Inspired by snowflakes

I thought of this while walking through the snow, I think it sums up my process, philosophy and appreciation for music:

"Visual art is the prism of the artist's eye. To hear the colors that are refracted by the imagination is to unify the impression of sight with sound. Music is the oscillation of the crystal through which imagination is refracted."

Hmmm...

Wunderkammer Nr. 5

So here is a fun little bit of strangeness, since I am much too busy right now to write a really thoughtful article (just finished the piece for 8th BB and am now starting two new string quartets). Many years ago (and up into the 19th century) people considered the "disappearance" of migratory birds in the winter to be somewhat of an unexplainable anomaly. Aristotle himself theorized that birds went into hibernation at the bottom of the sea, while another gentleman cited merely as "a person of learning and piety" theorized that birds flocked to the moon for the winter in a pamphlet entitled "An Essay toward the Probable Solution of this Question: Whence come the Stork and the Turtledove, the Crane, and the Swallow, when they Know and Observe the Appointed Time of their Coming" published in 1703. Amazingly enough, the possibility of birds migrating to warmer climates became a possible reality to the scientific public when this unfortunate stork was bagged on the Bothmer Estate in Meklenburg on a clear May morning in 1822:



Yes, you have guessed correctly if your first assumption was that the arrow through the dear bird's neck is in fact a central African spear which impaled its feathery victim before the stork took off and flew the entire migratory route back to Mecklenburg. This was one of the first documented clues in the modern era to lead people to conclude that birds in fact migrate great distances across the Earth, rather than go to the moon or merely vanish until Spring. I have to say, it is no less wondrous to me that this stork actually made it all that way with the spear through its neck. This phenomenon is actually not peculiar to the bird pictured above, but has occurred upwards of 25 times since 1822 coining the term "Pfeilstorch" or "Arrow-stork". The bird pictured above is supposedly now housed at the University of Rostock in Mecklenburg.

Four and Twenty...

Well, after much toiling I have finally finished the two movements of my work "Blaschka" (see Wunderkammer Nr. 3 and "Sixteen Blackbirds Baked in a Pie") for Eighth Blackbird. I am very excited at the opportunity to have this wonderful ensemble perform my work, and more importantly, give critical feedback from the perspective of a professional ensemble, something that composition students rarely have outside of their resident ensembles or student formed chamber groups. The premiere is on February 9th at CMU, naturally I will post the recording once I have it, I am very curious to see how they interpret my score.

My teacher has been on my case lately telling me my music is "very" abstract (subtext: too abstract). I feel like he thinks I am on the verge of some revelation in personal style, as he spends most of my lesson talking about how he used to do the same kinds of scores back in the 60's but has since relaxed into a more conservative style utilizing "drama" over the "academic". I mostly agree with him, to be honest, and it is a high compliment to think that he is trying to use his own development and personal accomplishments to help me in guiding (or perhaps expediting) my development as a composer. I think (without sounding overly presumptuous) he sees some kind of potential in me that he didn't realize in himself until years later, and in some way is trying to initiate me into that realization before I spend my life experimenting to that end. Either way, my thought process is rather abstract, and I do tend to have a very polarized output in terms of style. The elements that my music is constructed of are unanimously mine, but the way they crystalize themselves varies from the spacious pointalism of my Stigmata Musicum Nr. 1 to the rigid boom-chick folk-inspiration of my new work "Krljavestica!" which I will be writing about later on (premiere on April 12, 2008). Anyway, whatever happens, or whatever I choose to write next (just started a new piece for solo viola!) I just have to let myself be guided by that nagging inner voice that in me produces music. For now, let's see how "Blaschka" turns out.

Wunderkammer Nr. 4

What makes this post curious? Well, as much as I tend to live outside the modern era, there is no reason one's "Wunderkammer" cannot contain objects that are curious in their modernity. Ages ago, the cabinet of curiosities was reserved for strange natural objects, tomes of occult wisdom, religious relics from unknown corners of the world and bits and pieces of paraphernalia associated with the psychological, biological, chemical, alchemical and pseudo-scientific trends and fads of the era. These objects were ordered and labeled and organized in wonderful cabinets and indexes of countless wooden drawers and glass displays and stacked up in gothic chambers reserved only for the invited and the initiated to behold and many times never understand the significance of.

