fun void tuning ( time ) {
begin;
}
Friday, October 17, 2008
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Tuning is a function of time
It's a bit strange to see all your belongings that you've lived with for the last year in either one suitcase or a big garbage bag for secondhand clothing, which is to say, most of my clothes. Not to mention, they will definitely go over the weight limit, probably charging me an extra $300 that I don't have, as well as trying to carry on two laptops, a guitar, and a violin. I'm going to wear a suit, if that counts for anything. Mostly, because I don't want it to get too wrinkled and smelly in the suitcase, but secretly because I want people to take me seriously when I'm trying to check a half dozen bags, or rather carry on two instruments.
Anyway, travel is the least of my worries, primarily because it should be over by the end of tomorrow. I spent all day today having coffee or Guinness with friends, just saying goodbyes and trying to keep in touch. It's tough to tell, at this short time, who I will or won't see again. It's tough also, then, to avoid turning inward once I realize that there are, in fact, fairly important people that will become consistently less and less important as time goes by. But there's something to be said for sealing people in a particular place and time, and whether or not I see them again they will still be distinct entities apart from their 2007/2008 selves.
I remember some essay by John Cage, or Louis Andriessen, or La Monte Young or someone, saying that, in music, we can control pitch, rhythm, volume, timbre, or anything else except for time. The one constant element of music is time: linear, continuous, and inexorable (beware, this is a paraphrase of I don't know whom). Or the composer Morton Feldman, who wrote four-hour string quartets, and who said that he never repeats himself because, even if he did (which he does), it is now different, because it's happening at a different moment in time.
Well, let's cut the allegory short and get to bed, because it will be an early morning, and although I'm leaving some of you I'm going back to others of you. But this will be my last (substantial) post here; I may add something linking to a new site, probably something fancier, probably something with another black-and-white picture of me with a sheet of composition paper or an Apple laptop. For now, though, it's time to move on. Most bars in the U.S. don't serve anything on nitrogen.
Anyway, travel is the least of my worries, primarily because it should be over by the end of tomorrow. I spent all day today having coffee or Guinness with friends, just saying goodbyes and trying to keep in touch. It's tough to tell, at this short time, who I will or won't see again. It's tough also, then, to avoid turning inward once I realize that there are, in fact, fairly important people that will become consistently less and less important as time goes by. But there's something to be said for sealing people in a particular place and time, and whether or not I see them again they will still be distinct entities apart from their 2007/2008 selves.
I remember some essay by John Cage, or Louis Andriessen, or La Monte Young or someone, saying that, in music, we can control pitch, rhythm, volume, timbre, or anything else except for time. The one constant element of music is time: linear, continuous, and inexorable (beware, this is a paraphrase of I don't know whom). Or the composer Morton Feldman, who wrote four-hour string quartets, and who said that he never repeats himself because, even if he did (which he does), it is now different, because it's happening at a different moment in time.
Well, let's cut the allegory short and get to bed, because it will be an early morning, and although I'm leaving some of you I'm going back to others of you. But this will be my last (substantial) post here; I may add something linking to a new site, probably something fancier, probably something with another black-and-white picture of me with a sheet of composition paper or an Apple laptop. For now, though, it's time to move on. Most bars in the U.S. don't serve anything on nitrogen.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Irish Whiskey, English Mustard, American Pie
But not like that, sicko. I never noticed it before I was here, but it's tough when one of your three favorite foods is turned into a cultural sex toy. "Do you have pie?" when I rarely eat out, then even more rarely order dessert, in fact, I don't think this has ever happened "But not beef and Guinness pie, American pie, with fruit" which sounds like you're playing a joke, and no, tarts are not okay.
