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. 🖊️ 🎼

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

Keep Going — Sympolymathesy, by Chris Krycho

Robin Sloan on the only way you ever finish things.

v5.chriskrycho.com

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/

Finishing Things — Sympolymathesy, by Chris Krycho

In this case, a book chapter.

v5.chriskrycho.com

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

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.

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”.

🇨🇦 🇺🇸 Zoë Keating@zoekeating.com · 4w ago

So now Distrokid has been purchased by private equity firm CVC Capital Sigh

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!

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!

🇨🇦 🇺🇸 Zoë Keating@zoekeating.com · 4w ago

Songtradr has fired all the engineers at Bandcamp and while they say they are focusing resources on that beloved platform, we don’t know what is going to happen. I am worried. Now is the time to support member-owned cooperative music distribution platforms like @Subvert.fm

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

Hilary Hahn Plays Bach by Hilary Hahn on Apple Music

Album · 1997 · 16 Songs

music.apple.com

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.

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.

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!

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. 😂

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!

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 · 2mo ago

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

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

Chris Krycho@chriskrycho.com · 2mo ago

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

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.

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...

To be liked or disliked - a metrical field in which nothing grows

Analytics 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

jaimiekrycho.com

Context today: Pēteris Vasks’ stunning “Oboe Concerto”. The Albrecht Mayer/Latvian National Symphony Orchestra recording of that alongside Vasks’ works “Vēstījums” and “Lauda” is among my very favorite albums of the past decade. music.apple.com/us/album/pēter…

Pēteris Vasks: Oboe Concerto, Vēstījums & Lauda by Latvian National Symphony Orchestra, Andris Poga & Albrecht Mayer on Apple Music

Album · 2021 · 5 Songs

music.apple.com

Chris Krycho – Composer@music.chriskrycho.com · 2mo ago

A few years ago I invested in some Dan Clark AEON 2 Open headphones. The highest compliment I can give them is: I regularly have the experience of thinking, “Wait, is this coming from the headphones or is it in my room?” because the sound stage is so wide and open (as well as clear and clean). 🎧

A few years ago I invested in some Dan Clark AEON 2 Open headphones. The highest compliment I can give them is: I regularly have the experience of thinking, “Wait, is this coming from the headphones or is it in my room?” because the sound stage is so wide and open (as well as clear and clean). 🎧

The past couple weeks, a bunch of my music has gotten a bunch of streams (well, for me: 54!) from basically all over… but only on Apple Music. 🎵 *Zero* streams on Spotify in the same span—which is, sadly, normal. I wonder what happened to make that happen? If you have ideas, I’d love to hear them.

Spoilers: nope. I did get some work done this week, but I wouldn’t yet call it “momentum”. Work proved too disruptive. Onward, though!

Chris Krycho – Composer@music.chriskrycho.com · 3mo ago

Will this be the week I get some momentum on the symphony rolling again? Hopefully. There’s a chance. This spring has been brutal for making progress on that, but I haven’t given up and I haven’t ever completely stopped. And this month's newsletter is written and will be recorded Soon™!

Will this be the week I get some momentum on the symphony rolling again? Hopefully. There’s a chance. This spring has been brutal for making progress on that, but I haven’t given up and I haven’t ever completely stopped. And this month's newsletter is written and will be recorded Soon™!

I get why people end up putting background music under their video content on YouTube, but the current default of vapid filler music is bad and I hate it. I see it on software channels, photography channels, etc., and it’s an undifferentiated wash of vaguely jazzy noise. Ugh.

🎼 Been mulling a bit on a background project of doing some good work on engraving and then selling a bunch of my works. An interesting exercise in thinking through which of them I think warrant it: a few from college and after, and most of my more recent concert-oriented works!

I started working with @doricoofficial.bsky.social back in 2020 when I wrote Fanfare for a New Era of American Spaceflight (music.chriskrycho.com/works/fanfa...), and 6 years and multiple compositions including ¾ of a symphony later, it’s still one of my favorite pieces of software. A joy to use.

A fanfare for symphony orchestra (02:27), composed in honor of the SpaceX Crew Dragon Demo Launch recorded with the Budapest Scoring Orchesetra

music.chriskrycho.com

Sibelius’ Lemminkäinen Suite is so, so good. I have loved a bunch of his other works for years, but only found my way to this one in the past few years and it has quickly risen to the top of my list of Sibelius works and indeed to late 19th and early 20th century works generally. 🎼

As is my long habit, I am signing out of social media for Lent. I’ll (presumably!) be back after Easter Sunday. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with the Collect for Ash Wednesday—one of my favorite of the Collects of the whole Christian year. Grace and peace to all of you.

Quite surprised to hear that Native Instruments is insolvent. The private equity acquisition doesn’t seem to have gone well. The centralization (acquiring iZotope, etc.) was bad, too. I’d really love to see us get out of this cycle! But it’s obviously going to be a messy few years ahead /w LLMs etc.

Listening to the (mockup of the) whole of my in-progress #symphony as it stands today while doing day job work, and… yeah, it definitely needs the revisions I’ve mentioned I’m doing, but I *really* like it. Which, I should, right? But it’s not a given. Long way to go, but good so far. Onward. 🚀 🎼