What'cha Workin' On? August 2025

What are your hopes for productivity this month, whether in work or in life?

Alright folks we are COOKIN these days. I'm running a week behind (hence this post also being a week late), this week I'm frantically practicing so I can do some recording & filming on Friday or over the weekend. Just lost a couple days with a birthday, couple days for traveling to meet up with family and watch a roller derby bout, and a solid couple days working on my frankenstein desk. Cover photo related - There's already a fair amount of custom cable management and things permanently mounted to the underside of the desk top itself so I didn't want to replace the whole thing (and actual studio desks are stupid expensive anyway), so took off the legs and put it on an adjustable frame finally, and found a company on etsy that made wooden slide outs for full size keyboards. Couple dozen hours of redoing cabling and trying to get the drawer side mounted parallel enough that it would slide out properly and here we are.

ANYWAY, things are about to get shuffled again in freelance land, with the start of the academic year some of my teaching schedule is getting flipped. Also New: working for the theater department at the same university where I used to work in the school of music (lol), just a few hours a week to help out with a musical theater performance workshop class and to be on hand to play for audition days and things.

In light of some of that, I'm feeling pretty good about this month even though I'm behind. On the docket:

1.) Teaching/Scheduling: Just trying to make it all fit together. Theater stuff definitely on Tuesdays (and possibly some studio accompanying). In person at home Wednesdays, Columbus Thursdays but later now (possibly theater stuff in the AM), remote students currently both on Sundays. Adding 1 more remote student and 2 more in person at home, so that'll fill up most of the time I'm interested in carving out for that unless I add another day, trying to keep my teaching on Sundays to only be when allison is out of the house at derby practice ;)

2.) Recording/Filming - Two chunks: stuff I'm practicing RIGHT NOW to be filmed and recorded asap, and stuff that's not quite so pressing because I can't record them until I get the piano tuned (or just needs a lot more practice time)

Stuff Now:

• The Contortionist - Reimagined Recording & video lesson.
• CHON - Splash, recording & video lesson. Collab project with a guitarist & drummer in north carolina
• Del Amitri - Roll to Me (you know this song, you just haven't thought of it in decades), recording & video lesson.
• c#minor collab riff - swapped riffs with this great acoustic guitar player that's a new contact. We found a drummer to fit the riffs as well so just seeing if anything comes of it. Here's an example: https://www.instagram.com/p/DMdCmY_OTmM/

Stuff Later:

• whole tone cubano riff thing - just another demo idea.
• Copland - Fanfare for the Common Man, found a fun piano arrangement that I just need to practice a little bit.
• Bluehew - session work recording
• Vilera - session work recording
• Zelda - an exhaustive comparison of the Great Fairy Fountain theme from every mainline game. I did not mean to do this, I was originally just transcribing the like, OG fairy fountain theme from ocarina of time and then comparing it with the updated piano theme they used in BotW/TotK, but then I got sucked into the the woodwind quartet version from Echoes of Wisdom and then I found out that there's a proto version of the theme in the super mario brothers 3 water level, and then and then AND THEN I woke up 4 hours later and I now have like a dozen different versions to record.
• Third Stream Jazz - got a couple friends now that have written really nicely laid out piano music that I want to start chipping away at recording. Sjaak Douma, Pietro Beltrani, and Ben Vidal.

3.) Writing & Engraving Work

• Got a good chunk of new transcriptions & arrangements done last month, so aside from continuing to chip away at requests and keep track of any Vilera changes that hit my desk between now and the actual recording dates, I don't have anything pressing. Which is good because:

4.) Mixing & Editing

• Need to finish pretty much everything that was on my "TBD" list last month: Some Notes/GGD Demo, finishing CoastalDives long form analysis vid, musical theater demo reel, AAL Apeirophobia harpsichord layered cover.
• Really I need to finish this musical theater demo reel, wanted to get that done in time for the new school year to send out to some voice studios that may have need for backing tracks.
• Will have more collabs to edit as other people get their footage to me: c#minor collab riff from the rest of the trio, drums for Del Amitri, the CHON Splash trio.

All that being said, I got a bunch of spontaneous stuff done in July with meeting a couple new people and making some new sounds, so even though I didn't get to the whole planned list, it feels like a productive time. Worked on my color grading a little bit, trying to move on from the blue-orange contrast 'cinematic' era of my editing and land on something a little more organic/warm/emphasizing the live acoustic nature of piano in this digital age. Let me know what you think and if I'm on the way:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tN21m2EIkk

OKAY stay cool, summer can't last forever (or...?)
tricky dick blumenthal