Anyway, the line between Richland and Dublin cooking is really very thin and full of Crisco, and by that I mean it consists of pie. I never even bothered trying to make my mom's pies (except once, when I really ruined the crust and she had to save it thereby also saving Christmas) even though I watched her make it several times a year (Dad's birthday, my birthday, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas, potlucks) and am pretty good at cutting in the shortening, at least when I make scones, and can handle rolling dough fairly well, when I make pizza, but I still worked away in total fear, following the recipe (strawberry rhubarb) to the letter, which is something I haven't done to a recipe in years and years. But desperate times call for desperate measures, and although I managed to skip the pie-feasts of Dad's birthday, Thanksgiving, potlucks, and most recently the Fourth of July, I could not let my own birthday slip through the cracks. Needless to say, I botched the crust by not dusting the cutting board with flour, so I rolled that one back up and made it into a makeshift top, thank God it was a two-crust pie, while I went in for round two on the new bottom crust, taking six times as long as my mother, and forgoing a rolling pin for an empty bottle of Jameson whiskey, which put all these little backwards signatures of "John J. Jameson" on the crust, a sign of quality. So, I ended up patching the parts that needed patching, drawing an ocean scene with a fork on the top crust, and it still somehow managed to come out all right, even though I used Crisp n' Dry, which sounds like a deodorant, because I couldn't find Crisco.
And, really, from the first bite, it was worth it. The crust really did pay off, although it kind of fell apart since I didn't have a pie-scoop, but then it did that landslide thing and melted the ice cream (also the first time I've had ice cream at home here), and there was some left over, even. Which is to say, it was definitely a hit of nostalgia having the pie last night, but reheating the pie this morning with coffee? a full-on overdose.
Anyway, the line between Richland and Dublin cooking is really very thin and full of Crisco, and by that I mean it consists of pie. I never even bothered trying to make my mom's pies (except once, when I really ruined the crust and she had to save it thereby also saving Christmas) even though I watched her make it several times a year (Dad's birthday, my birthday, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas, potlucks) and am pretty good at cutting in the shortening, at least when I make scones, and can handle rolling dough fairly well, when I make pizza, but I still worked away in total fear, following the recipe (strawberry rhubarb) to the letter, which is something I haven't done to a recipe in years and years. But desperate times call for desperate measures, and although I managed to skip the pie-feasts of Dad's birthday, Thanksgiving, potlucks, and most recently the Fourth of July, I could not let my own birthday slip through the cracks. Needless to say, I botched the crust by not dusting the cutting board with flour, so I rolled that one back up and made it into a makeshift top, thank God it was a two-crust pie, while I went in for round two on the new bottom crust, taking six times as long as my mother, and forgoing a rolling pin for an empty bottle of Jameson whiskey, which put all these little backwards signatures of "John J. Jameson" on the crust, a sign of quality. So, I ended up patching the parts that needed patching, drawing an ocean scene with a fork on the top crust, and it still somehow managed to come out all right, even though I used Crisp n' Dry, which sounds like a deodorant, because I couldn't find Crisco.
And, really, from the first bite, it was worth it. The crust really did pay off, although it kind of fell apart since I didn't have a pie-scoop, but then it did that landslide thing and melted the ice cream (also the first time I've had ice cream at home here), and there was some left over, even. Which is to say, it was definitely a hit of nostalgia having the pie last night, but reheating the pie this morning with coffee? a full-on overdose.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Drones (We Are) - Valediction
More drones, I know. I even gave it (the mp3) an album name, sort of a pun. My intonation isn't perfect on this recording, but I feel that I manage to hit enough 7ths, major 3rds, and that E-natural well enough to make it at least work. For those of you asking "what does Just Intonation sound like?" this is what it sounds like, but usually better assuming someone is playing it who can actually play the violin.
Valediction: For any number of strings, Indeterminate duration.
Tune violins a whole step lower; tune strings IV, III, and II of cello and viola a whole step lower (C-F-C-G-D). Tune to perfect fifths.
There are about a dozen patterns here, as well as a drone on the F. All the patterns are overtones of that F from a 9-note scale (Ionian plus Lydian plus Mixolydian, or the standard Western I-IV-V). Each player should move about these patterns at will, although not jumping more than a few patterns at a time, to preserve some continuity. Players may repeat the patterns as many times as needed, and skip patterns if they wish; however, it is highly advised that someone always be playing a held F (drone), and, if there are enough players, someone should be playing a held C as well, for tuning purposes. Optionally, the players may be spread around the performance space, behind, above, or underneath the audience. They may also be amplified, and spatialized, although not with artificial reverb or effects. Finally, it may go on as long as it needs to; there is no limit (either maximum or minimum) to the duration.
