David McMullin

Composer of music in search of a spirit of wonder.

Current projects include The Luminous Mysteries, a setting of the complete prayers of the rosary for choir and orchestra, and a series of compositions custom made for individual musicians recovering from strokes.

#Composer #NewMusic #ContemporaryMusic #MusicAsPrayer #MusicInHealth

#中文
#español

(Banner image above: colorful abstract painting, watercolor on rice paper, by PC Ning. Avatar: boring headshot of me.)

compositions: https://david-mcmullin.com/music
score videos: https://makertube.net/a/mcmullin
recordings (mirlo): https://mirlo.space/david-mcmullin
recordings (bandcamp): https://davidmcmullin.bandcamp.com/

Public Key

npub1xduv2nxma3e7x0h0u250x5xp8w5c5kcz3je8kqhfnaqzx2kwlwmss4plvw

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsrx7x9fnd7culr8mh7928n2rqnh2v2tvpgevnmqt5e7spr9t80hdcpzpmhxue69uhkummnw3ezuamfdejsz9rhwden5te0wfjkccte9ejxzmt4wvhxjmc25a6a9

Publishing to

nostr.wine

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1xduv2nxma3e7x0h0u250x5xp8w5c5kcz3je8kqhfnaqzx2kwlwmss4plvw

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Published at

2026-07-31T09:17:16+02:00

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Event JSON

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Last Notes

2026-07-04 16:07:20 CEST

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It would be very nice if music comes from laughter. There’s definitely something playful about it. (Oddly though, it’s very hard for music itself to be funny unless it has funny words.)

2026-07-04 15:17:52 CEST

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Good point—more human rhythms.

2026-07-04 14:56:15 CEST

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Heartbeats, footsteps too especially. Breathing to some degree… all of which are rhythms we ourselves produce rather than ones we find in the forest or wherever. I’m having trouble even thinking of any external ones. Water dripping is probably the most common. Ocean waves are generally periodic but with a lot of variation, not precisely rhythmic. Certain bird calls and insect sounds? What else?

2026-07-04 14:23:18 CEST

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That makes sense in terms of the percussive transient sounds, but consistent periodic rhythmic sounds are pretty rare in nature, and don’t tend to mean any one thing. Why are we so drawn to those? Maybe because they’re typically human? I don’t know.

2025-10-26 16:49:12 CET

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Hey two of my favorite fedizens share a birthday—how ‘bout that!
https://sfba.social/@NorcalGma2/115441102221068442
@npub1s4k…g9yf

2025-10-20 19:32:21 CEST

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Enough complaining though. From here on I’ll make this a thread for random family lore.

2025-10-20 18:52:18 CEST

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They left Ireland (a few left Holland) and came to America at different times and probably for different reasons. Sure, as conservatives like to brag, they “came here legally,” but all that meant at the time is that they weren’t Chinese. They didn’t need paperwork or visas or anything, they just showed up. They may not have received a warm welcome, but they got to work making this country a better place—just like people from all over the world are still doing today.

2025-10-20 18:41:38 CEST

This quip in response to the news of the Irish government’s new Basic Income for Artists has me thinking about my ancestors.
I’m not a genealogy maven and I don’t know a lot about my family history. I do know this though: they were all immigrants. Or children or grandchildren etc etc of immigrants. And that’s how I see myself, although I was born in the U.S. into relative privilege.
https://musicians.today/@mcmullin/115405545067228946

2025-10-19 18:10:31 CEST

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You can get lost in lots of complications, but what I think about this is simple:
1) COVID is bad.
2) I don’t want it.
Perhaps you disagree. You may not believe (1) or you may feel differently about (2). Fine! I don’t expect to change your mind, and I’m not telling you what to do. Live your life.
What I don’t get is: why do people want to lecture me about this? My position is not crazy and it’s not hard to understand. I shouldn’t have to explain, justify and apologize for it all the time.
5/

2025-10-19 18:05:49 CEST

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But I understand that most people just what to get on with their lives, and they have no actual malice toward me. They see me in my N95 and maybe they think it’s weird, but they don’t mind and they carry on without making an issue of it.
This isn’t for them; it’s for the angry, self-righteous, self-appointed COVID salesmen out there.
4/

2025-10-19 18:03:13 CEST

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The rant that’s brewing here is not directed at the vast majority of people out there behaving as if COVID doesn’t exist. I do wish there were a greater sense of solidarity, and a greater willingness to tolerate inconveniences for the sake of the vulnerable among us. I spent the last two nights in the ICU with one such person (not for COVID), so this is a perspective I feel acutely.
3/

2025-10-19 17:56:56 CEST

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What makes a person a voluntarily want to do propaganda in favor of a disease?
Am I the only one who finds that strange?
2/

2025-05-11 02:13:16 CEST

Ever since my in-laws told me what they call asparagus in Chinese, I’m using that name for it in English too: dragon whiskers.
#LanguageLearning #Chinese

2025-05-08 20:58:24 CEST

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And…? What’s he like? I don’t know anything about him except what I read in the NYT an hour ago, (which I take with a big grain of salt with these kinds of things).

