a year in mp3s
72 hours of music in 365 days, 2009-2010
From September 10th, 2009 through September 10th, 2010, I created a piece of music every day and posted it online, notifying followers of the project on Facebook and through an RSS feed of its availability. This body of composition, titled a year in mp3s, documents a year in my life through a musical trajectory. During the 365 days of the project, I composed exactly 72 hours of music, with all of the pieces available free, online, under a Creative Commons by-nc-nd license. Some of the pieces are quite short and take the form of electronic sketches for longer works; some are pop tunes that I wrote while waiting in airports for a flight; quite a few are done late at night using a software package called Real-Time Cmix, developed with colleagues at Columbia University in the 1990s. Some of the works are taken from live performances with collaborators and friends, in 25 cities and four countries. At the end of the project, I published an editorial essay on my musical journey in the New York Times.
The project was inspired by a similar undertaking, called 365 Days / 365 Plays, undertaken by MacArthur- and Pulitzer-award winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks. Part creative exercise, part journal, the work was a highly personal one that served as a documentary of my 34th year.
