Tim and Dave talk about too much of a good thing. Can you listen to too much music? What do you do when your ears and mind get fatigued? How might we avoid fatiguing our audiences?

Tim provides anecdotal evidence of composers writing an increasing number of short works. Is this a trend that should concern us? What is the importance of scale to our perception of new works?

Just last week, Tim premiered a new work by Dave. How do composers and performers see the process of premiering a work differently? How is giving the first performance of a new work different from performing other works?

This week, we recorded the show right before Tim heads to far-off Tempe, Arizona for the NASA Biennial Conference to premiere a new work by Dave. What's the point of conferences? How do we take advantage of the opportunities they afford us?

What does it mean to have a musical identity? How do we develop our own artistic points of view? Where do they come from? Do we consciously create our identity or is it a natural outgrowth of our musical endeavors?

How do we write program notes? Who is the target audience of these notes? Do we really need them at all?

What value are the customs we have developed for presenting music? How does our ritual help or harm the concert experience? How can we change the way we present concerts? Is it possible to alter such a thoroughly established ritual?

Making music is a long process. How do you know when you're finished? How do you get from "almost there" to "Eureka! I've got it!"? Are there some problems that run too deep to tweak away?

We agree that musicians have a responsibility to know certain details about the music we make, but how much can we reasonably expect of audiences? Tim wins arguments on the blog of a Pulitzer-winning composer (hint: not Dave).

What kinds of music do you really dislike? Why might it be important to try listening to it anyway? What can we learn from music even when we don't expect to like it? How Dave learned to stop worrying and love Philip Glass.