All that aside, if for nothing more than vanity I want one of these:



What makes this "curious" is that each of the watches manufactured by Tokyo Flash employs a unique method of determining the time based on patterns of LEDs and pictures and shapes. Now, that's not to say that Tokyo Flash has come up with some revolutionary new concept of what time is or how we should perceive it, which naturally got me thinking about what our concept of the invention of time is rooted in. Simply telling time in a different way is only taking the same concept and looking at it from a different angle.



Of course, as I see it, time has no substance, and certainly isn't "real" or tangible. Time itself is the abstract measurement of something that does not exist except as a concept. It is a measurement of a measurement, and is only observed retroactively as the "past" since the present can never exist based upon our concept of what time must be, that is, always passing, and I'll leave the future up to your imagination. So what's the point? Well all this talk of time, of course goes hand in hand with the idea of numbers, which of course made me think of the Piraha people of Brazil.

This indigenous group of people live in the jungle in self-imposed isolation and apparently they have no concept whatsoever of numbers or colors. The discussion that this amazing culture (only about 400 strong and in serious danger of extinction) opens to the table, is whether the understanding of things like time and numbers is based in language, or if it is a more abstract concept familiar to us on some primal level. Apparently, the Piraha have no mythology, no religion, no art and no literature of any kind. Their concept of time, perhaps curbed by their lack of a number system (that is, they have no words for any numbers and refuse to learn to count) is reserved to only what exists within living memory, so therefore they have no history and do not speculate on the future. Interestingly enough, with regard to religion, though they have no concept of Deity nor do they endeavor to explain creation (which of course are concepts which exist outside of personal experience) they do observe "spirits" in the form of tangible objects like trees and jaguars and so forth. Another curious factor is that apparently this clan of people are able to whistle their entire language in order to communicate while hunting in the forest. Of course, being a musician I typically equate things like whistling to music and therefore art, but it is under their rigid mentality that this curiosity remains utterly utilitarian and an effect of necessity. Check out Wikipedia, though the article is questionable, it opens the window on an amazing corner of the world that remains a contemporary curiosity.

Wunderkammer Nr. 3

I have been neglecting my dear old blog for the past few days, out of necessity to write this piece for Eighth Blackbird. Needless to say, it is consuming my time, though moments ago I finally had the revelation I have been searching for to complete this movement and send it off to the ensemble with hopes of achieving some rehearsal time. In the mean time, I thought I'd post a little link to the subject matter which has inspired my rather abstract musical meditations.

Rudolph and Leopold Blaschka were a father and son team based in Dresden at the end of the 19th century. Together, they worked in glass to create some of the most stunningly realistic and hauntingly frozen models of biological specimens from the sea as well as innumerable flowers to display in natural history museums around the world. Here are a few pictures of the exact models which have inspired my latest work-in-progress, "Blaschka" for Pierrot Ensemble with Harpsichord. Remember, these are made from glass!

Marion Mahony Griffin

Just thought I'd post these for anyone who doesn't get the New York Times. Online in the Arts section the Times is running a slide show of the work of Marion Mahony Griffin, a female architect who graduated from M.I.T. in 1894 as the second woman ever to boast such an accomplishment. Her cousin was the well known Chicago based architect Dwight Perkins whom she subsequently went to work for. Check out these fabulous drawings, this is by far one of my favorite periods in visual art.

Sixteen Blackbirds Baked in a Pie

If you eat a slice, containing eight of them, then you get the ensemble Eighth Blackbird. Just thought I would make a brief update on musical progress as a very exciting opportunity has arisen which I am taking full advantage of. Oddly enough, the story goes back to the beginning of last semester (for you post-college types, around the end of August 2007) when my friend Derrick (former associate of mine at CAMI, now booking agent for Opus Three, formerly ICM) called me to say I should look into having CMU book Eighth Blackbird for a concert and master class for composers. At that point, I knew little about the group so did some homework to discover they are one of the hottest young Pierrot Ensembles around. They are based in Chicago and according to my friend Michael perform to sold out houses frequently, not to mention three Grammy nominations. I revealed to Derrick I had little power to rustle up sufficient funding to book a major ensemble like that, and as fate would have it a week later he e-mailed me to say that oddly enough they were already booked in Pittsburgh by the Pittsburgh Chamber Music Society in early February.

