Hi everyone,

How did it get to be September already? With time flying so fleetly, I'm not even sure when the last book update was. Nevertheless, here's the next one… let's just assume that I've kept them at evenly spaced monthly intervals… even if for no other reason than to assuage my guilt!

Much has happened since the text was locked way back whenever. We've now entered that zone where almost everything happens on paper, or as phone calls, or meetings, or lunches. This the business end where things seem creatively static, yet the real meat of the project is established.

The book project has now attracted the attention of a number of corporate entities. There is a potential to tie a couple of ideas together and perhaps make a bigger deal out of this release than was originally anticipated. While this complicates the business end, it wildly expands the creative end of things. I won't say more until I can (a song I'm sure you've all heard before), but we should all plan to have our expectations tweaked a little in the coming months. You'll see…

Not everything is pure business, however. Design elements continue to come in. You've probably noticed the blog header has been changing a lot recently. This relates to ongoing work on the book cover…. the standard edition cover, that is.

Let me try to be very, very clear about this, because it seems my past couple of explanations have confused many:

We're currently in the second stage of the cover design. It's a very linear process. The last deign lead to this design – this design will lead to something else as well. What you're seeing above is an adaptation of a portion of book cover proposal 2.2. It's not locked, it's not final, it's not even fully rendered. It's a version of a portion of a draft. ☺

That said, I LOVE this design! I don't think we're going to see much change, conceptually. The idea has always been to make this book feel like a granddaddy to the Complete Recordings… and I think that's being conveyed very gracefully here. (And while I appreciate all the suggestions posted elsewhere, legally I cannot and do not read them. Sorry, guys!)

When the cover is fully locked, I’ll plan to debut it here.

Inside the book, I am now in the process of vetting about two-dozen new music examples that never appeared in the liners. Some relate to themes that weren't discussed before, some will be placed through the Annotated Score so that ALL sections of the book combine words and notated music. Sue Sinclair, who engraved the music examples for the liners and created the short score compressions, has put together wonderfully detailed examples of passages throughout the scores. Those of you who like to sit and pick out notes of the piano should be thrilled! And even if you don't read music, these examples bring a wonderful graphical element to the book.

We're also hoping to include some of Shore's pencil sketches and conductor's scores from the sessions, complete with live-from-the-podium pencil scrawling. So if you're a behind-the-scenes aficionado, we should have something for you too.

And of course, this is all in addition to nearly one hundred thousand words… so I think we can comfortably assert that the word "Comprehensive" has earned its spot on the cover.

Next weekend I'm headed out to LA to work with Shore – and of course, to enjoy The Fly – so perhaps I'll be able to have another significant book update for you soon. Two updates in under a month! I'm on a roll!
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Enjoy the new discussion board below. Talk soon!

-Doug