My Daily Composing Routine
When I talk with people about my life as a composer, I am often asked what my routine is from day to day. Well here you go!
My day starts by making the coffee for my wife. (I will eventually drink it as well, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.)
While the coffee brews I lay back in bed and check what happened on Twitter and Instagram while I was sleeping. (Do you follow me on either of those platforms? I post occasionally on Instagram, but I practically live on Twitter lately.)
When my wife heads off to school, that’s my cue to get out of bed. I wave goodbye at the window with Pumpkin (our fluffy orange cat, and my occasional editor; I probably post more pictures of him on Instagram than anything else) and then I pour myself some coffee.
I watch The Today Show, or Good Morning America while I sip on my coffee and scroll through Facebook and check my email and such.
Once I am tired of watching the news I grab something for breakfast, top off my coffee and begin to stimulate my brain by listening to good music. Sometimes old music, sometimes new music, sometimes jazz, sometimes classical. As long as it is inspiring, I like to listen to it. I especially love listening to music of living composers. I have connected with some amazing composers recently and I love learning from their music
Next I go into my office to begin working on my music. Sometimes I write at my keyboard with pencil and paper, sometimes it is on my computer. This is the largest portion of my day. I typically work in my office until I get hungry. Sometimes that is around 11:00, sometimes that is around 1:30. (Sometimes on a productive day, I don’t stop until 3:30)
Sometimes when the day is nice I go for a bike ride before lunch. I can make a right turn from my road and have a challenging 8-ish mile bike ride, or take a left and have an easy 10 mile ride. Unfortunately I haven’t done that in quite a while, but hopefully I will get back at it soon.
For lunch I scrounge up something we have in the house. I’ve been eating a lot of soup lately. Sometimes I will put on a podcast in the background when I’m eating. If I feel like I’ve been productive so far that day and earned a little reward I will watch part of an episodes of Arrow, The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, or Supergirl. (I’m watching them in chronological order and it is taking much longer than I expected)
After lunch I get back to work on music. It’s nice to get completely away from the music during lunch because it allows me to revisit what I wrote that morning with fresh ears.
Some days I get stumped or stalled while I’m writing. When that happens in the morning, I go for that bike ride I mentioned. When it happens in the afternoon I do some house work to let my subconscious try to work things out. When my wife comes home and sees that the house is a lot cleaner than it was when she left for school, she looks at me sadly and asks “unproductive day?”
I end up walking around my office a lot more in the afternoons while listening to the playback of what I was working on because my back starts to get tight.
Occasionally I will fix myself something warm to drink in the mid afternoon, either espresso or some herbal tea.
My afternoon is often broken up by a phone call from a friend who calls me every few days around 3:40 on his drive home to catch me up on life outside my house. It isn’t uncommon for this to be my only real interaction with someone other than my wife all day long.
I get back to work and continue composing (or editing or printing) until my wife gets home from school.
I put on a record and fix dinner while she sits and takes care of a little school work until dinner is ready.
We eat dinner and watch tv together and head to bed at 9:00. I read until I fall asleep and start over the next day.
Of course, there are always subtle changes to my day. Sometimes I substitute teach, or go pop in on a rehearsal of one of my pieces, or run to Fedex to print up some scores, or do website maintenance all day. But when I’m at home writing, this is basically what happens.
