Chris Krycho – Composer

My goal is to compose 3× every week. Today marked the 7th day I’ve composed this month. You can do the math: that’s not close to 3×/week this month—and I’m trying to use the motivation of having made progress to double down, because even just a few bars of music every day really adds up.

Chris Krycho – Composer@music.chriskrycho.com

🎼🖊️ So far this month, I’ve managed to (re)write a bunch of musical ideas and integrate them into the 4th movement of the symphony, net 45 seconds or so of musical material. Will I finish drafting this year? Odds seem good with some planned vacation time coming up. 🤞🏼

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No individual day feels like (or indeed actually is) all that much when working this slowly. But for any large-scale artistic effort “on the side”, we actually get it done not via a huge push but by steady incremental progress. Huge pushes are mostly a fast track to burning out and giving up!

I have to remind myself of this on the regular, given how long this thing has been simmering. I started sketching parts of it on our piano in April 2021. I’m proud of myself for keeping on keeping on with it for 5½ years, and holding onto my long-standing goal: “Finish it by the time I’m 40”. 🖊️

Chris Krycho – Composer@music.chriskrycho.com

If I manage 5 seconds of music per day—and that’s probably about right, give or take, with orchestration work and whatnot meaning some days there’s no additional duration and other days there’s 20 seconds of new music that needs backfilling orchestration—12 days in a month is a minute of music!

🎼 Transposing existing sections! Reworking them to be in a different meter! Changing the tempo! Adding a timpani line! …look, it was an exciting morning of making some real progress on the symphony, okay? I’m just excited. 🎻 🎺 🥁 🤓

Chris Krycho – Composer reposted

It’s very much a Nils Frahm Spaces kind of work day.

One of them is me! One of them could be you, as either a supporter or an artist! This is good!

Subvert@subvert.fm

30,000 artists, labels and supporters collectively own Subvert. Join and become a co-owner today. subvert.fm

Chris Krycho – Composer reposted

drew mca

@drewmca.net

Really cool piece from the @subvert.fm coop annual general meeting (at 1:35:20): They went for an optional contribution at checkout, rather than taking a percentage of artist's revenue. They saw an average contribution of 27% per transaction, almost twice as much as bandcamp's mandatory 15%.

I’ve now gotten my full (yes, full! So it’s tiny! I don’t care! It’s *something*!) catalog up on @subvert.fm to match Bandcamp: www.subvert.fm/chriskrycho Along the way I also discovered that I have done a pretty poor job of keeping my ready-for-distribution files organized. 🤦🏻‍♂️

22 Sept

Spent a good chunk of last night reading @subvert.fm’s bylaws etc. and: I’m on board and thoroughly enthusiastic about the direction. We’ll see if it works, of course, but the goal is good. More on that in a video essay Soon™, I hope. In the meantime, catalog inbound! www.subvert.fm/chriskrycho

22 Sept

Why it is always *so* hard to get back into the flow after even just a couple weeks away from composing I may never know. 😮‍💨 Read: it took a bit, but I did find my way back into Mvt. IV a bit this morning. Steady on. 🎼 🖊️

v5.chriskrycho.comSubvert.fm — Sympolymathesy, by Chris KrychoA co-op for musicians? You have my attention.

21 Sept

Oh! @zoekeating.com recently mentioned her membership in (and indeed that she’s running for a board seat for) Subvert and I am *extremely* intrigued. More: v5.chriskrycho.com/notes/subvert.…

20 Sept

Finally done with weeks of travel and catchup-from-travel for work, which hopefully means this is the week I get back to composing. 🎼

28 Aug

Digging back up an old version of my symphony to reference something I removed in the years since and confronted with a dialog box telling *just* how long it has been since I opened this version of the file. @doricoofficial.bsky.social v3.5.10 was a very, very long time ago. 😂

Chris Krycho – Composer reposted

v5.chriskrycho.comWhy Post Dorico Tip Videos? — Sympolymathesy, by Chris KrychoMostly to help people. A little bit to help people find my music.

27 Aug

Okay, so I posted that @doricoofficial.bsky.social tip video earlier. But why bother doing that kind of thing? v5.chriskrycho.com/notes/why-post…

youtube.comUsing Flows, Tabs, and Layouts to Make Big Projects Manageable in DoricoWorking with large projects with many flows in Dorico can get slugg...