So, after that I basically forgot about it, what with the pressure of school work and such weighing on my brain. Several months later (now around the middle of December) my teacher frantically e-mails me that the Pittsburgh Chamber Music Society is looking for one or two composers from each of the music schools in Pittsburgh (Duqesne, Pitt and CMU) to write for Eighth Blackbird for a reading/critique and subsequent performance and recording the same weekend as their main stage show! To make matters even stranger, I had already begun a piece based on the glass work of the Blaschkas for their exact instrumentation (substituting piano with harpsichord). So I was chosen with another of my colleagues to finish and submit a score to be read, performed and recorded. The original deadline was tight, scores due January 28! To make matters worse, last night I got an e-mail from the director of the Chamber Music Society saying that the ensemble's manager was demanding scores in two days time (like, tomorrow) so needless to say it is consuming my days and nights until I get it done.

More on that, likely after I have a recording to post. The piece is going very well, and should be pretty interesting!

Music Plain and Simple

Mostly because I love this slick MP3 player my friend Steve turned me on to and assisted in installing on my blog, I've decided to post a few more examples of my music from the days of undergrad. If you search by category (to the right ===>) you can skip back to two other more recent works I have posted by clicking on "music" articles and having a listen.

This piece is one of the oldest in my library and goes back to I think my sophomore year in undergad (scary that is seems so long ago; 1999-2000). It is the second movement of my first string quartet as read and performed by the Cuarteto Latinoamericano. I really like what I did with this piece even looking back on it today. It is definitely ripe with the qualities of a "student" work, but I think it contributed a great deal to my exploring tonality and sonority and shaped what is becoming my current musical vocabulary.



This next piece is my second string quartet, written the following year and selected as the winner of the Harry Archer Memorial Scholarship (a commission of $1,000 granted to the most virtuous string quartet). This recording is of the world premiere played by the Cuarteto. It gained me my first write up in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette (that links to the actual article!) and was a very intimidating premiere as my piece was nestled between George Crumb's "Black Angels" and a passionate string quartet written by then head of the school Alan Fletcher. I think this piece exhibits a real development in my style, have a listen.



This last example is the full recording of the premiere of my orchestra piece, a requirement of all CMU composition students and a very exciting opportunity! In the end, I didn't spend nearly enough time writing it (I woke up the day it was due and arranged all my notes and sketches form beginning to end in about 8 hours) and what you hear here is nothing more than a large chamber piece played by too many instruments. To anyone wondering, that does not make it an "orchestra piece" as my disappointment is rooted in my neglecting to take advantage of all the possibilities available to me in writing for orchestra. Lucky for me, CMU decided to take me back, so I will have a second chance... in the end I think this is an okay piece with some very nice moments, though my aesthetic has changed considerably since this piece rolled off my printer. This recording is very quiet for some reason, so you'll have to pump the volume or put on some headphones...



Leave some comments and let me know what you think!

Good Samaritan

The Samaritans, are an ethnic niche of Jews who claim to be the only true Hebrews, practicing the original form of the Jewish religion, predating the construction of the Temple of Solomon. They claim to predate the modern day Israelites and that the Israelite form of Judaism is inauthentic. The parable of the "Good Samaritan" comes oddly enough from the New Testament, as seen in the Gospel of Luke when Christ heals ten lepers and the only one who returns to worship God is a Samaritan. John tells the story of a woman of Sychar who fetches water for Jesus, she is a Samaritan. Strangely, a very anti-Samaritan attitude is also taken in these same texts when in Matthew, Christ forbids his disciples to visit any Samaritan city. In Luke the Samaritans deny Christ and his fold any hospitality due to their unwillingness to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and in John again Christ is accused of being a demon-possessed Samaritan. Indeed, in Christ's time there was a great deal of prejudice against this small and reclusive caste of peoples.

