I’m writing you from inside the music.  I suppose I’ll come out sometime, but I don’t know when.  It’s pretty safe in here and I’ll have to admit, I rather like it and sometimes wonder if perhaps I just shouldn’t stay here the rest of my life.

I just spent the last 4 days immersed in the otherworld of notes and sound, strings and woodwinds, Logic and Kontakt, push and pull.  ‘Immersed’ is a shallow description of where I have existed for the last 96 hours.  ‘Lost’ is perhaps more accurate, but I can’t say I was ever lost, but rather ‘found’.

I came halfway out occasionally to grab a quick bite of something to eat or drink, check the Yankee game scores on espn.com, but even that would only be a quick half hour and the song would still be raging through my brain, the ideas still formulating, the desire to rush back into the studio and sketch the next 4 bars overwhelming.

I did sleep in spurts – far from my normal schedule – sometimes in mid afternoon, sometimes catching two hours at 8 and not knowing if it were PM or AM.  I didn’t read my email; I did not answer the phone except to talk to the Missus who was away for 4 days.  I did not go out.  I simply lived in the music.

Even as I write I feel myself slipping out of that world and back into the normal one.  I don’t like the feeling.  It’s really good in there.  There’s no pressure, no sense of time, no sense of place, no interruption of thought, only pure problem solving on the most creative plain.  It’s 96 hours poured into 4 minutes and 30 seconds of song.  It’s building a house from the bottom up.  It’s a kind of madness perhaps, but an exquisite madness.

Perhaps I should explain myself, but to do that would be to further stand outside the experience and I’m not sure I really want to do that yet.  But here goes.  I’m orchestrating and sometimes composing a new album for Julia Wade.  We’ve been really slow to start mainly because of her far too busy schedule and my own duties at Watchfire U.  The CD is long overdue.  She hasn’t done an album in a couple of years and that’s a sin.

How can a singer be too busy to do an album?  Ridiculous!  But I lived it.  I saw it happen and I’m partly responsible.  But cast the past aside; we’ve started – I think.  I know I have and she promises to be not far behind – still clearing out a world of responsibilities.

For my hermit weekend I chose Greg Granoff’s amazing piece of music entitled “Satisfied” – with lyrics from a poem by Mary Baker Eddy.  In the Christian Science religion this is a deeply beloved poem that has been set to music by a myriad of others far too many times.  Everybody seems to have his/her version.  For me, even thought I’ve written one myself, the Granoff Satisfied stands far above the rest of the pack.

So I thought I’d give it a tackle as an orchestrator and move his powerful arrangement for 4 manual pipe organ into a hundred-piece orchestra.  No easy task.  Certainly one of my most challenging adventures.  I grew up a rock an’ roller and decided that in my latter years at some point I would move more into classical music.

It seems that my latter years have now officially arrived.  On the first day it took me 17 hours to do the first 9 bars of the piece.  I’m not a slow orchestrator.  I’m very much on top of my equipment and I work with state-of-the-art tools that Bach would use today if he were with us in person.  But this one was a stretch beyond my usual pop/classical-crossover/R&B/folk/rock endeavors.  This one moved into other realms for me that were unfamiliar, yet delightful.  New ground, yet fascinating.

I don’t think I can possibly describe the experience fully.  It was like I held the reins of 50 horses that were all running out from me in different directions.  I needed to get them all going in the same direction at once, but they each had a mind of their own.  The lead horse, as it turned out, the one who finally got us all organized and going in the right direction, was called Greg Granoff.  Once I resolved to follow his lead, we were off and running.

Maneuvering a hundred piece orchestra is a little like the above.  There are infinite possibilities, an infinite palate of sounds, a myriad of directions where a piece can go.  So I let Greg lead.  There were moments where I simply took what he had given me in his organ score and converted it to other instruments.  But often, though fine on the organ, that wasn’t enough when it came to 100 players and their infinite possibilities.

In those cases I had to invent to support Greg and his original idea.  I had to become Greg and take it one step or sometimes 100 steps further.  I’ve never met Greg in person.  We’ve talked 3 times on the phone.  Yet it was easy to become him because I lived in his soul for 96 hours.  And I’m here to tell you that I deeply admire this man’s soul.

I’ve always said that the job of the orchestrator is to serve – to serve the whims and wishes of the composer.  Well, this last weekend I was his servant.  He may have been off on a picnic with his kids somewhere, but I was in my studio serving him elegant meal after elegant meal, making his bed, cleaning his arpeggios, tidying his chord progressions, honoring his melodies.

The second day of 18 hours I did a whopping 15 bars.  I paused, not knowing whether it was the second or the third day and listened back once again to the work and realized that I had ‘found’ the song, found the tonality, found the largess that I was looking for.  I wanted to listen again and again.  That’s always a good sign.  I wanted to revel in the organization of perfection and bring ‘perfection’ into more perfect order – if that’s possible.

Then I got to the bridge, the B section of the song.  Now I was confronted with a whole new raft of choices, problems, directions.  I stopped to watch the last 2 innings of the Yankee game on the tube – an activity that Bach would also have loved doing.  I got away so that I could get back.

I then plowed into it with renewed energy and spent the next 19 hours sorting and sifting, casting and reeling, experimenting and discarding – until the tipping point was reached.  The bridge complete, I could now look over the crest of the hill and see the end in sight.  My heart beat faster at this juncture, every fiber of my weary being screamed “Go for it!”  I had 16-24 bars left to orchestrate and much of that was development of themes that I had now wandered and reveled in for 3 days now.  It would be like revisiting and old friend – easy, familiar, a joy.

And so I went to bed instead.  I slept for 10 hours and woke about 4:30 AM with the songs innards raging through my brain.  I crawled out of bed, threw on my robe, brushed a few teeth and rebooted my studio.

Unknown hours later I orchestrated the last chord, the last note, the fade of the last note.  I grabbed some breakfast – a bowl of astronaut oatmeal and a glass of orange drink noticing that it was dark outside.  Totally discombobulated, I realized that I should, in fact, be eating dinner.  What did it matter?  Only one thing mattered – the polishing.  I began to listen.

I listened and polished and fixed and tweaked and listened again and took notes and started then over again for the next 6-7 hours.  Now exhaustion began to overcome me.  How much can 2 ears take?  They’re always the first to give out.  I do not record and work loud.  I’ve learned.  Besides, if it sounds great soft, it will always sound great loud.

I went back to bed, but could not sleep.  My brain would not turn off.  Even in the alpha level of weariness I wondered from Greg’s mind who this Peter Link guy was who was invading my soul.

I watched a movie on the tube.  I have no idea what I saw.  I remember nothing of the experience.  I spoke to the Missus.  She was engulfed in her own triumphs.  I was joyous for her.

Am I finished?  No.  I have only reached the end.  More hours lay before me.  But I have broken it’s back.  (A strange term when you really think about it.)  I have gotten on top of the song.  (An even stranger one.)

I’ll take some time away from it now before I go back to it – get some distance.  Already I miss it.  It’s not my song, but now I own it.  It will always be Greg’s, but now it’s mine too.  That’s the great thing about music.  It doesn’t really belong to any of us.  It’s like the air.  It’s just passing through.

Am I satisfied with “Satisfied”?  Somebody had to ask, so I thought I’d say it first.  I’m satisfied with where I am in the process up to this point.  I’m most satisfied with the experience of my long weekend.  Now back to life as it normally is.  Oh hum…

Stay tuned.