27 Aug

Writing a symphony means I have a lot, and I mean a LOT, of music. @doricoofficial.bsky.social 6 performs pretty well with it… but when I have the whole score open, it still chugs a bit. My workaround for better performance—not original!—is to combine flows, layouts, and tabs: youtu.be/SsDgxVgt-L8

youtube.comThat might be too many refrains 🎼Wait, how many times am I going to repeat the ‘A’ theme in this ron...

19 Aug

I’m back to trying to post regularly about what I’m working on, (now with the excellent Jaimie Krycho doing video editing)! Up first: Wait, how many times am I going to repeat the ‘A’ theme in this rondo form 4th movement of my symphony? Oh no. #composing #orchestra #music youtube.com/shorts/TFjx...

18 Aug

🎼🖊️ Fixing the voice leading in a strings part I wrote five years ago when I wrote the A and A′ themes for Mvt. IV of the symphony. 🤦🏻‍♂️ 😂 It was close before, but there were definitely some things that were just… wrong… in the interplay between violas and cellos. It sounds *way* better now. 😂

11 Aug

I’m in the phase of work on this final movement of the symphony where all my composing work is… happening with words in a notebook. To borrow an idea from novel-writing, I’m a “plantser”, halfway between a “pantser” and an “outliner”. I don’t need every detail planned, but I need *some* structure!

10 Aug

Rondo time! Analyzing the major ideas and developments in the first three movements and thinking about whether and how to integrate them into the final movement. If I pull everything I *think* I might pull, I’d end up with ABACADAEAFA. Probably going to have to trim that down a bit. 😂

9 Aug

🎼🖊️ Mulling on structure and development as I’m coming back to Mvt. IV of my symphony after having not done any serious work on it since 2021 (!). It’s almost certainly going to be a rondo—how traditional! Yet it’s what I gravitated toward almost instinctively, and it fits the movement thematically.

6 Aug

Finding my way back into Mvt. IV. It’s been literally years since I have done serious work on this movement—most of what I have here was written all the way back in 2021!—so I’m starting by doing some edits on it and trying to figure out “what I want to say” with this concluding part, as it were. 🖊️🎼

4 Aug

Just closed the tabs for the first three movements of the symphony after this morning’s revision work on Mvts. II and III. It’s time! No more revisions for now! I have the rest of Mvt. IV to write and I’m going to finish drafting it this year, Lord willing. Time to get to it. 🖊️ 🎼

4 Aug

(I’m going to try to make a little video later about the way I use tabs with flows/movements in @doricoofficial.bsky.social – it makes for significantly better performance when working with really large works that span multiple movements.)

Chris Krycho – Composer reposted

v5.chriskrycho.comKeep Going — Sympolymathesy, by Chris KrychoRobin Sloan on the only way you ever finish things.

31 July

A follow-up to my post earlier today about finishing things—on *how* we finish things: Keep Going! v5.chriskrycho.com/notes/keep-goi…

Chris Krycho – Composer reposted

v5.chriskrycho.comFinishing Things — Sympolymathesy, by Chris KrychoIn this case, a book chapter.

30 July

Got the last revisions for a book chapter/essay in this morning, and it feels *so* good to have finished this thing. Not a major work, in the grand scheme of things, but finishing nonetheless matters! A (little!) more on this theme: https://v5.chriskrycho.com/notes/finishing-things/

14 July

Currently listening through every recording I can find from Hilary Hahn, and just profoundly grateful for her artistry. What a remarkable musician.

music.apple.comBarber & Meyer: Violin Concertos by Hilary Hahn & Hugh Wolff on Apple MusicAlbum · 2000 · 5 Songs

14 July

Hahn’s Barber & Meyer: Violin Concerto recording from 2000 (!) have made my afternoon so much better. And Edgar Meyer’s concerto is *great*! music.apple.com/us/album/barbe…

9 July

A good view with some fun company (hummingbird!) for this morning's composing. Tweaking the ending of Mvt. II in subtle ways: lengthen *this* set of notes and move *that* set just so, and: AHHHH, that sounds right! It's like doing edits for prosody on an essay. Little details make a big difference.

9 July

One of the *extra* challenging bits about this is conveying how important this kind of detail is, even though it barely moves the needle on the duration of a piece. Since the start of the year, I have added a mere 16s to the mockup. And yet the work is much, *much* stronger after hours of edits!

8 July

AAAAARRGGGHHHHHH Music distribution is *hard*, so I can understand why and how Distrokid has struggled (self-distribution is basically impossible, but playing middleman is just getting squeezed on both sides)… but it’s telling that everyone’s response to PE acquisitions is “OH NO”.

