iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 29/09/2026

One of them is me! One of them could be you, as either a supporter or an artist! This is good!

Reposted by Chris Krycho – Composer

drew mca @drewmca.net · 24/09/2026

Really cool piece from the @subvert.fm coop annual general meeting (at 1:35:20): They went for an optional contribution at checkout, rather than taking a percentage of artist's revenue. They saw an average contribution of 27% per transaction, almost twice as much as bandcamp's mandatory 15%.

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 23/09/2026

I’ve now gotten my full (yes, full! So it’s tiny! I don’t care! It’s *something*!) catalog up on @subvert.fm to match Bandcamp: www.subvert.fm/chriskrycho Along the way I also discovered that I have done a pretty poor job of keeping my ready-for-distribution files organized. 🤦🏻‍♂️

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 22/09/2026

Spent a good chunk of last night reading @subvert.fm’s bylaws etc. and: I’m on board and thoroughly enthusiastic about the direction. We’ll see if it works, of course, but the goal is good. More on that in a video essay Soon™, I hope. In the meantime, catalog inbound! www.subvert.fm/chriskrycho

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 22/09/2026

Why it is always *so* hard to get back into the flow after even just a couple weeks away from composing I may never know. 😮‍💨 Read: it took a bit, but I did find my way back into Mvt. IV a bit this morning. Steady on. 🎼 🖊️

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Reposted by Chris Krycho – Composer

🇨🇦 🇺🇸 Zoë Keating @zoekeating.com · 21/09/2026

The more people obtain music directly from artists, the more those artists will be able to survive to make more music. Similar to buying food directly from farms via a CSA or farmers market, the less our lives are mediated by billionaires, the better.

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Reposted by Chris Krycho – Composer

🇨🇦 🇺🇸 Zoë Keating @zoekeating.com · 21/09/2026

I’ve been releasing music DIY for 25yrs and I believe that should always be a viable option for artists. The double sale of Bandcamp was a wake up call so earlier this year, I joined Subvert.fm, a member-owned music distribution platform. As a co-op, Subvert can’t simply be sold to investors. 1/

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 21/09/2026

Oh! @zoekeating.com recently mentioned her membership in (and indeed that she’s running for a board seat for) Subvert and I am *extremely* intrigued. More: v5.chriskrycho.com/notes/subvert.…

v5.chriskrycho.com

Subvert.fm — Sympolymathesy, by Chris Krycho

A co-op for musicians? You have my attention.

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Reposted by Chris Krycho – Composer

🇨🇦 🇺🇸 Zoë Keating @zoekeating.com · 21/09/2026

Don’t forget Facebook grew by launching Pages in 2007 and encouraging public figures like musicians to join. As soon as everyone was there and using FB instead of their own mailing lists, FB-now-Meta torched it all and made creators pay to reach folk who already followed them. 1/

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 20/09/2026

Finally done with weeks of travel and catchup-from-travel for work, which hopefully means this is the week I get back to composing. 🎼

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 28/08/2026

Digging back up an old version of my symphony to reference something I removed in the years since and confronted with a dialog box telling *just* how long it has been since I opened this version of the file. @doricoofficial.bsky.social v3.5.10 was a very, very long time ago. 😂

Dialog box which reads “This project was created in version 3.5.10 of Dorico. It will be automatically updated to the current version.”

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 27/08/2026

Overheard at work just now: > @oxide.computer racks at everyone’s house for CI!

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Reposted by Chris Krycho – Composer

Chris Krycho @chriskrycho.com · 27/08/2026

Okay, so I posted that @doricoofficial.bsky.social tip video earlier. But why bother doing that kind of thing? v5.chriskrycho.com/notes/why-post…

v5.chriskrycho.com

Why Post Dorico Tip Videos? — Sympolymathesy, by Chris Krycho

Mostly to help people. A little bit to help people find my music.

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 27/08/2026

Writing a symphony means I have a lot, and I mean a LOT, of music. @doricoofficial.bsky.social 6 performs pretty well with it… but when I have the whole score open, it still chugs a bit. My workaround for better performance—not original!—is to combine flows, layouts, and tabs: youtu.be/SsDgxVgt-L8

youtube.com

Using Flows, Tabs, and Layouts to Make Big Projects Manageable in Dorico

Working with large projects with many flows in Dorico can get slugg...

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 19/08/2026

I’m back to trying to post regularly about what I’m working on, (now with the excellent Jaimie Krycho doing video editing)! Up first: Wait, how many times am I going to repeat the ‘A’ theme in this rondo form 4th movement of my symphony? Oh no. #composing #orchestra #music youtube.com/shorts/TFjx...

youtube.com

That might be too many refrains 🎼

Wait, how many times am I going to repeat the ‘A’ theme in this ron...

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 18/08/2026

🎼🖊️ Fixing the voice leading in a strings part I wrote five years ago when I wrote the A and A′ themes for Mvt. IV of the symphony. 🤦🏻‍♂️ 😂 It was close before, but there were definitely some things that were just… wrong… in the interplay between violas and cellos. It sounds *way* better now. 😂

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 11/08/2026

I’m in the phase of work on this final movement of the symphony where all my composing work is… happening with words in a notebook. To borrow an idea from novel-writing, I’m a “plantser”, halfway between a “pantser” and an “outliner”. I don’t need every detail planned, but I need *some* structure!