Okay so what's the point? I just think it's interesting to take a moment to look back at where such hum-drum colloquialisms originate. It can in many ways shed new light on the act one typically associates with the expression. I suppose it can also make it even more confusing, considering the very mixed messages we are left to interpret, at least from the Christian perspective. Christ, of course, preached that actions speak louder that words or identity, and no matter who you are you are capable of love and compassion and receiving both. The example being relevant to that period in history, was perfectly exhibited by using a Samaritan, because apparently everybody hated them. So a "good" Samaritan was an ironic impossibility according to the social norms of the time. So does that mean that if I simply "do a good deed" I can consider myself a "good Samaritan"? Or does it have to be something I never would have considered doing, or out of my normal character, changing myself eternally based on the quality and selflessness of whatever I did? Or both? Of course the Buddhist perspective sheds a very different light on the matter of doing "good deeds" in that in order for good Karma to be achieved it cannot be recognized, acknowledged or even associate awareness of having been a "good deed". Karma doesn't count if you do it to get Karma, or if you even consider that what you did is something to be proud of or happy about. Therefore, I would say, it must be totally in step with your character, which is, of course, the rough ashlar of the Buddhist mind and the ultimate medium of refinement. One's character must be carefully refined and tempered in order that good Karma may be accumulated selflessly by following the Dharma.

What it all comes down to, is a short series (more of a pair) of peculiar happenings which affected my morning jog. I had just finished copying the harp cadenza of Andre Previn's harp concerto, which I was hired to do by Gretchen Van Hoesen, principal harpist of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (subject for another blog, another time). To reward myself, and since I had not yet showered, I decided to go out for a jog to beat my distance from Monday's jog. As an aside, with the cold weather and busy school work, I've been off jogging for a few months, so this past week I've been slowly building up my strength and stamina to average about 5 miles per trip (with longer ones interspersed). I have been using this website to plot the mileages and find routes. So Monday I made it 3.44 miles in about 30 minutes, and decided I would settle for no less than 4 miles this morning. I set out and jogged down to Wilkins, then took a left and made it up Beeler to CMU's campus before turning around and jogging back to Wilkins. I turned up Wilkins and decided I would go all the way to Shady and go back home through town. Well, I was a bit fatigued, so I ended up walking about half the route, and just as I was coming up on the street I cross over to my street on, I heard rapid footsteps approaching behind me.

I could tell they were frantic "I'm running away" footsteps because of the weight with which the footstepee pounded on those metal cellar doors that are in the street. I instinctively stood aside to be passed by a rather timid looking middle aged man, balding, in a shin length green down coat. He seemed to be running to catch the bus, but whizzed right by the bus stop, disrupting the people who were waiting there. Shortly thereafter, a second man, in a shirt and tie, with cell phones strapped to his belt (thinking back, he looked like a Radio Shack employee, which has a store in some close proximity to the scene of the event) went bounding after him. There was something very comedic about watching these two out of shape men chasing and being chased. Quickly I realized that the green coat guy had stolen something from the cell phone guy (Radio Shack?) and as they rounded the corner Cell Phone demanded "Give me back my stuff!" and Green Coat just sort of feebly looked behind him, fear in his eyes, as though he were being chased by a very unathletic army tank and started dropping blue plastic packages out of his pockets onto the side walk. A colorful crowd of typical denizens from the neighborhood gathered at the intersection as Cell Phone and Green Coat ran up a sleepy side street weaving in and out of parked cars and Cell Phone kept shouting "All of it, you asshole!"

Some old grandma turned to her husband with "well he should just let him go,"

"Yea, probably give himself a heart attack tryin' ta catch 'im" grandpa supplied.

So what it comes to at this point, is this sudden weird urge I have brought on by my disgust at beholding the pathetic sight of this sad man - really if you could have seen his face, oof - stealing telephone cables or whatever from Radio Shack and the intensity of the pursuit and how rabidly the victim was protecting his turf. I found myself battling mentally trying to decide whether I should run after the guy and beat him up, heroically returning the $25 worth of stereo cable to Cell Phone and disappearing like Batman, or just shake my head sadly and mope home whistling Vince Guaraldi's Christmas theme from Peanuts. I imagined my exact attack so vividly that it actually shocked me, so I watched the action a bit more and shook my head sadly and kept walking home pondering why these things happen.

A block down the road, I was snapped out of my thoughtful haze by an annoying beeping sound emanating from an ATM machine. I stopped in my tracks, backed up a few feet and read the screen:

"Do you need more time?"

