The Black Swan has arrived!

I started writing yet another piece of music... I'm not sure what I'll call it, perhaps some sort of lullaby. It's a slower piece.

The Black Swan came in the mail today from Amazon.com, I can't wait to get started reading it... maybe I'll have to put I Am A Strange Loop on hold yet again (a book which doesn't seem to be so interesting after all, just about everything Hofstadter's mentioned thus far I've thought about before).

I'm watching the film Lady in the Water as I type, so I must get back to it...

A banquet of sound

I finished another really short piece of music called "The Banquet". It features one melody repeated over and over about 12 or 13 times, each time with different orchestration. It's quite a ridiculous piece, but was a lot of fun to compose. Nothing like giving the timpani the main melody for eight bars, eh?

I'm uploading some of my music to Last.fm for some more exposure. I actually found the site through a Google search of my own name, so at least a few people on there already have my music listed somehow. Uploading takes forever though...

Headache

I've been tortured today with a bad headache... ouch... I realize of course it's all in the head. So I've been in too much pain to do much, that's my excuse... :(

I did write a few nice melodies, as if I need any more of those in my melody vault. Well, I guess you can never have too many. No sooner do I pick an egg of gold than the goose lays another, if you know what I mean.

A day of memorial

Not much to say today... the power went out for no reason, that was memorialable. Spent some time going through old video tapes and found some funny old home movies, those were memorialable.

According to film news websites, Pirates 3 failed to surpass its prequel in terms of opening weekend profits, and therefore of course failed to surpass Spider-Man 3's record. This is good, because Pirates 3 is a dumb movie! See my review from earlier...

Broken Swords

Woohoo, I've finished "Broken Swords"! That didn't take long. Nothing like the simple ABCBA format, eh? I don't have time to say much else today, so enjoy the music... I'll post a link to the MP3 download eventually on my MP3's page, but in the meantime you can hear it in this fine YouTube video:

Music in F minor

Last night I posted the score to my "Trio for Harp, Flute, and Oboe" on my MP3's page (see Opus 21). People on YouTube have been asking to see it, it seems to be my most popular piece there.

I hope to start my Christmas piece for the "GPO Christmas 2007" album soon, but I just started a new piece this morning. I don't think it will be a very long one, nothing like "Hour by Hour", but instead short and sweet. I'm thinking about calling it "Broken Swords" or "The Broken Sword" ... for some reason that's just what I see when I composed the first melody. It's in F minor, so it has that minor feel to it.

I did work on my book, The Game of Gynwig, a bit... I'm trudging through Chapter 12. Exciting, huh?

Pirates 3 review

Horrible. 2 out of 10 stars. I really hate where all the characters ended up, and the ending is ridiculous. So, overall, these Pirates of the Caribbean movies have gone downhill. The first one was the best, which I'd probably rate an 8 out of 10. The second one wasn't as good, but at least it had the prospect of setting up storylines for this film, Pirates 3. But this third one just stunk, with sudden pointless character deaths and a stupid ending. I fear they may have been setting up the ending in a way that would allow for more Pirate movies that don't need all the characters, in which case, shame on them.

That said, the special effects were still spectacular, and it's a shame they had to waste such computing power on such a dumb story. The music was also great, I look forward to getting the soundtrack in the mail.

I also saw The Good Shepherd a few days ago. I'd give it a 4 out of 10 stars. It was too choppy, I got the sense Robert De Niro was striving to be a less violent version of Scorsese, but failed. Scorsese's choppy scenes work, Robert De Niro's choppiness is pointless. But it did have some poetic dialogue (quite literally).

At Yahoo Movies, they've got a trailer for The Golden Compass up, which looks pretty bad. I'm so saddened. The special effects just look bland, especially compared to the standards set up by the Pirate movies and Lord of the Rings. Granted, the film is still in post production, so perhaps they'll improve on some things, but in my opinion the entire style of the fantasy world in the film is too bland, too clean to feel real. Too bad. (And the mouth movements of the talking bear were ridiculous... they better work on that.)

Pirates tonight...

I can't say much tonight (again) because I'm off to see Pirates 3 tonight and I'm trying to catch up on the saga by watching Pirates 2... I'll post a review of Pirates 3 tomorrow... maybe... if I feel like it.

Wearily I compose

I'm not going to dedicate a lot of time to this post because I've been up for over 24 hours and I'm feeling kind of... well... tired. However, I am working on the ending to my "Hour by Hour" piece, the longest piece of music I've ever written which has taken me about 3 months to compose. I'm excited to have reached the end and I'm putting the finishing touches on it now. Woohoo!

