jamuary 6, 2025

Overnight, several inches of snow fell, and it continues as I write this. When I was growing up I saw a lot of snow. When there was a storm, it felt monumental. The snow was impenetrable. When my dad (and I, sort of) shoveled our driveway, it felt like the piles off to the side were 40 feet tall.

I don’t see much volume of snow anymore. Maybe it’s the way the world is going, or the fact that I now live 250 miles south of where I grew up. But today’s snow feels the way those old snows felt: like they force everything to stop, if for a little while.

Today’s track moves a lot faster than my previous Jamuary entries, but it’s really just running in place — four squalls that make a lot of noise but are ultimately just the frame for a single moment.

I decided to use Fugue Machine to act like its namesake, if superficially. Four playheads rifle through a fast, eighth-note melody played by a Decent Sampler guitar. The slower, lower guitar is layered with a piano for a more powerful bass track.

I played the start and stop of individual playheads, and I played Fugue Machine’s global transposition tool, which shifts the the entire melody up or down and helped the piece avoid fully stagnating.

The snow’s still falling. I don’t think it’s going to stop just yet.

// tags: making music jamuary

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jamuary 5, 2025 Sometimes I want to learn a new thing or a new tool and push myself. Sometimes I want to luxuriate in the familiar. Today felt like the latter:

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jamuary 7, 2025 - one week in I have made a little bit of music every day for the past seven days in service of Jamuary. This is the first time I have attempted to take on the