A notebook page with handwritten notes about the A and A′ thematic ideas in Mvt. IV of the author’s in-progress symphony, with comments on the relation of this movement to a traditional rondo form as well as on the inner details of the musical ideas in play.

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 10/08/2026

Rondo time! Analyzing the major ideas and developments in the first three movements and thinking about whether and how to integrate them into the final movement. If I pull everything I *think* I might pull, I’d end up with ABACADAEAFA. Probably going to have to trim that down a bit. 😂

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 09/08/2026

🎼🖊️ Mulling on structure and development as I’m coming back to Mvt. IV of my symphony after having not done any serious work on it since 2021 (!). It’s almost certainly going to be a rondo—how traditional! Yet it’s what I gravitated toward almost instinctively, and it fits the movement thematically.

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 06/08/2026

Finding my way back into Mvt. IV. It’s been literally years since I have done serious work on this movement—most of what I have here was written all the way back in 2021!—so I’m starting by doing some edits on it and trying to figure out “what I want to say” with this concluding part, as it were. 🖊️🎼

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 04/08/2026

Just closed the tabs for the first three movements of the symphony after this morning’s revision work on Mvts. II and III. It’s time! No more revisions for now! I have the rest of Mvt. IV to write and I’m going to finish drafting it this year, Lord willing. Time to get to it. 🖊️ 🎼

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Reposted by Chris Krycho – Composer

Chris Krycho @chriskrycho.com · 31/07/2026

A follow-up to my post earlier today about finishing things—on *how* we finish things: Keep Going! v5.chriskrycho.com/notes/keep-goi…

v5.chriskrycho.com

Keep Going — Sympolymathesy, by Chris Krycho

Robin Sloan on the only way you ever finish things.

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Reposted by Chris Krycho – Composer

Chris Krycho @chriskrycho.com · 30/07/2026

Got the last revisions for a book chapter/essay in this morning, and it feels *so* good to have finished this thing. Not a major work, in the grand scheme of things, but finishing nonetheless matters! A (little!) more on this theme: v5.chriskrycho.com/notes/finishing-…

v5.chriskrycho.com

Finishing Things — Sympolymathesy, by Chris Krycho

In this case, a book chapter.

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 14/07/2026

Currently listening through every recording I can find from Hilary Hahn, and just profoundly grateful for her artistry. What a remarkable musician.

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 09/07/2026

A good view with some fun company (hummingbird!) for this morning's composing. Tweaking the ending of Mvt. II in subtle ways: lengthen *this* set of notes and move *that* set just so, and: AHHHH, that sounds right! It's like doing edits for prosody on an essay. Little details make a big difference.

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 08/07/2026

AAAAARRGGGHHHHHH Music distribution is *hard*, so I can understand why and how Distrokid has struggled (self-distribution is basically impossible, but playing middleman is just getting squeezed on both sides)… but it’s telling that everyone’s response to PE acquisitions is “OH NO”.

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 08/07/2026

Got about 40 minutes of composing done this morning, and I’m feeling pretty good about Mvt. II. I expect I’ll wrap up (this round of) revisions on it this week and 🫨 start work on drafting the rest of Mvt. IV! Also: *hoping* to get the music newsletter and videos going again this month!

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 07/07/2026

Well, this sucks. It’s roughly what we all expected after the Epic-then-Songtradr acquisition dance, but: it still sucks. GROWTH GROWTH GROWTH kills so many good things. Just run small, sustainable businesses: they’re good!

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Reposted by Chris Krycho – Composer

Chris Krycho @chriskrycho.com · 30/06/2026

🎧 🎻 🎼 Hilary Hahn Plays Bach is *very* good. Just the ticket for this afternoon. music.apple.com/us/album/hilar…

music.apple.com

Hilary Hahn Plays Bach by Hilary Hahn on Apple Music

Album · 1997 · 16 Songs

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 29/06/2026

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve done a *bunch* of edits on the conclusion of Mvt. II of my first symphony, and it’s *almost* at the point where I feel I can shift my focus over to finishing Mvt. IV. Six months to finish an end-to-end draft of this work? I can do this. Steady on.

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 26/06/2026

Some days, it’s nearly impossible not to despair of ever having my music find an audience. Say I finish the symphony: simple math still says it’ll likely never be played, even likelier never be recorded. (Getting a new symphony played, still less recorded, is *very* hard.) This is one of those days.

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 12/06/2026

I’ve spent at least twenty minutes composing three mornings this week. Over an hour! That’s not much—truly—but it’s more than I’ve done any other single week in 2026. Building momentum is the thing, and I’m doing that. Of course, I’m traveling for work next week. 🤦🏻‍♂️ We’ll see what I can make stick!

