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I thought I would take a break from the business of selling tickets to next week's Zubatto Syndicate premiere (available here!) and share a glimpse of the creative process behind this new music. There were a number of deliberate choices I made about my process and approach while writing this music that are a clear departure from my previous Standard Operating Procedure. I also found ways to support and reinforce some things about my writing process that have always served me well.

Historically, I have always fared better when writing a ton of music that when I am working on a few pieces or even a single piece at one time. When I have a few months to create and arrange a single piece, I tend to agonize over it, often procrastinating over every step of the way, and the results will be often be disappointing (at least to me). Last year, in anticipation of a gig as guest-conductor for a local jazz orchestra, I had hoped to present one new chart for the show (in addition to the six I already had). Relative to other recent projects, I had all the time in the world to work on this new tune. Ultimately, I abandoned it mid-sketch - nothing about it was working for me, and I vacillated between feeling like I was pulling teeth and like I was relying on repeating the same old tried-and-not-so-true tricks just to get it finished.

For Zubatto, I knew I had to write around 10-12 new tunes in a fairly short amount of time. I began working in June, and set a goal to be sketching for the full group by late August or early September. Rehearsals ended up beginning in early October. To be certain that I would have enough material, and enough of the "right" material, I wanted to generate a *lot* of ideas. At that point, I had an idea of the sound for the group and the music in my head, and a number of guiding statements that I scrawled in a sketch book in the form of pithy aphorisms (More on those another time!), but I didn't know how to translate those vaguely imagined sounds and concepts into musical statements.

The solution was the creation of an "idea factory" process. For much of the summer, I spent the first four days of each week just tinkering around on the piano, working out new melodies, playing with chord progressions, working out cool rhythm section parts - and so on - and writing down the results. If I heard something that I wanted to play with, or had a conceptual idea, or thought of something while away from the piano or guitar, I would add that to a "To-Do" list and work on some of those every day, too.

Fridays were designated as "Mock-up Day" - the day on which I would do simple Finale arrangement of every idea, usually 2 or 3 staves plus rhythm section parts. Each mockup/idea received a number, in sequential order (Number 1 was the very first thing I worked on, 36 was the last). I'll talk a little more about the role of the mockups in the next installment. These would then be forgotten (for the time being), in favor of adding more and more new ideas to the pile.

Every few weeks, I performed an inventory on all of the mockups, giving them two ratings: one for the "coolness" of the idea (highly objective, of course) and one for the "bakedness" of the idea (an 8-bar meoldy alone would have a very low rating on the baked scale, a 32-bar form with a complete rhythm section part a very high one, and so forth). This provided me with a reasonable way to begin to prioritize the ideas when it came time to begin sketching for the full group.

When it came time to get more organized, I began to divide everything into small groups. I didn't want to stop generating ideas until the very last possible moment (in fact, several of the last ideas I came up made the final cut), but I also wanted to be sure that I wasn't left with too much development and arranging (and too little time) at the very end. Pieces that were high "coolness" and reasonably baked went directly into the "To Sketch" pile. If a piece had a high "coolness" rating but wasn't very baked, it went into "To Work On" pile. Everything else went into a last pile, with a name that isn't really worth repeating.

I continued to refine and add to these piles, until I had around 15 tunes in the "To Sketch" pile. That (and the proximity of the first rehearsal) was my signal to stop the R&D and move full time into sketching and copying into Finale.

Some stats! I made mockups of 36 different ideas. Of those, I ended up sketching 13 full band arrangements. 10 of those made the setlist for the concert. Their numbers are: 2, 7, 8, 9, 14, 27, 29, 30, 35 and 36. So the first couple of weeks were very fruitful, as were the last couple. In between, not so much.

The best part of this way of working may still be yet to come. I now have a good-sized pile of orphaned ideas, many of which may yet have a future (high "coolness" rating!). On the other hand, in the last week or so, I've begun to get excited about starting to work on new ideas for the next round of Zubatto Syndicate music (many of these are already popping up when I'm trying to sleep or write annoying Facebook pleas for ticket purchases). Just another reason to make sure the premiere is a big success on November 5th!

In part 2 of the "Writing for Zubatto" series, I'll talk about working with the rhythm section (and rhythm in general) for the music of Zubatto Syndicate. Maybe with some fun examples!