I set a New Year’s goal in 2008 to write 52 Tracks in 52 Weeks. As of October 8, I’ve posted 39 to my music blog. I’ve got 13 more to go and there are 12 weeks left in the year.

Surprisingly, a staggering majority of the tracks are improvised ambient compositions at about 40 beats per minute. Creating these slow, lethargic, sleepy time pieces tunes my ear to mix issues that I wouldn’t notice if the tempo was higher. Plus, it gets me in the practice of trusting my musical skill enough to play music while the record button is on, with no idea where I’m going with this.

It also gives me the realization that not every track I write has to be great for me to let the world have it. Of the 36 ambient tracks I’ve written so far this year, I doubt very many of them are amazing. The point is that musical output often looks like a bell curve, with a small number of As, a bigger number of Bs, a great number of Cs, a few Ds, and a smattering of Fs. Even if your favorite artist can do no wrong, we never hear the army of turds they wrote to get to their greatest hits. Even some of the songs on Stevie Wonder’s albums are filler (Cs).

Onward!