Today I listened to 22 (give or take) versions of A Mighty Fortress Is Our God. Some renditions were bland (to my palate, anyway) while others sounded, well, overwrought. Not that overwrought music isn't fun to listen too sometimes, but that's a topic (and playlist) for another day.
My first Dhymn is going inexorably slow. It may have something to do with my lack of ability, time and energy ;) But seriously, I'm blessed to have this opportunity to learn about music. Many people spend their days trying to procure a meal and a safe place to sleep.
Meditation
Time bookstanding today: 40
Quality of meditation (out of 10): 5
Practice
Minutes on the keyboard today (out of 40): 5 minutes
Quality of practice (out of 10): 2
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In other words, reading about MuseScore doesn't count. Only time spent using the software counts.
Speaking of different versions/interpretations, I listened to five very different versions of A Mighty Fortress Is Our God for inspiration. I'll listen to more tomorrow (and there must be hundreds of them).
Despite it being election night in Canada, I've still managed to test out ScoreCloud between glimpses of live election coverage. ScoreCloud, at the time of this writing, is good with correctly analyzing single notes but not chords. So it's a no-go. Disappointing, as I really wanted this to work.
I'm going to move on to MuseScore and focus on learning that. Also listening to copious amounts of Intervals'AVW // INSTRUMENTAL for ideas on my first Dhymn. This album epitomizes pure djent for me, unadulterated by screamy vocals and questionable lyrics.
Meditation
Time bookstanding today: 29
Quality of meditation (out of 10): 5
Practice
Minutes on the keyboard today (out of 40): 10 minutes
Quality of practice (out of 10): 3
Today I've been experimenting with ScoreCloud and recording from my keyboard to my laptop. Still more geeking and tweaking to do with configuration settings.
Meditation
Time bookstanding today: 20
Quality of meditation (out of 10): 4
Practice
Minutes on the keyboard today (out of 40): 15 minutes
Quality of practice (out of 10): 5
Great musicians...have developed, farther than the rest of mankind have been able to develop it, a language of tones, which, had it been so willed, might have been developed so as to fill the place now occupied by articulate speech. Herbert Spencer, though speaking purely as a scientific investigator, not at all as an artist, defined music as "a language of feelings which may ultimately enable men vividly and completely to impress on each other the emotions they experience from moment to moment."
Put in another way, skillful musicians use tones (or a “particular combination of material and spiritual elements” as Krehbiel puts it elsewhere) to convey feelings and make you feel them too. Likewise, I'm trying to combine feelings of power and surrender, material and the spiritual into a kind of song called a dhymn.
Inversely, some musicians don't want you to feel anything at all, as in the music you'll hear in product video marketing, commercials and corporate propaganda campaigns. The following video shows how you might arrange a song so that it is vague and emotionally ambiguous.
Meditation
Time meditating today: 0
Quality of meditation (out of 10): 0
Practice
Minutes on the keyboard today (out of 40): 10 minutes
Quality of practice (out of 10): 2
I'm at a bit of a standstill here. I'm working on my first dhymn – making the hymn A Mighty Fortress Is Our God “djenty” – but have not gotten far. Basically, I'm playing the barebones melody with the right hand and adding fifths/power chords with the left to simulate “chugs”.
I'm playing around with other ideas in my head like a solo, but maybe I'll use music composition software to test them out. I have no experience using musical composition software though, even dumbed-down smartphone apps that create beats or sound loops. It's new territory for me, so I'm excited to get started.
My options for cheap/free music notation software:
Meditation
Time bookstanding today: 20
Quality of meditation (out of 10): 5
Practice
Minutes on the keyboard today (out of 40): 10 minutes
Quality of practice (out of 10): 1 ... Too much on my mind, including a second job interview that went rather well.
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As part of my daily devotional to God, I sing a hymn before jetting off to work. Today the hymn was All Creatures of Our God and King:
Halfway through I became emotional and could not finish without difficulty. It's not unusual for me. As I sing words of praise my heart softens and swells with love and gratitude. There is a sense of surrender.
