll be great to see him, but I think it’ll greatly reduce the number of hours I can work this coming weekend.

I’m still having fun working on the piece, but I’ll be relieved when it’s done. I’ve been spending 13+ hour days on it nearly every day for weeks (next time, I should write a piece called Dirge), and I miss playing with AEJ. We have so many episodes of “Hart to Hart” to catch up on…

John Corigliano emailed this MP3 to me last year. As John said in the email text:”This is truly wonderful. Turn your volume up.”I’ve no idea where he got it, but wow. If you aren’t feelin’ that holiday spirit yet, my friends, get ready…Click here to listen to my favorite holiday performance ever.