I usually declare a shinkyoku moratorium in the fall, as a way to curb the amount of music I produce in a single year. These moratoriums are usually broken the moment I start working on something new. Technically, I broke last year’s moratorium back in February, when I wrote a few measures of a new string quartet.
I haven’t worked on it since, and now that I’ve launched a label and a publishing company, I don’t think I’ll get back to it any time soon.
So I’m extending the shinkyoku moratorium from September 2007, or at least, I’m not considering it broken. Launching the label forces me to look seriously at the current state of my catalog, and adding to it just doesn’t seem appealing. Now that I have a means through which this music can be (somewhat) properly distributed, I need to make sure it’s the best it can possibly be.
That means recording and editing vocals, finalizing arrangements and closing outstanding bugs issues.
I did manage to record a slew of vocals back in December 2007 — with help from the Spreadsheet — and I hope to spend the summer getting the rest of those first takes done.
I’ve already shipped off a majority of my songs for Copyright registration, and I’m still considering whether to register them with ASCAP.
After three years of attempting to curb my productivity, I finally have something to put me in check. In essence, I’m moving out of the prototyping phase and am transitioning to a production phase. That opens up a whole slew of tasks — perhaps requiring outside involvement — which makes pure creation a dubious endeavor.
In other words, I won’t have time to add to the workload.