Children of Men

I ordered the new Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack and the book The Black Swan from Amazon.com today. Woohoo!

I saw the film Children of Men last night. I'd give it a 7 out of 10. In contrast to Copying Beethoven's horrible cinematography, this film had brilliant cinematography, with superb long single-shot takes (or at least seemingly single-shot takes). It is some of the best cinematography I have ever seen. That said, the story left me wanting a bit more. Although it had a good ending (well, a Pyrrhic victory ending at least), I still felt it was incomplete. I want to know what happens further on down the line, where are the characters five years or so down the road? How does the world get better? Overall though, good film, I liked it.

In other news, I just found out today that Lloyd Alexander died on May 17 at the age of 83. :(

Pretty flowers

I spent hours planting flowers today. I have outdoor allergies this season, so I was sniffing and wheezing the whole time, but I did catch up on some podcast listening. I also went to Blockbuster and got some movies, so perhaps I'll blog some reviews to those movies eventually. Haven't done much else today, those flowers took up all my time.

Oh, I did subscribe to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for a year, so I'm looking forward to my first edition of that arriving in the mail, but who knows how long that will take. I also thought up an idea for a fantasy short story. How many years do you think it will take me to get published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction? I have two rejections from them so far... there will hopefully be more to come... ("hopefully" because it implies that I actually finish more short stories).

Reading into it

I was listening to The Dragon Page podcast last night in which John Scalzi (an author I have never heard of before though his books look interesting) was interviewed. I'm going to paraphrase here, but if you listen to the original podcast you can hear his exact words. Basically Scalzi said that after he wrote a certain book, fans asked him why he did this and why he did that. Scalzi said in the podcast that there really was no reason, "I was lazy and that's the way I decided to do it." But that's not what he told fans because he was working on a sequel. He told fans something to the effect of "ah, yes, there's a reason for that..." and then he wrote in the reason to the sequel. And now when people ask him about reasons for things in the sequel, he says "oh, really?" with an open ear, for the readers are unknowingly encouraging him to write about reasons for certain things. I just thought that was funny.

One of the things that came up in the interview is how the readers gave authors way too much credit for things they might not necessarily have been thinking about when actually writing. Some authors probably try to make themselves appear smarter by pretending that such things certainly were the intent. I don't think this is necessarily a harmful way of doing business, but it can get plain stupid when you have English teachers (*cough* Dr. Walker *cough*) who make you write essays on such things, as if prose has to be taught by analyzing the drivel the English department presents as literature.

Shrek 3

I saw Shrek the Third last night and I'd give it a 6 out of 10 stars, the same rating I'd give Shrek 2, though I'd say this latest edition is better than Shrek 2. It is certainly hilarious, filled with all that good old Shrek humor, but when it comes to the sappy parts in which the characters have to talk about their feelings and the lessons they've learned and such, dialogue still comes across as far too forced, which for some reason I didn't sense with the first film. I would much prefer the film to be twice as long (about 3 hours) and have that much more character and story development (and more orchestral music scoring and less pop music), but I guess most audiences wouldn't much care for that! Still, I enjoyed it, and I would certainly recommend it if you enjoyed the first two films.

Shrek 4 is scheduled to come out in 2010, according to imdb.com, so we'll have to wait a few years...

I really haven't been up to much else worth mentioning... it is extremely nice to be out of school.

P.S. For movie ratings, 4 is average, so anything above a 4 is good and anything below a 4 is bad, while 4 itself is neutral.

Time to podcast again?

I created another music animation video for YouTube, this time for my "Canon No 2 in C major" ... embedding seems the proper thing to do:



Haven't done much else... I read a bit more of The Moonstone... I'm on page 44 now, isn't that exciting?

Now that I'm home, I've been reunited with my clarinet, but I really need some new reeds... I've also been reunited with my wonderful mic, which means I could do some new podcasts now... any ideas for a podcast?

Copying Beethoven review

I unpacked a bunch of stuff yesterday, but my room's a mess and not everything is unpacked. But my computer is all set up, that's the most important thing, no?

I watched the film Copying Beethoven last night, which was horrible. I'd give it a 2 out of 10 stars. I don't mind historical inaccuracies when they enhance the story, such as in Finding Neverland, but this story about Beethoven's fictional young female copyist seemed quite uninspired, lifeless, and bland. The cinematography was quite noticeable for its dreadfulness, with silly zoom ins and shaky cameras all over the place. What is it with shaky cameras these days? I hate the "shaky camera" effect, stop it you cinematographers! I don't want to get dizzy and sick watching people shake around on the screen. You can create tension with the music and the story itself, you don't have to go about shaking everything making it look like a home video. In the movie, during the premiere of Beethoven's 9th, which Beethoven himself conducted (in the movie, that is), the camera decides to whirl around and stop suddenly on Beethoven, and then get shaky. It's unfortunately almost laughable, because I'm sure the director and cinematographer and others involved wanted this to be a serious film. They should have done something like a crane shot at the climax of the 9th, so we get to fly above the choir and/or the audience, instead of being whirled about to make us nauseated.