Then I marched off to work and listened to Intervals' Siren Sound on repeat and some Animals as Leaders. The sensations I experienced were markedly different. It was like my nervous system was being jacked up with electricity. Adrenaline surged through my body and my brain got a big dollop of dopamine. I felt an undeniable rush of power.
Here are two powerful but completely different responses to music. I wonder how it's possible to combine the two genres into one (Dhymn) and still maintain the authenticity and potency of each. Time, and lots of experimentation, will tell.
Meditation
Time bookstanding today: 20
Quality of meditation (out of 10): 5
Practice
Minutes on the keyboard today (out of 40): 18 minutes
Quality of practice (out of 10): 5 ... Lot's of left-hand comping made my arm ache.
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I'm a bit surprised, WikiHow has a How to Djent page. I like wikiHow because their tutorials are generally high quality. For example, their How to Play the Piano page is written by professional concert pianist Michael Noble and has pearls of wisdom like this:
All of your playing power comes from your core, so you want to make sure you're sitting with your back straight and your shoulders down and relaxed.
A timely tip for me as I need the energy to arrange and play my first Dhymn after a long day of work!
Also wikiHow's instructions for how to play my game Rejection Therapy* is superb, and better than I ever explained it.
Back to How to Djent: the first step is, logically enough, listen to lots of Djent, so that's what I've been doing today in my free moments. A djenty gem you should check out is Siren Sound by Intervals.
Note: Several years ago I sold Rejection Therapy. It's in good hands, but I'm not involved with it in any way.
Meditation
Time bookstanding today: 30
Quality of meditation (out of 10): 5
Practice
Minutes on the keyboard today (out of 40): 25 minutes
Quality of practice (out of 10): 6
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Continuing my musical experiment called Dhymn, today I practiced a simple arrangement of A Mighty Fortress Is Our God by Martin Luther. Actually, I practiced several versions before finally settling on one.
The first arrangement was too simple, even for my limited playing abilities. It was a scaffold melody and only for the right hand. The fact it had no chords left me cold.
Then I tried an arrangement almost identical to the hymn book. That one is too hot to handle for my untrained left hand.
But I think I found an easy one that's just right for my skill level. I practiced that one for about an hour, making total practice time for today at about an hour and a half.
During practice there have been moments of despair mixed with a sense of accomplishment. I'm making progress on the song, but it sounds clumsy and rough. I'm not cut out to be a piano player, this I know for sure, but there are many kinds of composers I tell myself.
I'm going to remain focused and positive and learn this song. Then I'll see what kind of djenty embellishments I can add.
Meditation
Time bookstanding today: 40
Quality of meditation (out of 10): 5
Practice
Minutes on the keyboard today (out of 40): 40 minutes (although it's closer to an hour and a half, 40 minutes is the maximum I allowed)
Quality of practice (out of 10): 10
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The hymn I decided to djent-ify for Project Dhymn is A Mighty Fortress Is Our God. As you'll hear for yourself, the song has a majestic quality, a real oomf to it, and the lyrics are deeply reverent. It's one of my favorites.
The composer of this masterpiece is none other than social-religious reformer Martin Luther. I've enjoyed this hymn a hundred times yet never knew that until today! I printed off several arrangements (all in D Major) and started practicing the easiest version.
In whatever free time I can steal away, I'm listening to a lot of Djent bands too. Here's what I consider a good representation of the genre:
Cross-pollinating these two musical forms will take time. My expectations far exceed my nascent musical abilities, but I expect to learn a lot and create something new in the process.
Meditation
Time bookstanding today: 40
Quality of meditation (out of 10): 3
Practice
Minutes on the keyboard today (out of 40): 25 minutes
Quality of practice (out of 10): 7
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Getting Started Score. Photo by 
My God, my shelter. Photo by Tobias Van Der Elst