If anyone wants to perform this, let me know and I'll write up the score. Mostly, it's either in my head or on scraps of paper in a half-dozen notebooks scattered around my room.
Please suffer my four-violin recording.
http://www.willamette.edu/~acsmith/valediction.mp3
Valediction: For any number of strings, Indeterminate duration.
Tune violins a whole step lower; tune strings IV, III, and II of cello and viola a whole step lower (C-F-C-G-D). Tune to perfect fifths.
There are about a dozen patterns here, as well as a drone on the F. All the patterns are overtones of that F from a 9-note scale (Ionian plus Lydian plus Mixolydian, or the standard Western I-IV-V). Each player should move about these patterns at will, although not jumping more than a few patterns at a time, to preserve some continuity. Players may repeat the patterns as many times as needed, and skip patterns if they wish; however, it is highly advised that someone always be playing a held F (drone), and, if there are enough players, someone should be playing a held C as well, for tuning purposes. Optionally, the players may be spread around the performance space, behind, above, or underneath the audience. They may also be amplified, and spatialized, although not with artificial reverb or effects. Finally, it may go on as long as it needs to; there is no limit (either maximum or minimum) to the duration.
If anyone wants to perform this, let me know and I'll write up the score. Mostly, it's either in my head or on scraps of paper in a half-dozen notebooks scattered around my room.
Please suffer my four-violin recording.
http://www.willamette.edu/~acsmith/valediction.mp3
Monday, July 28, 2008
Genre
When pirating music, sometimes it appears in iTunes intact with artist names, sometimes album information, and if you're very lucky it comes with a genre. Rebuilding my music collection, since I somehow can't access the 60 GB of (mostly) my CD collection on my dying external hard drive, my favorite genre was "Unclassifiable," for a Larry Polansky (electronic, microtonal, acoustic, heavily distorted guitars, sometimes a choir, teaches at Dartmouth) album "C H A N G E," but that has now been eclipsed by a Keyboard Study from the album par le GERM split LP by minimalist founder Terry Riley, Genre: Unknowable. For some reference, he is also listed under folk, rock & roll, "instrumental," jazz, "misc," avant garde, and (where do we draw the line?) classical. To be fair, he probably belongs in electronic, world, and new age as well.
My dream is to perform his signature piece "In C" at Wulapalooza, or anywhere else with a semi-captive audience. It's a series of 40-something loops for any number of musicians with any instruments, where you move forward at will, with no conductor. It is, as I believe, a deconstruction of the Western tradition. There's really no acceptable YouTube video for this, but I have a recording from the Node Ensemble concert somewhere, on another computer.
My dream is to perform his signature piece "In C" at Wulapalooza, or anywhere else with a semi-captive audience. It's a series of 40-something loops for any number of musicians with any instruments, where you move forward at will, with no conductor. It is, as I believe, a deconstruction of the Western tradition. There's really no acceptable YouTube video for this, but I have a recording from the Node Ensemble concert somewhere, on another computer.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Oh no.
http://salem.craigslist.org/etc/766600084.html
I am addicted to craigslist. Don't even get me started on "missed connections."
I am addicted to craigslist. Don't even get me started on "missed connections."
Pancaking
As part of an ongoing quest to use all my remaining baking ingredients, I made pancakes for breakfast. Except, there's a problem in halving the recipe when the four-serving version calls for one egg. Normally, I might just leave the egg the same and reduce the others, making extra-eggy pancakes--but, no, that would be capitulating. Now it's a challenge, and you, about.com, are about to lose.
I remember in sixth grade someone (Alan, in case anyone is interested) invented a word, "pancaking," for my current state. It's the act of eating pancakes drawn as a larger allegory: beginning something whole-hearted and enthusiastic, a delicious first bite, soon settling into the rhythm of things, then even sooner overwhelmed by the mass and monstrosity of what's on the plate in front of you, but determined to go on. Obviously, in a literal sense, this applies quite well to my present state, yet I believe it ranks with the Odyssey and the Gospel of John as a legitimate classical myth-structure; indeed, it applies to watching a Meg Ryan movie (funny and heartwarming; expected that joke, sure; isn't this over? where's Tom Hanks?) to Samuel Beckett (any elaboration needed? Good.)
