TINY PUZZLE

Lots of thoughts tonight, all trying to get out of the door at the same time. I feel a bit like someone's sped up the music by a couple of beats per minute and nobody's noticed.

Ever get that? Like something small is wrong, out of place, almost right, but uncomfortably not? It jangles away at the back of my brain like a tiny puzzle.

I played the Yamaha CP300 tonight for the first time in a while. I don't know why I expected it to sound like the Nord Stage 2, but the pads seemed kind of cheesy by comparison. Plus I didn't have the good old Roland XP80 to beef out the sound, which meant there wasn't a lot of scope for mixing pads. I think, as time goes by, I'm going to end up playing less complicated stuff - keeping it simple while the rest of the band contributes to the overall sound. I threw in a bit of celeste, which is always fun, if not just a little bit Bethelsongship Central.

That wasn't the tiny puzzle though, figuring out the CP300; that was fun. I do eventually have to decide whether I want to replace the Yamaha with a hard stage piano like the Nord or go down the software route and run my sounds through something like Omnisphere or Ableton. I'm not sure what the best option is. That's a puzzle, certainly, but it's not tiny or annoying. It's large and warm like an electric blanket.

The tiny puzzle might be to do with work. We had a planning meeting today. My manager pitched me a curveball.

"There is one project I'd like to throw in," he said, "and it's for Matt."

"Oh?" I said, grabbing my pencil and notebook.

He proceeded to give me a research task about PDFs. I added it with unbounded joy to my bulging to-do list.

That's not it though, is it? This is something small, out-of-focus and disjointed that's making me feel uneasy like an unresolved cadence - like something I've forgotten to do, or promised and can't, a double-booking or a call or something.

I'll figure it out.