Still, there were a few funny parts that were meant to be funny, such as Beethoven's cruel words about female composers, and how Beethoven ruins the dinner of the family that lives below by washing his hair. He's deaf, what can he do?

At the very end of the film, Beethoven lays on his deathbed and dictates his last quartet to his copyist... hmmm... sound like the end of another movie about a composer? Hmmm? Tsk tsk tsk! Copying Amadeus!

I thought the film looked rather insipid from the trailer, so I wasn't too surprised when such notions were confirmed. Do not waste time seeing this film; time is better spent actually listening to Beethoven's 9th in its entirety. (I like how the third movement of the symphony is skipped completely in the film... who wants to listen to that boring movement?)

Home at last

Whew, I am finally home! Most of my stuff still needs unpacking though... including my computer. Sometime this summer we're moving into a bigger house, so that will be extremely hectic. But it's good to be home and it's great that the semester is finally officially complete. A quite busy summer awaits... and I'll blog about it everyday that I can to try to keep myself sane... and because I'm a dork.

One day more

One day more... another day, another two exams... this non-ending academic scam... these men who seem to grade my work will always drive my mind berserk... one day more!

My first exam today starts in thirty minutes. I've been studying just about all night, and I guess I'll just spend the next thirty minutes being nervous. Right after the first exam comes another! But today is the final today, and in four or five hours, my exams will be complete!

While studying, I've been listening to the catchy "Someone in a Tree" from Sondheim's Pacific Overtures, so now it will be stuck in my head all through the exams, which is actually nice... a song stuck in the head is a great nervousness coping device!

Last night I also put up some book quotes from Roots of the Classical, as I've been planning. There are hopefully some more quotes to come, but what's there now was all I had time for.

And thus ends the last post on this blog from this dorm room... how special. I mean to get away Tuesday, everything's set, I leave tonight...

A comedy tonight

Hmmm, actually an exam tonight, but if my life were a movie, the exam might be a comedy. I've got a math exam tonight at 7:30 PM, so I've still got a good amount of study time, and I'll be studying basically all day. Hopefully I'll still have some time to do those quotes from Roots of the Classical after the exam tonight. So today will be a pretty bland day as I do nothing but study, study, study. I finally go home tomorrow night!

Exams so wicked this way come

I'm working at the university library for the last time this morning!

I finished Roots of the Classical last night. Nothing like knocking out a 470 page book in two weeks, though I admit I skipped most of the music examples which did take up a fair amount of space. Maybe next semester if I have the time and the dedication, which I probably won't, I'll check the book out again and spend some time with the music examples. Yeah, like that's gonna happen with all the other stuff I want to do... it's a nice thought though. Anyway, as I said before, I do have at least 20 quotes I wanted to blog about in the book quotes blog, so I'll do that today in between studying breaks.

I have three more exams, one tomorrow night and two on Tuesday. The last one on Tuesday I hardly have to study for... maybe I'll just run through the notes for an hour, but it's pretty simple stuff. The other two, however, are math exams, which I must study for, though I'm still afraid I'll blank out for some reason on at least one question. The one on Monday night will probably be the hardest, and if I can get through that, Tuesday shouldn't be too much trouble. However, the first exam on Tuesday is at 7:30 AM. Ugh! I haven't waken up that early in a long time, that won't be fun. Almost to the end...

I've had a few people contact me asking for sheet music for my "Trio for Harp, Flute, and Oboe" which seems to be my most popular video on YouTube (which isn't that popular at all compared to... uh... more popular videos). So I really want to make that available somehow... I want to publish it on Lulu.com (I think I said this in another blog post somewhere) and offer it as a download, but I wonder if anyone would pay for it? If I can make at least enough money off of it to buy a candy bar, that would be awesome. I guess I'll try offering it as a pay-to-download (something like $2.00... really cheap, no?) and see whether or not anyone is willing to pay for it.

That's enough blather for today...

Great concert

PDQ Bach was hilarious, I especially enjoyed the final movement of his "Variations on an Unusually Simple-Minded Theme for Piano and Orchestra, S. 1" ... ah, that was great! They did a fair amount of visual jokes as well, so the humor did not come entirely from the music, as it might on one of his albums, so seeing him in concert was a much different experience... probably even a better experience.