Pancaking is never really done with. The current plate is finished, yet there is still almost a whole bag of white flour left, not to mention all the multi-grain flour, yeast, baking powder, baking soda, etc. But now, at least, I'm satisfied with a job well done, and also there's syrup all over my computer.
And now for a picture that I'll probably end up regretting when I apply for a job where they're likely to Google my name (which job is that?):
I remember in sixth grade someone (Alan, in case anyone is interested) invented a word, "pancaking," for my current state. It's the act of eating pancakes drawn as a larger allegory: beginning something whole-hearted and enthusiastic, a delicious first bite, soon settling into the rhythm of things, then even sooner overwhelmed by the mass and monstrosity of what's on the plate in front of you, but determined to go on. Obviously, in a literal sense, this applies quite well to my present state, yet I believe it ranks with the Odyssey and the Gospel of John as a legitimate classical myth-structure; indeed, it applies to watching a Meg Ryan movie (funny and heartwarming; expected that joke, sure; isn't this over? where's Tom Hanks?) to Samuel Beckett (any elaboration needed? Good.)
Pancaking is never really done with. The current plate is finished, yet there is still almost a whole bag of white flour left, not to mention all the multi-grain flour, yeast, baking powder, baking soda, etc. But now, at least, I'm satisfied with a job well done, and also there's syrup all over my computer.
And now for a picture that I'll probably end up regretting when I apply for a job where they're likely to Google my name (which job is that?):
Friday, July 25, 2008
1-3-7-21-49-147
Just hit play.
Yes, friends, that is my new favorite guitar tuning. It is (if you're into this) an E (maybe), a third harmonic above that, a seventh harmonic of the E, a seventh harmonic of the third harmonic, a seventh harmonic of the seventh harmonic, a third harmonic of the seventh harmonic of the seventh harmonic (bringing us to 3x7x7 = 147).
In short, it's the greatest tuning ever created. I tried to pluck a tune normal guitar style, but it just wasn't doing the tuning justice, so I cradled the guitar between my legs like a cello, put my recorder in front of myself, picked up my violin bow, and started making noise. What you hear (as we speak, if you followed instructions) is an excerpt, after I got used to the mechanics of it, but before I started to run out of ideas. You'll notice it's mostly 5 minutes of drones; they aren't all drones, but when you vibrate the higher strings at 21 and 49 and 147 times the speed of the lower strings, their vibrations are so perfectly in tune with the natural vibrations of the lower strings that the whole thing starts to reverberate. All this really needs is to be even louder, and sustained for upwards of an hour.
Anyway, the last one (taeper, or repeat backwards) was also on guitar, but with a different tuning (1-4/3-7/4-9/4-11/4-4/1), and just the same thirteen (yes, prime numbers) notes, looped and played backward. There's a bandpass on the whole thing, so nothing changes except for the reinforced frequencies--the shift in melody that you hear is actually just a shift in filtration, like holding differently colored gels in front of a white light.
Yes, friends, that is my new favorite guitar tuning. It is (if you're into this) an E (maybe), a third harmonic above that, a seventh harmonic of the E, a seventh harmonic of the third harmonic, a seventh harmonic of the seventh harmonic, a third harmonic of the seventh harmonic of the seventh harmonic (bringing us to 3x7x7 = 147).
In short, it's the greatest tuning ever created. I tried to pluck a tune normal guitar style, but it just wasn't doing the tuning justice, so I cradled the guitar between my legs like a cello, put my recorder in front of myself, picked up my violin bow, and started making noise. What you hear (as we speak, if you followed instructions) is an excerpt, after I got used to the mechanics of it, but before I started to run out of ideas. You'll notice it's mostly 5 minutes of drones; they aren't all drones, but when you vibrate the higher strings at 21 and 49 and 147 times the speed of the lower strings, their vibrations are so perfectly in tune with the natural vibrations of the lower strings that the whole thing starts to reverberate. All this really needs is to be even louder, and sustained for upwards of an hour.