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 10/06/2026

How in the world had I gone until today and not heard Copland’s Symphony No. 3—and therefore never realized that he integrated “Fanfare for the Common Man” right into the fourth movement? And here I’ve always worried about plagiarizing myself even a little bit. 😂

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 08/06/2026

This felt really good: actually spent 25 minutes composing this morning. Made a bunch of meaningful improvements to Movement II. A long way left to go, but if I can build some momentum, maybe—just maybe—I can actually do what I’ve planned and finish a draft of the whole thing this year!

A screenshot of Dorico open to the second movement of a score, with an in-progress export (showing 20% progress).

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 31/05/2026

Well, this looks to be an absolutely incredible resource. Definitely going to be (a) watching it and (b) bookmarking it to return to for future reference… like, say, when I finish drafting and revising this symphony, so I can prep the score for hopefully (hopefully!) finding a performing orchesetra.

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 30/05/2026

So if my music going forward echoes Vasks a little bit more, this is part of why. 😁

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 26/05/2026

I maintain a de minimis presence on Threads because it has a lot of users, at least some of whom are potentially interested in music like what I write. And every time I use it directly, I wonder… does literally anyone on the Threads team use the web app? It’s unbelievably slow and janky.

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 26/05/2026

Context today: Pēteris Vasks’ stunning “Oboe Concerto”. The Albrecht Mayer/Latvian National Symphony Orchestra recording of that alongside Vasks’ works “Vēstījums” and “Lauda” is among my very favorite albums of the past decade. music.apple.com/us/album/pēter…

music.apple.com

Pēteris Vasks: Oboe Concerto, Vēstījums & Lauda by Latvian National Symphony Orchestra, Andris Poga & Albrecht Mayer on Apple Music

Album · 2021 · 5 Songs

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 26/05/2026

A few years ago I invested in some Dan Clark AEON 2 Open headphones. The highest compliment I can give them is: I regularly have the experience of thinking, “Wait, is this coming from the headphones or is it in my room?” because the sound stage is so wide and open (as well as clear and clean). 🎧

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 24/05/2026

The past couple weeks, a bunch of my music has gotten a bunch of streams (well, for me: 54!) from basically all over… but only on Apple Music. 🎵 *Zero* streams on Spotify in the same span—which is, sadly, normal. I wonder what happened to make that happen? If you have ideas, I’d love to hear them.

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 23/05/2026

Spoilers: nope. I did get some work done this week, but I wouldn’t yet call it “momentum”. Work proved too disruptive. Onward, though!

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 17/05/2026

Will this be the week I get some momentum on the symphony rolling again? Hopefully. There’s a chance. This spring has been brutal for making progress on that, but I haven’t given up and I haven’t ever completely stopped. And this month's newsletter is written and will be recorded Soon™!

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Reposted by Chris Krycho – Composer

Chris Krycho @chriskrycho.com · 13/05/2026

I get why people end up putting background music under their video content on YouTube, but the current default of vapid filler music is bad and I hate it. I see it on software channels, photography channels, etc., and it’s an undifferentiated wash of vaguely jazzy noise. Ugh.

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 01/05/2026

🎼 Been mulling a bit on a background project of doing some good work on engraving and then selling a bunch of my works. An interesting exercise in thinking through which of them I think warrant it: a few from college and after, and most of my more recent concert-oriented works!

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 29/04/2026

I started working with @doricoofficial.bsky.social back in 2020 when I wrote Fanfare for a New Era of American Spaceflight (music.chriskrycho.com/works/fanfa...), and 6 years and multiple compositions including ¾ of a symphony later, it’s still one of my favorite pieces of software. A joy to use.

music.chriskrycho.com

A fanfare for symphony orchestra (02:27), composed in honor of the SpaceX Crew Dragon Demo Launch recorded with the Budapest Scoring Orchesetra

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 27/04/2026

Sibelius’ Lemminkäinen Suite is so, so good. I have loved a bunch of his other works for years, but only found my way to this one in the past few years and it has quickly risen to the top of my list of Sibelius works and indeed to late 19th and early 20th century works generally. 🎼

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Reposted by Chris Krycho – Composer

Chris Krycho @chriskrycho.com · 18/02/2026

As is my long habit, I am signing out of social media for Lent. I’ll (presumably!) be back after Easter Sunday. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with the Collect for Ash Wednesday—one of my favorite of the Collects of the whole Christian year. Grace and peace to all of you.

Selection from the 2019 Book of Common Prayer which reads, “Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made, and you forgive the sins of all who are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 28/01/2026

Quite surprised to hear that Native Instruments is insolvent. The private equity acquisition doesn’t seem to have gone well. The centralization (acquiring iZotope, etc.) was bad, too. I’d really love to see us get out of this cycle! But it’s obviously going to be a messy few years ahead /w LLMs etc.

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 23/01/2026

Listening to the (mockup of the) whole of my in-progress #symphony as it stands today while doing day job work, and… yeah, it definitely needs the revisions I’ve mentioned I’m doing, but I *really* like it. Which, I should, right? But it’s not a given. Long way to go, but good so far. Onward. 🚀 🎼

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