Without thinking twice, I pushed "NO" and some woman's ATM card came popping out. Luckily, the bank itself housed the ATM machine, so i walked in to the bank (mind you, I had not yet showered and just ran 3.7 miles, so I must have looked a fright!) and handed the card to the little blond haired man behind the teller window who drew a nervous smile and stuttered something like "can I help you?" (I'm sure he was hitting on me... but maybe I'm flattering myself?). I said in a low tenor "someone left that in the ATM machine" and turned and walked out as he called out "thanks..."

So in reflection, as exciting as it would have been to trample a thief in action and recover stolen property, I had my chance to do a good deed just as the disappointment in missing one was setting in, rescuing some anonymous woman's ATM card from the same brand of thievery that helped the Radio Shack guy burn 5 pounds of stagnation off his day.

Observation: writing this blog negates my chance at achieving Karma, but can I still be a good Samaritan? Or do I want to be?

Stop Motion - Go Motion

Anyone who knows me, understands my obsession with the surreal and macabre. Many of my interests are rooted in the ancient Mysteries, magic, occult, and of course all of that carries over into the imagery of Alchemy and Qabbala in all of those fantastic engravings and woodcuts from centuries past, pregnant with secret knowledge taken to the grave by most of their creators. Anyway, probably one of the biggest influences on me both artistically and musically (synonyms?) is the Czech school of surrealism, particularly that wonderful medium known as stop-motion animation.

Of course, any American who has grown up with those cheesy animated features they show around Christmas time, like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and the Abominable Snowman have been well acquainted with the genre since early childhood. Not to mention the revival of the art form with films like James and the Giant Peach and the Nightmare Before Christmas. But the niche I am more interested in, and am referring to here, is that higher tier of art-film pioneered by the great Jan Svankmajer, perhaps the best known of the Czech surrealists. I was introduced to the form through the wonderful and haunting work of the Brothers Quay, who oddly enough are American, of Western Pennsylvanian origin. Their films strike a nerve trapped deep below outward consciousness. The shocking and yet subtle imagery in their films consisting of animated porcelain dolls lacking eyeballs and weird chimeric beasts made of mouse skulls and snipped off bird wings, snail shells and mechanical drawing instruments leaves the viewer transfixed on the screen, and wondering whether he should take a shower after the film is over or go straight to church.


Most recently, thanks to a Barnes and Noble gift card I received for Christmas, I was able to make a few new DVD purchases, the first being the films on Jiri Barta, another Czech Surrealist in league with Svankmajer and the infamous Bros. Quay. The DVD is called Labyrinth of Darkness and is a mad house of dark and depressing weirdness dreamt up by one of the more creative (or disturbed) madmen of the genre. The DVD includes eight short films, including the hour-long epic "The Pied Piper of Hamelin", perhaps Barta's best known work, akin to the Quay's "Street of Crocodiles" or Svankmajer's "Faust" or "Alice". The only disappointment I have is on the poor quality of the film, understanding of course that in the renegade and budgetless world of art-film dirty scratchy prints may be inevitable. I suppose we have become so hyper-sensitized in this age of "digital reprinting" and "remastering" that the character and warmth of a funky 8mm or 16mm print from some secret reel hidden in Jiri Barta's freezer is lost on our soft and delicate eyes. Of course, I still listen to all of my LPs, and the warmth of sound and occasional scratchy pop that emanates from my stereo sort of empowers me, and fortifies my fortress of individuality protecting me from progress.

Anyway, attention must also be drawn to the fantastic musical scores, drawn from a very Eastern European palette and masterfully woven into each image with relevance and intention. Stepping back to the Bros. Quay, the great Lech Jankowski I feel is the champion of this school of film scoring, a real influence on my own musical language. If you're curious at all, I definitely recommend this DVD, and anything by Svankmajer or the Bros. Quay. In fact, a new collection has just been released of the Bros. Quay films, it is called Phantom Museums. Check it out.

