In my life I have made several attempts to create and maintain a blog. Creating one, no problem at all. Maintaining it, however, hasn’t been quite easy; in fact, I ended up deleting all the blogs for one reason or another. Somehow they all offered little value in having others read. Or simply I lost interest in continuing them.
Year is 2026. My life changed rather drastically this fall. I won’t dwell on it here, but the teaching job I had for the past three years ended. I do keep my brain sharp by working on projects, but it’s true I’ve not really had interaction with other people on a daily basis since the job ended.1 I feel I want to take another stab at this blogging business again. Yet creating multiple-thread posts on Bluesky seems a bit restrictive in terms of what I could actually write and express, while starting a Substack account seems a bit too grandiose; I do write, but I write more musical notes than proses. I have so many people in my life who are far better at the métier of the latter than I am, anyway.
Yet.
I probably ought to remind myself: “Isn’t that the same excuse you had as you were away from playing the clarinet for so many years?” Somehow I picked the instrument up again recently, and things are going rather well. I think it’s a question of starting something, and sticking with it.
What I will write here is probably going to be quite specialized. But I have one topic I want to write at length about: LilyPond. I think blog-style posts where I give thoughts, tips and tricks, some diversions (which I do have a folder in my computer called “silly geese”), and even some “Hey I stumbled upon this wonderful LilyPond user!” kind of posts might still be nice. Maybe some creative minds may find it useful. Having been a little over two years since I started using this software program, I do have some things to say about things I observed from using the software program, not just the program itself, but the world around it.
And when I feel I need to freshen this blog, I could probably write on other topics, like algorithmic composition (about which I have quite bit to say, too), teaching, even cooking and coffee brewing. Or simply I could perhaps post some pictures of my boss:
Footnotes
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With one huge exception: I attended the New Music on the Point September Retreat, where I met fellow composers who all wrote exciting music and worked with Duo Axis. ↩