On June 29 and 30, the National Symphony Orchestra is playing the good old "Video Games Live" concert... I'd love to go see that, who wants to come?

I'm on page 426 of Roots of the Classical and I've got one chapter left to read. Almost to the end! And then I have at least 20 quotes to put up... though I might skip some to save time.

PDQ Bach time

I'm not sure how I did on the exam I took... but I was pretty brain dead afterwards. I tried reading Roots of the Classical a bit more, but it was too late, I was too brain dead. So instead I got a bunch of my stuff sorted since I move out of my dorm on Tuesday, May 15th. I threw away (well, recycled) a lot of paper, it's really kind of sad how much paper is wasted on this "education"!

Today, Friday, at around 11 AM I'm taking the bus to the metro station, then taking the metro to meet my father in Washington, DC. We will then go to the Kennedy Center to see PDQ Bach and the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center! I'm really looking forward to it; the last time I saw the NSO they were being conducted by the infamous film composer, John Williams. I guess that was about two years ago... that was really a lot fun. The last time I was at the Kennedy Center though, it was to see the "improv" (apparently fake "improv") play Shear Madness, which was certainly funny, but certainly not worth the $40 it cost for the ticket. Argh! Waste of $40! PDQ Bach will be much better... over the summer I hope to return to the Kennedy Center to see Phantom of the Opera! That will also be a lot of fun... I've actually never seen a musical being performed live, unless you count "Peter Pan On Ice".

Anyway, I hope I can wake up in time since I've now spent all this time blathering...

The first exam draws near

Just a bit of blather before I go to bed... I've got my first exam tomorrow afternoon (well, today I guess, since it's after midnight, and this counts as Thursday's post) and I want to spend the morning studying. Today's (or technically yesterday's) studying was disturbed with a lot of nasal congestion, which seems to going away now, which I know you care about. "Wait a sec, I gotta check Sean's blog for status on his nasal congestion."

Anyway, the exam tomorrow (er, today) has something to do with computer science, but I've never been able to quite figure out what... it's just a random collection of compiler and coding information, it doesn't seem to have much of a theme. So in the morning I've got to study time measuring and code optimization.

My "Hour by Hour" piece is now over eleven minutes... I worked on that for a bit as a reward for studying, as if rewarding myself with anything does any good... well, I guess it does, because I composed a pretty darn beautiful melody if I do say so myself, which I do. The piece won't get much longer because I think the climax I'm working on now will be the last. Whew, this is one heck of a piece! Catchy melodies and variations and counter melodies and awesome harmonies all over the place. Woohoo! I think it will be Opus 35. Woohoo, I'm almost to 40! I should try to get to 50 before my 22nd birthday. Wouldn't that be awesome? Eh, not as good as Mozart... :(

Hey, I've blogged daily for over a month now, whoop-de-doo!

Return of the phlegm

Is it already May 9th?! My first exam is tomorrow afternoon, so I've got to study, study, study. Unfortunately, nasal congestion has once again returned to annoy me and all those who must hear me sniff and sneeze. Bleh, allergies! Have you ever noticed how much allergy medication doesn't work? Argh... *sneeze* *cough* *sniff*

I'm up to page 340 now in Roots of the Classical. I got a fair amount read yesterday.

Minute by minute

I was finally able to spend a few more hours on my "Hour by Hour" piece, and it's total duration is currently about five seconds short of ten minutes... which means by the time the piece is finished it will be longer than ten minutes. I'll have to go back and see if I can find out which of my current pieces is the longest, for perhaps "Hour by Hour" will conquer them all.

The entries for the GPO Orchestration Challenge #12 are up here. Quite interesting to hear so many diverse interpretations of one theme, no?

My first exam is on Thursday evening, so I've got to study for that today.

Waltz and such

I put a new video on YouTube, an animation that goes along with my beautiful "Waltz of Pegasus" ... here, I'll embed it:



Ain't that pretty? Right after I post this blog entry, I'll hopefully go work some more on my latest piece of music... I keep wanting to write a smaller ensemble piece, such as another trio for harp, flute, and oboe or another woodwind quartet, but I've gotta finish this longer orchestral piece first!

I haven't gotten much farther in that book, Roots of the Classical; I'm only on page 275 now I think.

Prejudiced classical music lovers

Those Enigma Variations sure are nice... and varied.

I spent at least a little time studying for my math exam, which I won't have until the 15th, so I have plenty of time... didn't really get much more of the book read, though.