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8 July

Got about 40 minutes of composing done this morning, and I’m feeling pretty good about Mvt. II. I expect I’ll wrap up (this round of) revisions on it this week and 🫨 start work on drafting the rest of Mvt. IV! Also: *hoping* to get the music newsletter and videos going again this month!

7 July

Well, this sucks. It’s roughly what we all expected after the Epic-then-Songtradr acquisition dance, but: it still sucks. GROWTH GROWTH GROWTH kills so many good things. Just run small, sustainable businesses: they’re good!

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Chris Krycho – Composer reposted

music.apple.comHilary Hahn Plays Bach by Hilary Hahn on Apple MusicAlbum · 1997 · 16 Songs

30 June

🎧 🎻 🎼 Hilary Hahn Plays Bach is *very* good. Just the ticket for this afternoon. music.apple.com/us/album/hilar…

29 June

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve done a *bunch* of edits on the conclusion of Mvt. II of my first symphony, and it’s *almost* at the point where I feel I can shift my focus over to finishing Mvt. IV. Six months to finish an end-to-end draft of this work? I can do this. Steady on.

26 June

Some days, it’s nearly impossible not to despair of ever having my music find an audience. Say I finish the symphony: simple math still says it’ll likely never be played, even likelier never be recorded. (Getting a new symphony played, still less recorded, is *very* hard.) This is one of those days.

26 June

On these days, the thing I do is: remind myself that “little likelihood” (which is not hyperbole but reality) is not the same as “no chance”. And what *is* the same as “no chance”? Not finishing the work at all. An unfinished symphony definitely won’t get played.

winningslowly.orgWinning SlowlyTaking the long view on technology, religion, ethics, and art.

26 June

My ethos has always been “winning slowly” (winningslowly.org); it’s just that the “slowly” part is sometimes nearly crushing. But “winning” in the ways that matter *only* happens slowly. So: show up, do the work, keep on.

12 June

I’ve spent at least twenty minutes composing three mornings this week. Over an hour! That’s not much—truly—but it’s more than I’ve done any other single week in 2026. Building momentum is the thing, and I’m doing that. Of course, I’m traveling for work next week. 🤦🏻‍♂️ We’ll see what I can make stick!

10 June

How in the world had I gone until today and not heard Copland’s Symphony No. 3—and therefore never realized that he integrated “Fanfare for the Common Man” right into the fourth movement? And here I’ve always worried about plagiarizing myself even a little bit. 😂

8 June

This felt really good: actually spent 25 minutes composing this morning. Made a bunch of meaningful improvements to Movement II. A long way left to go, but if I can build some momentum, maybe—just maybe—I can actually do what I’ve planned and finish a draft of the whole thing this year!

youtu.beProofing Orchestral Scores: INTROYouTube video by OrchestrationOnline

31 May

Well, this looks to be an absolutely incredible resource. Definitely going to be (a) watching it and (b) bookmarking it to return to for future reference… like, say, when I finish drafting and revising this symphony, so I can prep the score for hopefully (hopefully!) finding a performing orchesetra.

Orchestration Online@orchestrationol.bsky.social

PROOFING ORCHESTRAL SCORES: INTRO Finally! The introduction to my projected series on proofing your orchestral scores has arrived! This video represents a quick overview of my upcoming intensive, 6-part series on proofing your orchestral scores... youtu.be/JTx0vbfi5DY

30 May

So if my music going forward echoes Vasks a little bit more, this is part of why. 😁

Chris Krycho@chriskrycho.com

This essay written almost entirely to the works of Pēteris Vasks. Tonight, his works “Oboe Concerto”, “Vēstījums”, and “Lauda”.

26 May

I maintain a de minimis presence on Threads because it has a lot of users, at least some of whom are potentially interested in music like what I write. And every time I use it directly, I wonder… does literally anyone on the Threads team use the web app? It’s unbelievably slow and janky.

jaimiekrycho.comTo be liked or disliked - a metrical field in which nothing growsAnalytics are a tricky thing. They tempt you to believe that your work - whether writing, comedic videos, visual art... - has a quantifiable value, measured in "views" or "likes and dislikes" or "follows." The iterations of these measurements are endless, and all egocentric. I derive the most joy from

26 May

The re e is such a frustrating tension between wanting to promote my work so it can hopefully find an audience and just making good art for the joy of it. Jaimie describes some of that well here: jaimiekrycho.com/to-be-liked...