iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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 · 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 · 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 · 08/06/2026

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 · 09/01/2026

Snow day! So what I want to be doing is composing. What I will be doing… is annual and quarterly planning. Glad the snow finally showed up, though!

Electronic keyboard on a desk facing a large window with heavy snow and ice buildup outside, a snowy deck railing and muted lake in the background

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 02/12/2025

An excerpt from my latest video essay on musical composition… by way of talking about composition in photography, and teaching people to appreciate street photography! (Full video linked in thread) #music #composing #photography

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 02/11/2025

Beginning to think that Spotify’s stats are maybe not that coherent. Something *literally* does not add up here. 😂 Whoops. (Bugs like this happen, and with large enough audiences this particular bug probably gets lots in the noise—but not with mine!—, so it’s extra funny in this case.)

Screenshot of Spotify stats email for Chris Krycho; it reads “In the past 28 days, Chris Krycho had 3 listeners. Out of those, 452 were new listeners. 252 are monthly active listeners.”

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 31/10/2025

This month in my music newsletter: a discussion of “fittingness” when adapting other art to #music – including a chance to hear me singing to illustrate one of the most common failings of text setting I hear in church music. 🎤 😂 But also: Camille Pépin, Ephraim Radner, and an update on my #symphony!

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 24/10/2025

Time to start something new. Palette cleanser in between finishing Mvt. III and starting work in earnest on Mvt. IV of the symphony! Still figuring out *what*, though. 😂 #composing #music

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 22/10/2025

Two days ago, I finished drafting the 3rd movement of my first #symphony. Lots of revision ahead! Four years since I started on it, and I’m steadily making good progress. More in my #music newsletter next week (subscribe to get it when I send it). Up next: something else as a palette cleanser!

A square image with a gradient from dark blue in the upper left to dark grey in the bottom right, which reads:

Symphony No. 1
Mvt. III—drafted!
Bars 288
Notes 10,832
Dynamics 1,358
Trills 21
Duration 8′52″

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 05/10/2025

Delighted to be enjoying opening night for the Colorado Springs Philharmonic’s 99th season. Camille Pepín, Tchaikovsky, and Stravinsky, led by new music director Chloe Dufresne. This is: good!

Picture of the interior of the Pikes Peak Center in Colorado Springs with an orchestra in stage warming up before the concert begins; the words “Opening night!” in all caps are laid over the image in black text with a white background.

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 03/10/2025

I wrote in my end-of-September newsletter this week about the “two chasms” that artists like playwrights and composers have to cross—one chasm shared by all artists, and one… not.

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 31/07/2025

July newsletter is out! It’s a meditation on staying the course—as I work on my first symphony and am in that “slog in the middle” that is, as I note in the newsletter, not just normal but indeed a *norm* for every large undertaking.

Screenshot of text that reads, “Way back in the early 2010s, as I watched my wife write her first novel, I saw her work through exactly that challenge. Starting the book was fun, finishing the book was fun, but the work in the middle—even though she enjoyed it—, was much harder. From talking to many artists working across many different arts over the years, this is not just common but the norm. In some sense, it actually norms what it is to make a significant work: there is a slog in the middle, and you must endure. More than that, it is the norm for all kinds of “making”, as I put it in The Work is the Work last month.”

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 17/07/2025

Status: analyzing music I wrote a couple weeks ago to understand what I did intuitively so I can iterate on it intentionally. It’s really fun: I⁶ – IV – V – vi – iii⁶₄ – I² – vi⁷ – IV – IV⁶₄ – V⁶/V – V⁷/V – V/iii – iii – V⁶/V – V – IV – V⁶ – …and then: somewhere!

Picture of a desk with a window overlooking a lake, hills, clouds, and mountains behind it. On the desk are a MIDI keyboard, a yellow mug, a laptop with Dorico showing notation, and a staff paper notebook with a pencil on it.