I spent some time arguing some more about modern music here. Someone said (or at least this is what I understood his words to mean) that he believed most classical music lovers would also enjoy modern 'academic' music, even though the style has changed, if it weren't for their prejudice that makes them afraid to even check it out. I argued against such a view, claiming that a majority of classical music lovers probably just do not currently care for the majority of the 'academic' music that is being written. To quote myself:

I'm not sure how you think it would follow that lovers of classical music would love today's new concert music just because that's what 'serious' composers are composing now. Why do people love classical music? This is subjective of course but I'd say it's the music itself they enjoy, not the fact that composers were using the idioms of their day, or the fact that they're considered 'serious', or whatever historic influence they might have had. Just because the idioms have changed doesn't mean that classical music lovers are just going to automatically follow it or accept it or love it. In fact, it would seem to me changing idioms would be even less of a reason to follow it. If someone was a fan of Mozart and Mozart said "New idiom: atonality!" and followed it up with some high pitch laughter, he'd probably lose some of his fans. Extreme example, of course, I don't mean to imply that's what modern music is like, but certainly a large majority of it is not like classical music was 200 years ago. It's a different genre, a different style, not just a continuation of classical music because of its 'artistic seriousness'. (You say yourself it's a different idiom.)

Ah, a nice long quote! I wonder if a majority of 'academic' composers would necessarily agree with me?

Nothing happened

I'm on page 250 of Roots of the Classical... reading it was what I did most of the day yesterday. Sometimes I get the feeling the author is talking right to me, if you know what I mean!

Hey, it's Cinco de Mayo, so... yay, I guess.

Well, I gotta work at the library today. And then I'll start preparing for exams while listening to some nice Enigma Variations.

It's over now, the music of the night

Whew, long day!

I'm on page 156 of Roots of the Classical and I have plenty of quotes to blog hopefully sometime this weekend. I'm not really spending as much time with the musical examples as I'd like because I want to finish reading the book before school's out, but I'd say it's definitely worth the $65 for the paperback. However, while it's now on my Amazon.com wish list, there are still some things I want a bit more, so I probably won't be buying it anytime soon. (Afterall, college students are penniless!) It would be worth it to look out for used copies though. Anyway, one thing I enjoy about the book is that the author seems to agree with many of my preconceived musical notions, which is always nice.

I tried working on The Game of Gynwig for a bit, and after an hour I got about two paragraphs written. Blah, it's hard to write!

Classes are finally over! My two classes today mainly consisted of not-very-helpful reviews, but at least it was easier to pay attention. I still have the final exams coming up, but all in all I'd say this has pretty much been the worst semester... probably even the worst schooling experience of my entire life... glad it's over! (For the most part!)

I tried to work on my piece of music for a bit, but I was too tired and my own music lulled me into a state of consciousness that was not quite asleep yet not quite awake... so I really couldn't get any work done on it at all. I guess classical composers never had that sort of problem, writing out their classical compositions on paper and not really being able to hear them the way I do.

I also did my laundry for hopefully the last time this semester. Isn't that interesting?

Thumb twitching

Woohoo! No homework left! At least, until next semester... argh...

I'm on page 110 of Roots of the Classical, a quite insightful book, and I have several more quotes from it to add to the book quotes blog whenever I get around to it.

Hmmm... I don't really think I've done much else lately besides homework, reading the aforementioned book, and arguing on the forum. I have two things I need to work on now, besides studying for exams: finish the "Hour by Hour" piece and work on my novel. Well, those things and of course finish reading the book.

I had a dream the other night in which my thumb was twitching. When I woke up it was still twitching. Oh, how wonderfully annoying it is when our senses make their way into our dreams.

Last of the homework

I must do my last homework assignment of the semester tonight... it's like a threshold crossing or something.

I'm a bit farther along in Roots of the Classical... on page 72 to be exact. Because I know blog readers care about the specific page I'm on in a book. I guess I'll just keep reading. It would certainly be nice to finish before the semester ends.

Tomorrow is the last day of classes. Looks like my first exam is on the 10th and then one on the 14th and two on the 15th. Blagh. At least I'll have over a week to study.

And then I have two more semesters of this worthlessness!

May means dead caterpillars

May is here, and the caterpillars are getting squooshed on the sidewalks... where are the birds to eat them?

I'm making slow and not very steady progress in that book, Roots of the Classical... I have at least one quote so far I want to put up on the book quotes blog.

I spent some time last night composing my entry for the Orchestration Challenge 12... nothin' like orchestrating little whole tone melody.

I've only got one homework assignment left, and then the only thing left to do school-wise will be to study for exams. The end is near!