On June 2, 2007, I performed a concert at my friend Karen’s house. She knew that I was interested in developing a laptop performance practice and had offered to host a gathering so that I could try out some music. As I recall, the performance was okay, a good first effort. The important moment of the evening came after the music when I was in conversation with Boris Willis (choreographer and dancer). He described to me his new project, called Dance-A-Day, for which he was videotaping a new dance every day and posting it to his blog.

The next day I was composing a one-minute piece to submit to Vox Novus’s 60×60 project, which curates a one-hour mix of 60 one-minute pieces by 60 different composers. In a moment of inspiration it occurred to me that I could do my own version of a daily project, composing and posting a new one-minute piece every day for a year. I even had a name for it: 60×365.

After a little planning, I launched the project on July 1, 2007. I had no idea how hard it would be, or what the challenges would be, or even if I’d make it all the way to the end (spoiler alert: i completed all 365 compositions). I’ve now lived with this project for almost ten years. During this time, I’ve moved twice, met many new people, and evolved as an artist. I can see how the experience of these daily compositions has shaped my current practice.

For the next year I am going to revisit 60×365. Each week I am going to repost one track from the project. The selections will be from the corresponding week ten years ago. These will likely be my favorite track of each week, with thoughts, reflections, memories, et cetera. So, without further introduction:

Week 1
Recovering no.1 (July 5, 2007)

Before I launched 60×365 I thought that I could be disciplined enough to stay ahead of schedule. I even spent the weeks leading into the launch composing pieces (at the rate of about one a day) in order to a few days ahead of schedule. I wasn’t planning on this project being like a diary. I just wanted to compose every day and post every day. I believed that I could create and maintain a schedule that allowed me to compose one day, then revise and post a couple of days later. This would mean working on multiple compositions each day to maintain a buffer.

This buffer disappeared very quickly, and by the middle of the month I was composing each day’s track on the day it was being posted. I think this made the project better. There was an immediacy to the work that was exciting. I was also forced to deal with composing when no ideas were present. This led me to explore ideas and techniques I probably wouldn’t have otherwise.

Recovering no.1 was composed on the day it was posted. (I needed to save some of the pieces composed ahead of time of specific days later in the month.) A couple of months earlier I had accidentally deleted a folder of audio files from an active project. I hastily downloaded a file recovery program and ran it to try and get these files back. Fortunately this worked. In addition to the files I had deleted, there was an additional 14GB of audio files. All of these extras were random noise, presumably other files types that got recovered as audio.

For 60×365 I composed four collages using these files. This is the first of the series. I still have these recovered files. They have made appearances in other projects, most notably in Mortal Sin(e) from Confessions of a Digital Proselyte.

~~~~~

I am also sending out the text to these posts each week as an email through my newsletter platform. If you wish to receive it that way, please signup here.