Only 5 days left of my final Christmas holiday as a student at Surrey.... very very scary. Luckily I have finished my jazz coursework that's due in next Friday (I'm getting relatively good at this finishin coursework early lark now), written a few things for barefacts and started on my composition for the Joyce Dixey Composition Competition in March. Again, it's an electroacoustic one (my favourite style) with the theme 'Dreams' - I've found a great quote from the matrix and have used that in the section I'm working on at the moment, the final one. Lots of wooshy sounds, some drums, lots of synth and piano - groovy. Last year I was highly commended, and although it doesn't really feel like a competition to me, I feel like quite a lot is expected of me. But truth be told I have a manically busy semester coming up and I can't spend as long on it as I did last year - weeks and weeks! The week before Joyce Dixey will be my busiest of the term, so I really won't be able to organise rehearsals and suchlike, hence the electricness of my piece. I'm going to write some other pieces for 'proper' instruments for the portfolio, but for now, it's my synth and computer for me.

Adam and I had lunch in Chancellors today... haven't been there in a while... pizza and spiral fries, yum! They've got a new menu with a pretty groovy selection of vegetarian dishes - think I'll write an article for barefacts on it. Have to work my way through all of them...!

I feel kind of cut off from the world right now... sitting here at my computer hidden behind my huge headphones and listening continually to synthesised sounds and a quote from the matrix. But I'm getting somewhere with my compsition, and that's a good thing. I love my keyboard. It's a yamaha s80 keyboard/synth - fully weighted and all that, at the top of the market - took me years to save up for it, but it was worth every penny. There are still loads of settings I haven't worked out - need several weeks to get through the manual I think. I wonder when my next proper holiday will be...?

Righty ho... off to mess around with some more groovy sounds! :)