The Magic of Technology

Well, the world is an interesting place. As I have suggested before, I have a very complicated relationship with technology. It isn't so much that I am opposed to it, though I may be a marginally self-proclaimed luddite in many ways, it is more the way people use technology, or the assumptions that have developed in the technological age that lead to events like this. Oddly enough, and friend of mine posted the linked article to Facebook not realizing that it happened less than a mile from my parents' house. To sum up, if you're too lazy to click the link, it is about a man from California driving a rental car equipped with a GPS system. Unfamiliar with the area, he was trying to get onto the Saw Mill Parkway, which runs north-south from New York City through the Hudson Valley. Just shy of the entrance ramp, he was driving over the train tracks, when his GPS brain ordered him to "turn right". So logically, as any intelligent software designer traveling on business from Silicon Valley would do, he turned right immediately... ONTO THE TRAIN TRACKS. Long story short, his car got stuck and he abandoned it just before it was smashed and destroyed in a fireball by an oncoming commuter train which he apparently tried to stop by waving his arms.


The point is, besides this being an incredibly saddening and yet hilarious event in the history of Bedford Hills and the Metro North Railroad, it amazes me how often it is that the most apparently brilliant people, are still the stupidest. I was discussing the event with my friend Joel, who always has a very unique perspective on things, and who acknowledged that it seemed to be the case that technology is making people lazier or that people want to rely more on technology because they want to think less. I countered but saying I don't think it's that people want more or less to think or do things for themselves, but that they have been fooled into thinking that technology is somehow supposed to make life easier, or that they don't have to think if the GPS is telling them where to go. I maintain the view point that throughout history, human nature has been basically constant, and the same groups of people are just as stupid now as they've always been. It may be easier for them in this age to get away with it, but I'm sure that every period in history can exhibit some parallel convenience that fools like this guy have leaned on for the simple lack of common sense, nothing more.

Stigmata Musicum Nr. 1

Now in the interest of fleshing out the "music" category, I thought I might step back in "time" for a moment and write some updates about my latest musical endeavors.

August saw the premiere of my first complete piece since finishing undergrad in 2003. The work was inspired by, written for and premiered in public by the New York Miniaturist Ensemble, a fascinating group of top notch musicians dedicated to performing works consisting of 100 notes or fewer. The concept spoke to me immediately (thanks Mark!) and I set to work creating my "Miniature No. 1" for solo percussionist. The piece was my first excursion into the world of the spacial score, or score based upon its visual element and the placement of notes rather than being bound my meter to dictate the passage of time. The philosophy I have developed is that the score should "look like what it sounds like" which after my second piece in this style proved to be much more accommodating to the performers. The extreme opposite is realized by the brilliance of composers like Elliot Carter, Milton Babbitt and Brian Ferneyhough, all of whom I have been listening to a great deal recently. Elliot Carter in particular pioneered the idea of rhythmic transformations and complex rhythms within rhythms which can be interpreted only by the most sophisticated musicians. For the NYME I created a one page score, complete with arrows and dotted lines suggesting phrases and rhythmic direction, more like something George Crumb would have done, complete with the option of speaking fragments of text lifted from the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus (needless to say, the skilled but timid percussionist elected not to speak the text).

For my next experiment in avoiding definite and overly complex rhythms, I created a piece for two flutes and two bassoons entitled "Stigmata Musicum No. 1". The title is a mutation and parody of the Syntagma Musicum of Michael Praetorius and the mission of the work is to develop the intimacy of creating a compelling chamber music performance. Due to the lack of time signature through the majority of the work, coordination is completely dependent upon the intuition of the players, who must take turns as conductor and carefully watch and be aware of the entire score. The premiere was expertly performed by my chamber group, David Graham and Mira Magrill, flutes, and Nick Cohen and Vanessa VanSickle, bassoons. Below is the three page score and complete recording of the premiere. The complete work is about 7'30", give it a listen!

Wunderkammer Nr. 2

I love this idea. The idea (as I alluded to in my previous post of curiosity) that people are in too much of a hurry. That the appreciation for time well spent, and patience toward refinement is a value rapidly decaying in the age of light speed technology. Of course, I am sitting in front of my computer, typing this blog and feeling rather proud that I can do so and in an instant have it posted and sent away for anyone who may stumble across it. It reminds me of a Calvin and Hobbes strip, focused entirely around Calvin's dad as he sits in front of the computer griping about how in the old days a "rush job" meant the client would be lucky to get it in a week, and how computers in their ability to deliver have only made our lives less convenient by heightening expectations for instantaneous deliveries. Then, in the background little Calvin is reading the instructions on a microwavable dinner and exclaims "Five minutes?! Who's got that kind of time?!"

