Pete has told me a lot about their use of the Fairlight (and like an idiot, I kept referring to it as the Fairchild, a vintage compressor). That’s not really the sound I’m going for, but they were certainly ahead of their time. Rest assured that the synthy stuff will have piano in it, and the piano-y stuff will have synth in it.

Personally, I think the last few batches of snippets are a huge improvement over the first few, but a lot of those early ones were just to get a feel for functions in the software.

I totally understand where you’re coming from with the backlog of ideas. For me, the real fun started when I finally exhausted mine while working on my fifth album. I went through all my cassettes and text files and used everything worth using, so The Thought Chapter started with a clean slate. Occasionally you feel like you can’t write about something because you’ve already covered the topic, but it forces you to approach things from new angles and not settle for another “I’m falling in love with you” or “you suck” kind of song.

Not that I’ve seen any of those types of songs from you. That’s just a pattern I’ve spotted with beginning songwriters. I suppose you got those out of system before you could write something like Goodbye Dear Aunt Bobeets, which is so much more interesting and truly unique.

Canyon likes Little Richie more than I do. He says, “It’s awesome and I like the drums.” It seemed a little busy at first, but grew on me. I like Swing Vampires better though. As far as whether it’s “meant to be” it doesn’t grab like Hoover Slam, which is a slam dunk.

Glowing would be great for walking or dancing. I do like a good thump.

It’s pretty cool to have a window into your songwriting process. My equivalent of a “snippet” is usually a guitar ditty or one line of melody and/or lyrics, which will stew in my subconscious while I wait for the rest of the song to condense around it. These brew, sometimes for months or years—6 years in the case of Waterfall and Slightly Down—then all at once crystallize, often after I gain wisdom or life experience that reveals what I couldn’t see at the time. Rarely the inspiration is so strong that the snippet becomes a song immediately, as in Continental Divide. But I’ve never been able to set the schedule myself. The only thing that saves me is I have written so many songs that it will be a long time before I run out.

Props to you for charging ahead towards your deadline with such determination!