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 28/02/2025

The run on which I took these beautiful photos was terribly frustrating: the first photo was shot along one of the few clear spots on the whole course. Most of it was, by contrast, covered in black ice—you can see just a bit of that at the edge of the frame in the second photo. (1/3)

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 27/02/2025

This won’t be a “new release” for much longer! But it has officially made its way to alllllll the services (I recently got a notice that it was live on iHeartRadio, which I had forgotten all about!). As I put it in the forthcoming issue of my newsletter: (1/3)

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 25/02/2025

#moon at #sunset in the #winter – again, the kind of thing that makes me want to #compose some quiet piece of #music to convey the *sense* of the thing somehow.

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 21/02/2025

Jotting down some musical ideas before the girls got up, as I practice writing better/more interesting/just-plain-different melodies. #composing #practice #melody #harmony #music

A man sitting a table, jotting notes on a notebook of musical staff paper.

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 18/02/2025

Scene: trying not to wake up your kids while you’re doing some ear training and melody analysis. #composing #music #practice #parenting #art

A man wearing pair of over-ear headphones over a pair of earpods. He looks bemused.

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 12/02/2025

Took a 5-minute break from the regular work and edited this. Nothing especially to do with #music here, other than the fact that I’ve had “western/American” themes on the brain lately—mostly this is just “I like taking nice pictures near where we live”. #horses #Colorado #FrontRange

Three horses graze in a snowy field below a wintry blue sky, with an old water tower, scattered trees, and (far away) a city in the background.

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 10/02/2025

This morning’s #composing looked about like this. Trying to keep hammering away at this idea that popped into my head 9 days ago till I have enough of the #music on paper or in Dorico that I can get back to working on the symphony without fear of losing this!

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 04/01/2025

If you’d like to hear it actually *sung*—you know, kind of important!—this is my wife singing and me playing during a practice session at church last year.

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 04/01/2025

The main bits of interest: 1. There is now an SATB arrangement (which I quite like!)—I actually wrote it last February, but failed to share it. Whoops! There's a mockup attached. 2. Based on feedback from our choir, I tweaked how the meter is presented at the start. It’s “weirder”—but easier!

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 29/10/2024

For just a bit of what I drive at late in the piece:

Screenshot of an excerpt from the post: “Most video game and film music is not as complex or as “sophisticated” as most traditional classical music. It does not have to be, though, to be good orchestra music. Orchestras playing video game music—or playing John Williams and Ludwig Göransson while showing with the films they scored—is a lot like the outstanding lattes I had at that coffee shop before I realized what black coffee could be, still less what good espresso could be. I still like those lattes sometimes: they are good! When people come to trust you because you serve them the best lattes they have ever had, they might just be willing to try the black coffee with a nudge. Given Göransson, people might just be willing to try Beethoven, too. Build up enough trust, and they might be willing to try out the espresso—or listen to something difficult but rewarding at the orchestra: John Adams or Anna Cline on the easier side, or Schönberg or Henryk Górecki on the more difficult side. (Even I don’t drink straight espresso every day!)”

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 26/05/2024

It has been a quiet May in terms of social media output… because I have been super busy with a mix of software work, public speaking, running a half marathon, and composing. Last week I wrote nearly a minute of music, some of the best I have ever written, as a result of keeping my focus there!

A plant bud just emerging from the soil.

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 02/04/2024

Over the next couple weeks, I will share a bunch of the sketches and development materials from #Fanfare for a New Era of American Spaceflight, from 2020 and 2022. This is how it started! #composers #music

The first pencil-on-paper sketch of my Fanfare for a New Era of American Spaceflight

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Chris Krycho – Composer @music.chriskrycho.com · 16/03/2024

@jmduke.com A quick heads up that your pricing page and features disagree with your docs (and historic blog posts) about whether automations are available on the Standard plan. 😢 I assume this was a change at some point—but I also cannot find a mention of it on the blog?

Screen shot from Buttondown’s docs showing that automations are available “on Standard plans or higher”.

Screenshot from the feature page showing that automations require a Professional plan.

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