Anyway, the last one (taeper, or repeat backwards) was also on guitar, but with a different tuning (1-4/3-7/4-9/4-11/4-4/1), and just the same thirteen (yes, prime numbers) notes, looped and played backward. There's a bandpass on the whole thing, so nothing changes except for the reinforced frequencies--the shift in melody that you hear is actually just a shift in filtration, like holding differently colored gels in front of a white light.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Dodging cars, succeeding (so far)
Trying to make the most of this page before next week, when I have to retire it (or at least change the name) and realizing that I haven't said anything with real words for weeks. I've got this plan for next week, the day after my birthday, where I'll move out August 1 (really just take most of my stuff to a friend's house so as to not pay rent) and bicycle to Derry. If I stop halfway, in Armagh, it will split the trip into two days, about 82 miles Friday and 70 miles Saturday.
The problem I ran into, though, on my test run today was getting out of Dublin. It's nearly impossible to make it out of here without hitting those 100 km/h and over roads. It's not so bad staying on back roads, even though there's really no shoulder and my knuckles are permanently pale, but at least the cars are shooting by at 50-60 km/h instead of 100 (reference: like riding on the Richland bypass highway, which is also scary, but at least then I know where I'm going). I'm thinking that if I can make it far enough out of Dublin and not get lost one of these days, then I can do it again next Friday. So, tomorrow it looks like it'll be a 60 mile round trip to Drogheda, which is almost the entire way to Armagh, up in the (capital-N?) north.
The only downside is that (did I say this already?) most of the directions from the last two-hour test ride are lost, my only memories of those last two hours being trying not to die. Anyway, I'll be home (alive, we hope) on August 7, but then off to Salem/Portland probably for a day or two, so we'll figure something out.
The problem I ran into, though, on my test run today was getting out of Dublin. It's nearly impossible to make it out of here without hitting those 100 km/h and over roads. It's not so bad staying on back roads, even though there's really no shoulder and my knuckles are permanently pale, but at least the cars are shooting by at 50-60 km/h instead of 100 (reference: like riding on the Richland bypass highway, which is also scary, but at least then I know where I'm going). I'm thinking that if I can make it far enough out of Dublin and not get lost one of these days, then I can do it again next Friday. So, tomorrow it looks like it'll be a 60 mile round trip to Drogheda, which is almost the entire way to Armagh, up in the (capital-N?) north.
The only downside is that (did I say this already?) most of the directions from the last two-hour test ride are lost, my only memories of those last two hours being trying not to die. Anyway, I'll be home (alive, we hope) on August 7, but then off to Salem/Portland probably for a day or two, so we'll figure something out.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Friday, July 18, 2008
Budapest: In three parts
Budapest
In Three Parts
Copyright July 15, 2008
"It just gets destroyed, then rebuilt, destroyed, then rebuilt."
-Claire McQuerry
Pt. I: The Ottomans
All begin on pattern A, beginning at different times, in canon. Move to pattern B at will, again in canon, but with the tempos shifted so that each repeat takes the same duration. There is a simple formula for this, tX being the tempo of either pattern: tA/7 = tB/5. Play until all reach B and fade out individually.
Pt. II: The Hapsburgs
Split into two groups: one group plays notes from A, while the other plays notes from B. Repeat until it crumbles.
Pt. III: The Soviets
Pick any note from A. Change after 7 seconds. Repeat 7 times.
Pick any note from B. Change after 5 seconds. Repeat 5 times.
In Three Parts
Copyright July 15, 2008
"It just gets destroyed, then rebuilt, destroyed, then rebuilt."
-Claire McQuerry
Pt. I: The Ottomans
All begin on pattern A, beginning at different times, in canon. Move to pattern B at will, again in canon, but with the tempos shifted so that each repeat takes the same duration. There is a simple formula for this, tX being the tempo of either pattern: tA/7 = tB/5. Play until all reach B and fade out individually.
Pt. II: The Hapsburgs
Split into two groups: one group plays notes from A, while the other plays notes from B. Repeat until it crumbles.
Pt. III: The Soviets
Pick any note from A. Change after 7 seconds. Repeat 7 times.
Pick any note from B. Change after 5 seconds. Repeat 5 times.
