February 2026 ❄️🎶 by evan tarrh

(Pretty long! You don’t have to read! Thx for checking this out!)

This February my brother invited me to make some music every day. Thank goodness for that!

It was a miserable January for many reasons, so I was eager for the month to end. Of course February turned out to be equally (more? hmm yes more) horrifying. Yay! But because I tried to make and finish a little sketch/jam/song/beat every day, I felt a little bit of purpose outside myself, and crucially I was able to avoid my phone during some of the evenings when I most needed to avoid it.

I'm really excited about the music I made this month. There's a lot of familiar sounds in the mix, but a lot of new ones too. I didn't end up with 28 songs: some days I worked on music for projects that aren't ready to share (ooh! teaser!) and some days I simply did not have the juice to be creative. On a couple days I didn't have any music equipment other than my laptop. One day all I did was share something straight from a voice memo. Some days involved a lot of resampling of the previous days’. Another one contains a not-disguised-at-all sample that got DMCA'ed by Soundcloud and will probably not fare any better here lol.

Anyway, I think there is a nice range of music here. If you're not into the first couple days you hear, skip around a bit. Although, to be honest the later days of the month are IMO not quite as good, as I started running out of steam a bit, and received some emails and push notifications that were frankly very distracting, and somewhat day-ruining at a minimum, and occasionally somewhat life-altering, and so on and so forth, and ultimately I'm glad that the month has come and gone and that I can stop worrying about making something new every day.

It would be fair to wonder why I would release music and then mention that some of it I don't think is very good. Well basically, I'm 30 years old and I've decided that the fear of being bad at things or of making bad art is crippling and unnecessary, and that being scared to share what I do is much more embarrassing than making bad art. So, as such, here is what I made, and whatever, there is a skip button for anything that really sucks.

Once before, I tried making a song every day for a month. It was 2017 and it was also February. I had graduated a semester early that December from my undergrad degree, instead of finishing my music major or taking interesting classes just for fun. I made it two weeks of daily songs before giving up, and ended up with 18 songs that month. (Pretty good! Although I'm happy that I did more this time.) I posted them all on Soundcloud, excited to share what I hoped was a unique musical voice, and proof that I was doing something meaningful with my time in between college and work.

Listening back to those daily songs from 2017, I feel a closeness to the person I was when I was 21. I feel tenderness toward the driven, headstrong, clueless, sensitive kid whom I can picture clearly. I have a dogshit memory because my brain is full of holes and funny pictures, but the memories I have of actually making this music in 2017 are readily, eagerly called forth just by listening again. I feel connected in time through that music, no matter how amateurish the music itself sounds now. I'm impressed by some of the songs I made and I cringe at some of the other ones. Mostly I’m glad that I eventually figured out how to make drums sound good at some point since then.

I’m grateful for everyone who encouraged me and affirmed my kind of random hopes and dreams back then. I think 21-year-old me would be disappointed with what I’ve done musically with the last 9 years. At the time, I thought coding would provide a temporary career while I grew a musical following and launched a fabulously successful career as a performing and recording artist. I, also, thought it sounded cool when I made beats without a grid or metronome because surely my human timefeel would be more interesting and intuitively groovy than sticking to a BPM like everyone else. (Hmm.) And I think the knowledge that I never went full time doing music, and now have a harder and harder time imagining ever doing so, would sting terribly.

On the other hand, looking back at the last 9 years, even though many of those goals have drifted gently away, the 30-year-old is proud of what I’ve done and of who I am now. I still wish music was a bigger part of my life. But I think that’s just because I find music to be so interesting and awesome. I think it’s the closest thing we have to real magic.

I frequently find myself returning to the idea that the practice is the point. Making music every day this month was genuinely fulfilling, and in many ways that has been enough in and of itself. But it’s also nice to look back and see all the things I made this month and think about all the work I put in over the last decade, and to feel like I’ve been slowly finding my way: becoming more myself, and becoming a better conduit for the things I hear in my head that I want to make real.

If you take the time to listen to my music, I’m extremely grateful. It’s nice to feel heard! I hope the little moments that I worked hard on peek out through your headphones and phone speakers.

Thanks for reading and listening.

Evan

pianist/producer/ composer/music enjoyer

evantarrh.com
SoundCloud