I agree with Calvin's dad, and while I use my computer a great deal for creating scores, I spend just as much time behind the mouse as I do behind my pencil and while having a digital score certainly makes life easier when changes need to be made, I am proud to say it takes me just as long if not longer to create a perfect score in the computer as it does on paper (my process involves both). What's the point? The computer, of course, as I preach to the younger generations of composers entering music school "now", is merely a tool and should not dictate how something should be notated or executed. In this age, so many people are in such a hurry, whipped by the self impressed assumption that because a computer is involved that must mean it will be easier to execute or happen somehow faster than "normal" that they allow their creativity to be dictated by what the computer seems to be able to do, rather than guide the computer to do what one needs it to do. The best example I can think of to illustrate the absurdity of the situation would be to imagine a carpenter trying to build a house and laying a hammer on the ground in the midst of a pile of lumber, nails, shingles and dry wall and saying "BUILD!" I'll tell you something, the hammer isn't going to leap off the ground and start hammering, it needs direction, bearing, heading, vector, force, intuition and even creativity to drive a nail. To illustrate deeper, do you think the carpenter lets the hammer tell him how to build the house?

Okay, so why did I put "now" in quotes? The curiosity in today's lesson comes to us from the Long Now Project, something I whole heartedly support! Check out these two diagrams of the passage of time and see if it inspires any critical thinking:



Or to better illustrate their philosophy:



These same folks have engineered a clock which keeps track of time based upon the "big picture" and distorts any understanding of what an increment of time is and what it means as it passes. The clock ticks once a year, chimes once a century and the "cuckoo" comes out every millennium. Time, after all, is only a system of measurement, utterly abstract in its reasoning, invented by the human mind to mark the length of the incomprehensible and intangible. It is all relative to our own life-span for as we began to observe life and death our mortality was only supported by history and looking ahead to the future. But where is the past and future? Where or when? What's the difference? Though it seems as people start to survive longer than they have, they are certainly living a lot less. Their website better explains everything, visit it here.

Spongedude Circlebritches

So there is a distinct possibility that I will be scoring the latest video game being designed and built by my old colleague Steve (check his website!).



Just thought I'd post up here my progress, so for your listening pleasure check out the first track designed to imitate the music from Spongebob Squarepants. Drums: Eddie Meneses, Guitar/Bass: Ryan McCulloch, Keys/Theramin: Sam McUmber, thanks guys! Until further notice this track is my copyright and my property, so listen, enjoy, and leave it for someone else to do the same.

Wunderkammer Nr. 1

Upon this blog, I shall also be posting curiosities from my digital Wunderkammer (that is, cabinet [or chamber] of curiosities). Number One I came across a while back, but have revisited since for love of this fantastic photograph. I assume it was taken in some war yard early in the century, no doubt during the First World War. The crazy contraption behind the two gents strolling along is not the latest whack-o band instrument, but a listening device used to HEAR approaching ships that are out of the visual range. That's right, even into WW2 sound reflectors and giant listening devices like this one were used before the advent of radar. In this day and age it seems like some fantasy cooked up by H.G. Wells, but it really wasn't so long ago in the real scope of things that there was no television, no radar, no satellites or space shuttles, no cell phones, and blah blah blah. Imagine the perception of time during the Roman Empire, when relevant events might have happened within the course of 200 years and styles and attitudes were refined and circulated upon the same foundation. Blast Bro.: Franklin for "inventing" electricity... it's all gone downhill since then.


p.s. I love this guy. Find out more about LISTENING DEVICES.

DANGER WILL ROBINSON!

I have always been a Mac user. Ever since the first Apple computer entered the home of the common man, credit due to the brilliant ad "1984" directed by the great Ridley Scott, we were in line to get one. Of course, it wasn't until a few years later, when my Uncle Seth was updating his office technology and decided to go Apple that we purchased our fist computer using his corporate discount. It was a Macintosh LC, complete with a whopping 16Mhz Motorola processor, 10 Megs of RAM and a huge 12" color monitor. In fact, "LC" apparently stands for "low-cost color", as it was one of the earliest affordable models and there were still computers that could be in black and white or the timeless green and black. Of course, my father continued to use his type-writer until I graduated high school, but that's another story.

