The Stone-Hearted Maiden of Hatfield is a catchy little tune about ghosting and sudden endings.

It can be hard to know, when a stranger on a subway platform starts ladling his scrambled thoughts onto you late at night, whether he is friendly, crazy, or just simple. One such stranger introduced himself as Edward, and I wrote Simple Edward for that third potentiality.

Sometimes I Wish I Played Recorder in an Early Music Ensemble. I’m sure we all have those days.

A friend I visited in another city had covered his kitchen wall with cutout paper fish various guests had colored. I meant to contribute one but got sidetracked. So instead I transubstantiated a tune I started composing on his piano into A Decorated Fish For Your Wall.

When it’s summer, you know it’s summer. And during winter, you generally don’t forget it’s winter. But in the spring and fall, I sometimes find myself momentarily disoriented, forgetting which season it is. Sometimes this temporal dislocation widens, and I feel strongly, however briefly, that I am in some previous year of my life, and that the moment I’m savoring is Like Every Spring Before and After.

As you grow up, you hit fewer Prime numbers. In your first decade, you are two, three, then five, seven. In your teens, you are 11, 13, 17, 19. But in your twenties, it’s just 23 and then a six-year gap before you turn 29. In your thirties, similarly, you hit 31 and wait six years until you’re 37. I realized this when I turned 23 so I wrote a tune comprised of three phrases: five bars, seven bars and eleven bars, all adding up to 23. I like to start out the tune in a two-feel; that’s the only even prime.

My contribution to the pile of music written by people who read East of Eden and liked it so much they ran and wrote a tune called Timshel starts with an ostinato that spells out the word in a musical cryptogram: Ti mi sol h re la = B E G B D A.

Pudder Datter Monkey Chatter Pumpkin Platter is something my parents used to say.

I’m agnostic about luck and its opposite; no reason a thirteen-bar tune can’t be Lucky.

I wrote a tune that struck me as resembling a Syllogism in its structure. And then to avoid the pretension of a one-word — and a $2 word at that — title, I added Trix Are for Kids.