My life is currently being slightly taken over by attempts to stay on top of the windfall apples dropping from my next door neighbour’s enormous overhanging tree. Anything up to about 7 pounds of apples are falling per day, my freezer is almost full (there’s a whole shelf of fruit now), and this is really only the start – there are a lot of apples on the tree at this point.    I’ve eaten a lot of blackberries, too from the brambles growing underneath, and have now cut them back so I can get to the windfalls before the snails and slugs do. 

Thankfully I have several friends who want apples this year!

There’s something rather therapeutic and even joyful standing in the kitchen processing the abundance of fruit and I think that has come out in this new piece. I’ve shoe-horned in a sound made on my new toy Iris:  The screechy violin-like solo is a patch made from a sample of my mandolin. Learning to use Iris has also made me want to go back to the super-complicated built in synth in my DAW and learn how to get more out of that, and I’ve discovered one or two useful new tricks there, too.

I’m wondering whether this needs a simple vocal.  I’m also not completely sure about the key changes in this piece, it was tricky to stitch the two different sections I wrote together, even though they are in related keys. Do let me know what you think. Is this a keeper, or should I be chopping it out like the bits of apple that the slugs and snails got to first?