Excuse in advance my stream of consciousness thoughts as I think about where I’m at with music and what’s coming next for me, but I wanted to get my thoughts in one place and share, for anyone who actually enjoys what I do, where I’m at right now.
The elephant (or little dog) in the room is that our dog Harvey, the lead “singer” of The Pup Pups passed away this month. You all know how much he meant to me, but also The Pup Pups had become my favorite creative outlet. Yes I have another instrumental album in the works and yes I’ve been scoring films nonstop, and of course I have my podcast and other projects, but nothing makes me as happy as playing around in various genres, making silly songs about my pets. So the loss of Harvey while a huge impact on my life in general, is also a big impact on my creative work.
But we always knew that would happen. Lots of songs on The Pup Pups’ last 5 albums (especially the last couple) have been about that impending loss. So it’s not like I didn’t know it was coming. But now that that time is here I realize just how big an impact it makes as I sit in front of my computer unsure of what to work on and what I want to do next.
The answer to what is next is almost certainly the “final” The Pup Pups album. I put that in quotes because who knows, I may eventually make an album just about the cats, or just about pets in general or maybe even down the road about a new dog when we eventually bring one into the family. But at the time of his passing Harvey and I were half way though a new album. Maybe even more than half way. 15 songs. Eight about him, five about the cats, and two that are just generally about all of our furry little friends. There’s one more Harvey song that I’ve decided I’m going to add to the album from the list of unfinished ideas I had (it’s very weird to try to complete his parts without him here but I have to do it for me). And then I’ll finish up the rest of it, and release this album as a tribute to my son. Probably towards the end of this year, depending on how things go.
Once I’ve finished that, it’s back to instrumental music. For too long, I’ve had my next full length album And Other Unexplained Phenomena sitting at the 80% done mark. It’s time to finish it. I actually have 4 music videos for this one in various stages of production, and the album is without a doubt the best thing I’ve ever done. It’s the culmination of what I set out to do when I decided to start releasing instrumental albums of my music. Everything I ever hoped I could sound like. It’s all here on this album. So much so that although I realized how ridiculous it sounds to use the word “final” twice in one self indulgent blog post, I am kind of looking at it as my final album. Granted, making music is who I am and I doubt that will happen. What will more likely happen is a break and I won’t release another album for a few years (not counting soundtrack albums of which I have a couple in the works from films I recently scored). But I mentioned during the MISSING PIECES release that once my next album is out that I’ll be at a kind of stopping point anyway. A place where all my unfinished music is finished and released. The B-Sides so to speak already came out on MISSING PIECES. When And Other Unexplained Phenomena comes out as the official album that it is, there’s nothing left. So any new album will be 100% all new music that I start after I get this one out. It’s the end of an era and the idea of starting a new era is daunting, weird, a little scary and I can’t even think about at the moment. So yeah… It feels like this is my final David Rosen album… For now.
Of course part of this feeling of uncertianty comes from my recent taking over of Wax Trax Records, my family’s record store here in Las Vegas. It’s going great so far and I’m excited about the changes I’ve been putting into place and making the store my own. I know a lot of people probably thought I’d be dreading it, but it’s been nothing but great. But it does take up all of my time and energy, so that’s a big part of why the idea of more music after all of this feels a little uncertain. And Other Unexplained Phenomena and the next The Pup Pups album are both almost done, so I just need to find little pockets of time to finish them. A whole new album after that with only little amounts of time is a much more daunting task.
Speaking of which… Film scoring. Like I said I have some scores I plan on releasing as albums. One for sure is Friday & Friday the latest feature from Chris Johnson who directed the film Beater for which I released a score album for back in 2020. Just like with that one, I’ll also include some selections from scores of some other short films I worked with him on in the last few years. But aside from that and the few film scores I did at the beginning of this year… I can’t imagine I’ll be able to take on as much gigs anymore. If any at all. If the right projects come up, I will probably at least try to take them on. But I used to be able to take entire days, locked in my studio, working on scoring. Spending a random evening here and there just isn’t going to cut it. I’m not saying I’m stopping film scoring. But I’m definitely going to have to be very selective going forward and see how it goes from there, because I just simply don’t have that kind of time anymore.
And of course the question you’re all asking yourselves… When are you finally gonna do another comedy-rap album with D-Mize? Don’t worry, that’ll happen. I never put much time into that stuff, and I still won’t. But we’ve got like a dozen songs started and we’ll just keep squeezing in more wherever we can. That’s something I’ll still be doing when I’m 100 I’m sure, but always putting as little time and effort into as humanly possible. Sometimes I don’t even ask Gina to turn down the TV when I’m laying down my verses. Screw it if there’s some noise in the background. Who cares? Sorry D-Mize, but at least we’ll have another album sometime soon!
And that brings me to today. I spent this morning working through that final Harvey song (it wasn’t coming out exactly how I’d hoped so I’ll have to go back to it another morning soon). I just spent some money on some new software, so maybe that’ll motivate me to put some time into And Other Unexplained Phenomena. Who knows? All I know is a musician is who I am, not just something I do, so even if it takes a while, I’ll be back with more music soon. But as you can see if you’ve read this far, I’m kind of all over the place for the first time in my life, and your guess is as good as mine how things will turn out going forward.
David Rosen is an award-winning music composer. He composes original music for films, commercials, jingles, video-games and all other kinds of media projects. He has a vast music library of original tracks available for licensing and is also available for custom compositions. Contact him on the ABOUT page for pricing and availability for your next project.