The point of this story is, despite having worked for Apple (at the Apple store, in another lifetime) and seeing the ugliest side of the retail beast, my faith has been restored and I continue to enjoy and be amazed by Apple products. This restoration of faith came after the recent death of my hard drive. After a week in New York for the Christmas holiday, where I decided I wouldn't need my computer, I came home to Pittsburgh and fired her up. She seemed to work fine, no problems apparent, so I left for the opera, leaving the screen saver going (putting it to sleep disconnects my iChat, which I like to leave up with an away message) and when I returned, the screen saver was still running smoothly but the computer would not snap out of it. Assuming it was in some "software is not responding" induced trance, I simply held down the power button and restarted it.

Then that sinking feeling of doom set in, just as I realized that the blinking question mark staring back at me in place of any normal "starting up" activity was probably not a good sign. So I hit the power button again, and this time the computer powered down immediately. Terrified (as the last back up I had made was over a month ago, thankfully including the latest versions of all my important scores, though excluding my address book and iTunes library), I called my Mac Guru buddy Karl to get a diagnosis. Ever callous as he is, I was met by "that's bad" before being subjected to a series of peculiar questions like "is it making sort of a 'ping pong ball of death' sound?"

In fact, yes, as the hard drive tries to mount but can't, it makes this funny sound reminiscent of a bouncing ping pong ball tainted with anthrax. To make a long story short, the hard drive was dead. Karl's explanation: "they just do that, try sticking it in the freezer..." Later I discovered he was serious about the freezer bit, but since I was still covered under Apple Care (which seemed like a sucker move when I bought it, but for just this reason it saved my life) I didn't feel like voiding my warrantee by freezing my computer.

To make an even longer story slightly less long, I took it to the Apple Store where they expertly swapped my hard drive out in a matter of minutes, then carted my deceased hard drive away to the furnaces for euthanasia. Okay, so was I satisfied? At this point, yes and no, because the first question on my mind for the diligently well informed staff at the Apple Store was "can I get back my iTunes Store purchases somehow?"

To be fair, I remember the days of working retail and avoiding at any cost making a definitive answer that may in some way generate hope, understanding or optimism in a potentially volatile client such as myself (thank you Andrew Grossman!). So upon my query, the nice boy in the blue shirt scurried away to the cashier to inquire, shaking of heads, scratching of chins, nervously looking around the room, then he came back slowly approaching with an uneasy frown of attempted compassion saying, "noooo... there's not way to do that."

So how was my faith in Apple restored? Because following the successful replacement of my dead hard drive with a shiny new blank one, everyone in the Apple Store was wrong. Following the lead of my dear monkey-man Joel, I looked right on the Apple website to find a tech support form which was pre-marked specifically with "your hard drive died and your iTunes library was deleted". Incredible! A swift turn around allowed me that very same evening to re-download EVERY MP3 that I had purchased since subscribing to iTunes, amazingly enough it numbered somewhere around 450 mp3s, so my bank account was also jumping for joy. It took about 2 days to download all of them, sadly the rest of my music, including my own compositions, are in a box somewhere in New York waiting to be re-ripped. What's even more significant is though the people in the Apple Store still hint that it is illegal to rip music off of your iPod and is only possible by using unauthorized third party software that they can't tell you about during normal business hours (wink wink), the same tech support e-mail informed me that iTunes 7 has a specific feature which allows it to happen. Further incredibleness.

Apple is shaping up, the story ends most happily, as I waited before buying Leopard which I have yet to install, but bought at the school store for a whopping $69. Thank you grad school.

Methuselah Returns!

Dear Blog,

I know it probably won't provide the strongest support for our friendship, but I totally forgot about you. I mean, thank God you aren't some kid strapped in a safety seat locked in a car in a parking lot in Phoenix baking alive, because then I would not only feel bad, but I'd probably get arrested. Revisiting the two posts you brought to the world really brings me back to another life time, full of pantsless dead homeless men and rain soaked dirty subway platforms. Ahh, to be working again, and miserable...

Life has been full of amazing developments since last I posted. I am back at Carnegie Mellon University, a masters student working on my next degree in a long line of certificates and papers conferring my ability to write music. Life could not be better, though it would be nice if my student loan would come through already. I'll write more later, not to you, our relationship but remain a utility.

Be well, blog. See you soon!

CK