I’m working on two new ostinatos one rooted in B, the other in E. They started off as simple loops, but lately I’ve been trying to stretch them across two octaves. Not just to make them longer, but to complicate the repetition, to create a sense that the loop isn’t circling in place but spiraling somewhere. When you expand an ostinato this way, even though the pattern is technically repeating, your ear starts to interpret it differently less as a hook, more as a progression or evolving terrain. There’s an intuition I keep returning to: that writing new music, especially when it asks more of you, reconfigures something deep in one’s circuitry. Waking corners of the brain where habit sleeps. I don’t need research to feel it, I feel it in the afterglow of a session, in the clarity lingering like incense. There’s something about writing new music, especially past your usual gestures, that feels like mental cross-training. I sense it repays you neurologically. Or maybe it is more metaphysical, self sharpening. Either way, these two ostinatos are giving me some kind of reward.