{"id":640,"date":"2010-04-07T08:51:14","date_gmt":"2010-04-07T16:51:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alexshapiro.org\/blog\/?p=640"},"modified":"2010-04-07T08:56:11","modified_gmt":"2010-04-07T16:56:11","slug":"getting-my-ducks-in-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alexshapiro.org\/blog\/?p=640","title":{"rendered":"Getting my ducks in a&#8230; ?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/blog\/blogpix\/duckrow.jpg\" width=\"400\" height=\"133\" alt=\"[IMAGE] right side up\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/blog\/blogpix\/duckbutts.jpg\" width=\"400\" height=\"133\" alt=\"[IMAGE] upside down\" \/><\/p>\n<p><font color=#4F4E81>&#8230;click to listen:<\/font><br \/>\n<a href=\"\/RealAudio\/SlyJazz.mp3\" style=\"text-decoration:none\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"\/ASJazzFilmTV.html\" style=\"text-decoration:none\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/blog\/blogpix\/moregn.jpg\"\/><font color=#4F4E81>&#8230;about the music<\/font><\/a><\/p>\n<p><i><font color=#346513>Things are going swimmingly.<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n<p>I often say that composing is a faith-based activity. I can go for quite a while under deadline without managing to come up with anything. I don&#8217;t mean anything I <em>like<\/em>. I mean, <em>anything at all<\/em>. I am the Queen of the Procrasti Nation, and being pretty busy, there&#8217;s plenty to procrastinate with. But despite the impending, career-denting doom that could occur, I never fret (well, okay, I fret, but I don&#8217;t take it that seriously). Why? Because after 32 years of composing music under the stress of deadlines, I&#8217;ve never failed to meet my delivery date with something I&#8217;m not embarrassed by (hmm&#8230; it&#8217;s possible that my standards are far too low). Once you&#8217;ve done this sort of thing that many times, you just have faith that you can, and will, do it again (in other words, this is not a technique I recommend to someone with their very first pro gig). Now watch; having had the hubris to type this, something will screw up next week that will have me in a real bind.<\/p>\n<p>So here I am, nearing my deadline, and just about done with a really fun electroacoustic wind band piece for the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bandquest.org\/index.asp\" style=\"text-decoration:none\" target=\"_blank\"><b>American Composers Forum&#8217;s BandQuest series <\/b><\/a> that&#8217;s funded by the <a href=\"http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/ya9sdsh\" style=\"text-decoration:none\" target=\"_blank\"><b>NEA, <\/b><\/a> and I appear to have my ducks in a row. And like the guys in the photos above right outside my studio, sometimes that can be in some rather creative positions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230;click to listen: &#8230;about the music Things are going swimmingly. I often say that composing is a faith-based activity. I can go for quite a while under deadline without managing to come up with anything. I don&#8217;t mean anything I like. I mean, anything at all. I am the Queen of the Procrasti Nation, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexshapiro.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexshapiro.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexshapiro.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexshapiro.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexshapiro.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=640"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexshapiro.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":650,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexshapiro.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640\/revisions\/650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexshapiro.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexshapiro.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexshapiro.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}