first post!

For the next 25 days, I will be turning Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho into a musical. Well, kind of. A script treatment and a handful of songs, actually - 7 or 8 if I'm lucky, 6 if I'm realistic. I got home today, around 5:30. Tomorrow will be the official Day One: mapping the plot through the songs (this involves rewatching the movie), creating backgrounds for all of the characters, and starting the script treatment. I'm not officially making myself start writing music until Thursday, although I already have the first verse and chorus of Lunch Hour (title subject to change, but I probably won't change it) reasonably fleshed out.

Anyway. More specifically, here are my goals for this month:

• Create a script treatment
• Compose 6-8 songs
• Chronicle everything 3-5 times a week on this blog (this includes stir-crazy, Oberlin-in-January thoughts as well as composer ones)
• (unlikely bonus goal:) Roughly record all of the songs that I compose. Bonus points if the recordings feature singers who aren't all me, and super bonus points if they feature instruments that aren't just piano.

More broadly, my goal is to rekindle my love of/comfort with songwriting; I've sort of hit a wall since TIAMAZ ended, and I'd like to get past it. Throughout all of this, ideally, I'll also be exercising a few times a week and reteaching myself piano using actual piano books and coursework. I'd like to say that I probably won't complete all of these goals - or even close to it - 25 days from now, but that seems pessimistic, and that's not a positive way to start the month. So I won't think too much about that.

Best-case scenario, I either a) finish everything I set out to do by the end of the month, or b) get so immersed in the project that I continue to work on it intensely even after February has passed. In the slightly more long-term, I'd like to make some decent recordings of the music - especially to make up for the fact that I never did put out a TIAMAZ soundtrack - and possibly even write a script. Oh, I'm also planning on reading the book. For perspective.

So we'll see how things go. As with TIAMAZ, I'm guessing I'll rewrite a lot and rethink my process a TON and probably end up somewhere very different from where I expected to. It should worry me - I'm sort of stunned at how much I got done with TIAMAZ when I look back at all my old notes from rewrite meetings - but I'm mostly just trying not to think about it. I figure it'll only stress me out, and if I need to make changes, then I will.

Oh! Also, completely unrelated, I need to watch all of the films I think are going to get major Oscar nominations this year. These are as follows:

• Birdman
• The Imitation Game
• Foxcatcher
• Interstellar
• Unbroken
• Selma
• Nightcrawler
• Still Alice
• Wild
• Gone Girl
• Boyhood
• Theory of Everything
• Grand Budapest Hotel
• Whiplash

The strikethrough ones are ones I've already seen. If I'm able to find all of these, and I stick to my schedule, it shouldn't be hard to get through them by the end of the month. I also need to finish knitting gift hats; when I reach that point, I'll start learning how to make socks. Or maybe mittens. Or I'll teach myself to knit in the round.

So I guess I have a lot of goals this month. More than are realistic, but it's good to have goals. It's probably become very obvious by now that I really like making lists. In list form, here are my goals:

• Psycho musical
• Frequent exercise
• Steady piano improvement
• Oscar contender viewings
• Knitting improvement

I will chronicle all of my successes - or failures - with these goals here. I'll probably upload photos of my notes, and maybe some samples of songs as I become comfortable with how they've turned out.

As an aside, I'm giving myself every Sunday off from the schedule I've written out for myself. If I decide I have too little to do, I might add some responsibilities from the rest of the week (but not all of them). I know I'm better about making lists and getting organized than I am about actually following through, but I'll start intending to follow through anyway. We'll see how it goes.

As for now, I'm going to knit and watch The Office. If I feel like it, I might watch the movie Psycho and create my song map tonight. We'll see. Oh, also, my luggage and I came home on different flights tonight, so I need to wait up into the very early morning hours (an experience completely foreign to me, of course. Heh.) until the Southwest people can deliver it to Keep.

That's all for now.