2025-03-27 19:00:02 CET

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Now I've tried playing with it once. I'll try again later, and will probably have much more to say about it if I find the time. For now: This is at once (fascinatingly):
1) Not a bad thing for what it is, probably useful for most people and reflective of how they think about music; and
2) Emblematic of everything I can't stand about this widespread diminished understanding of what music is and what it can do.

2025-03-25 22:12:25 CET

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I was afraid I would object so strongly to the approach they describe here that I’d be boiling mad, but it’s actually pretty interesting, and it probably works; I’d be curious to try it out. It seems reasonably well thought out, but the whole thing is built up from premises and assumptions about music that I don’t share, and even actively resist. For just that reason, though, it’s clarifying as a thought experiment.

2025-03-10 13:54:52 CET

“We’re facing an unsustainable rate of reinfection for an unsustainable percentage of the population with a virus that carries an unsustainably high risk of long-term damage.”
From: @npub12sa…2fym
https://ottawa.place/@Cassandra/114135523324806653

2025-01-16 19:43:32 CET

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I don’t have them over much, which creates its own awkwardness. Mostly they accept my choices for my situation, but they think their situation is different, and that their choices don’t affect me, for some magical reason.

2024-12-14 17:33:38 CET

Almost everyone has decided that they would rather suffer permanent brain damage than the social stigma of being the only one around who doesn’t want brain damage. I don’t get it.
Please be that one masked weirdo who still cares. It will give the second, third and fourth weirdos permission to care too.
#CovidIsNotOver

2024-12-06 16:57:32 CET

Any #oboe players out there? Here’s a piece waiting to be premiered, played beautifully in this demo recording by Jennifer Slowik:
https://davidmcmullin.bandcamp.com/track/votive
More info and PDF score here:
https://david-mcmullin.com/compositions/votive/
@npub1eus…vl8u @npub1qcn…qevp #BandcampFriday #musodon #OriginalMusic #NewMusic

2024-11-30 14:23:00 CET

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There are a lot of similarities in the ways that words and music work, probably because both deal at least implicitly with sound. What I was talking about there is like how you can sometimes completely change the tone, pace or meaning of a paragraph by changing just a punctuation mark or two.

2024-11-30 03:36:59 CET

Fussing with the seams:
Any place in a composition, at any level of structure, where something ends and the next thing begins, if I make the slightest little adjustment to the length of the gap in between—or if there’s no gap, to how much they overlap—I’m always amazed what a dramatic effect that can have on the overall momentum, energy and shape of a piece. I keep relearning this but it surprises me a little every time.
#composing #ContemporaryMusic @npub1qcn…qevp @npub1eus…vl8u

2024-11-14 16:17:47 CET

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This doesn’t mean I’m withdrawing from politics personally, or that I think I’m unaffected and above it all. I’m just being deliberate about what my engagement will look like. It won’t be a constant state of agitated hypervigilance that achieves nothing, and it won’t be arguing with strangers online. It won’t be subordinating my music to specific practical political objectives—I don’t think it would help much for that anyway.

2024-11-14 15:01:09 CET

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I’ve been thinking about this recently too, and I get where you’re coming from, but I don’t think that’s my calling. I must be the other kind of artist. I’ve been pulling my thoughts together and I should write a proper explanation, but for now let this be the short version:
No. Donald Trump does not get to determine what kind of music I make. He’s already drained away more of my attention than he has any right to, and he’s not getting my music too. Just no.

2024-09-22 22:11:33 CEST

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As I opened my 3rd-floor window and stuck my head out, I saw something fall from somewhere above me, where an upstairs neighbor had evidently read my mind.
An egg went splat, dead center on the guy's windshield. Bulls-eye. This, I admit, struck me as pretty funny.

2024-09-22 22:07:30 CEST

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This will make more sense if I tell the whole story. Someone had double parked, trapping the guy's car in a curbside parking space in front of my building. So he started honking the horn. Incessantly, and for a long time. It was around midnight.
When I couldn't take it anymore, I went to the window to see what was going on, contemplating, as I approached, what might be effective things either to yell or to throw at whoever's making all this noise.

2024-09-22 18:54:53 CEST

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In New York 30 years ago somebody broke my apartment window with one. We called the police and showed them the metal ball this guy threw from street. Guy says yeah that’s mine, it’s for stress. I said I don’t think you’re using it right…

2024-08-29 18:03:23 CEST

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If I were a defense lawyer I would be thrilled to learn that the police reports were written by a hallucinating chatbot. Even if they’re accurate and have been checked by an accountable human, it would still give you something to work with toward reasonable doubt.