As I was writing the other day, I am continually looking at how our thoughts match up with our experience. Today I picked up another way of looking at it, courtesy of Abraham-Hicks: your receiving matches your transmission. In other words, what you give off is what you are likely to receive back. Everyday we have the opportunity to look at how our thoughts and feelings match the experience we are attracting. For example, today I have been getting ready for a gig, playing through some classical music I have…
Category: Music Career
Day 168: Letting It Evolve Naturally
So I have been composing daily since the beginning of June. That’s almost seven months of daily composing. I have written a ton of new music, gotten a lot of experience using Logic Pro, and done more orchestrating than I ever have before. Orchestrating is something I have dreamt of doing for many years, this year was the first time I really sunk my teeth into it. So it’s been a blast. A little while ago I started to realize, “Hmm, maybe I’m ready for more than just being in…
Day 144: My 4-Million View Video
So my Charlie Chaplin video has reached 4 million views. The magical fireworks were from May through July, where I got tens of thousands of views on an average day, and as many as one hundred thousand. The views started to drop in August, and recently they have been a trickle compared to the previous flood. No matter. This has been a great experience. It is an affirmation of “If you build it, they will come.” It might take four years from when you first post, but they will come!…
Day 107: How Does This Feel to You?
Note: Tonight I had a nice “inner monologue” conversation where I discuss some shifts I want to make in my life. The question “how does this feel to you?” helps me discern the rightness of my thinking. In these areas I feel like I’m doing really well: Relationship, Running, Creative expression (composing and blogging), Teaching, Personal finances. But uh… Wait a second. This may be something I want to journal about first, lol. haha Why, Chris? Are you worried you might say something you’d regret? Um, yes! I haven’t thought…
Day 45: A Transcendent Production of “The Secret Garden”
This is a two-parter pertaining to musicals 🙂 Part #1: A Transcendent Production of “The Secret Garden” For many years now, my wife has shot pictures for “Music Circus,” an annual Summer tradition here in Sacramento where six complete musicals are professionally staged over several months. Due to the Pandemic, Music Circus hadn’t happened since 2019. My wife has loved returning to take pictures after the three year break. For me it’s been great fun to be able to see the productions again. Last weekend I took my mom to…
Day 41: Reaching for Satisfaction (Music-Sharing Edition)
Today I sat at the cafe and blissed out for three hours writing, something I absolutely love doing. At one point I realized it wasn’t the topic I was writing about (which happened to be investing) that was important so much as how the topic was feeling. In other words, I was having fun, so I kept it up. And because it felt good, I know it was good for me 🙂 That’s how I am learning to think of things these days. It’s not the subject, it how it…
Day 36: My Short-But-Sweet “In the Heights” Adventure
A few nights ago I was about to close up for the night and relax, when my friend Lisa called. A few years ago we worked together on several musicals at a high school in Elk Grove, including “Frankenstein,” which I wrote the music for. Lisa is now doing “In the Heights” in Woodland, about a half hour outside of where I live in Sacramento. She explained that their keyboardist had taken sick, opening night is two days away, and is there ANY possibility I could maybe… drive over right…
Day 28: Improving My Marathon/Life Balance
I can personally say that training for and running a marathon has been one of the most fulfilling and satisfying things I have ever done. However–this may sound obvious–it is not easy. And when I say it is not easy, I’m not just talking the physical challenge of four months of training and then that big run at the end. I’m talking about the challenge of balancing marathon training with the rest of life. I’m still figuring this one out, but I’m hoping that with Marathon #3 I can get…
Day 6: What Does it Mean to Get a Million Views?
What does it mean to get to a million views on your Youtube video? Ask me this a few months ago and I would have had no idea. Yet a couple weeks ago, a Youtube video of mine actually accomplished this feat. In fact, today it is rapidly approaching 1.5 million views. You can watch the video here. It is a Charlie Chaplin film clip I recorded my own piano score to … four years ago ( I wrote about it during my first 365 Day Blogging Project: see “Day…
Oh, To Enjoy My Songs!
This week has been pretty remarkable, because for the first time in recent memory I have been playing my songs. And enjoying myself. And I’m not just talking about playing the song I happen to be working on. I’ve written about fourteen songs in the past year (eleven of them for a musical I collaborated on earlier this year). I certainly spent a lot of time with these songs. No, I’m talking about playing (and in many cases listening to records I’ve made of) songs I wrote as far back…