Monday, July 7, 2008
Encroach
You know when you can hear the rain approaching? I mean, when it's really not raining very hard but the trees a few houses down are really just eating it up, making all kinds of noise, clearly the only ones in this town who want more rain, and it crescendos coming closer and closer until it's really a torrent next door and the light sprinkle in your garden probably won't be very light for very long. That's a good time to decide to stay in for the day.
Leaving for Munich (then Salzburt, Halstatt, Vienna, Budapest) tomorrow. Should be fun.
Leaving for Munich (then Salzburt, Halstatt, Vienna, Budapest) tomorrow. Should be fun.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
lbs.
I'm somewhere between Kings Cross and York, and I just finished my vegetable pasty, and as Garrett Sholdice said, it doesn't take long out of London before that buzzing in your head quiets down. I haven't yet gotten used to the currency--so much prettier than the ecumenical euro--and probably won't get a chance to before I fly back to Dublin tomorrow.
Yesterday was boiling in London, easily 80 degrees. I could not think, stumbling around partly lost and partly just bored for the sake of nothing to do all day, and too much heat to do it in. It was vindicated, though, by the excellent concert by the Fidelio Trio, with old works by Donnacha Dennehy, Linda Buckley, and Kevin Volans, and new works by Benedict Schlepper-Connolly, and (sort of) Gerald Barry.
The reason I am even here in the first place was today's interview with Garrett and Ben, and London was the only place I could meet them both together. They've started this organization, Ergodos, putting on contemporary music concerts and commissioning new material as often as possible.
One thing (more than one, really) Ben said interested me, in terms of his critique of the European mindset: Ireland is now officially two weeks into a recession, and they are a brand-new organization applying for arts funding. In order to survive through public budget cuts, they realize, you have to put effort into opening revenue streams aside from the arts council. Their goal is more than just having the same fifteen people in the new music crowd show up for every gig; it's to actually get new audiences in the door. The concert that they held in conjunction with a school in New York and the Royal Irish Academy of Music exemplified this: the new music crowd was largely absent, but there were whole families there listening to this music written decades ago that is still off-the-charts abstract even now.
(When is music not abstract?)
I must resolve to take the train more often. Train stations are significantly more quaint that airports, the nature is pretty, and this train even has spotty WiFi. Luckily, on my trip next week (next week!) From Munich to Salzburg to Halstatt to Wien to Budapest I'll be taking trains the whole way. It's time to decompress, to sit in four-seat rows where airplane cabins would almost certainly have six seats. Plus they have outlets to plug in your computer.
And, finally, the best thing about England? Cask ale.
Yesterday was boiling in London, easily 80 degrees. I could not think, stumbling around partly lost and partly just bored for the sake of nothing to do all day, and too much heat to do it in. It was vindicated, though, by the excellent concert by the Fidelio Trio, with old works by Donnacha Dennehy, Linda Buckley, and Kevin Volans, and new works by Benedict Schlepper-Connolly, and (sort of) Gerald Barry.
The reason I am even here in the first place was today's interview with Garrett and Ben, and London was the only place I could meet them both together. They've started this organization, Ergodos, putting on contemporary music concerts and commissioning new material as often as possible.
One thing (more than one, really) Ben said interested me, in terms of his critique of the European mindset: Ireland is now officially two weeks into a recession, and they are a brand-new organization applying for arts funding. In order to survive through public budget cuts, they realize, you have to put effort into opening revenue streams aside from the arts council. Their goal is more than just having the same fifteen people in the new music crowd show up for every gig; it's to actually get new audiences in the door. The concert that they held in conjunction with a school in New York and the Royal Irish Academy of Music exemplified this: the new music crowd was largely absent, but there were whole families there listening to this music written decades ago that is still off-the-charts abstract even now.
(When is music not abstract?)
I must resolve to take the train more often. Train stations are significantly more quaint that airports, the nature is pretty, and this train even has spotty WiFi. Luckily, on my trip next week (next week!) From Munich to Salzburg to Halstatt to Wien to Budapest I'll be taking trains the whole way. It's time to decompress, to sit in four-seat rows where airplane cabins would almost certainly have six seats. Plus they have outlets to plug in your computer.
And, finally, the best thing about England? Cask ale.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Rude Octaves
Just hit play while you're reading this. It's good mood music.
I created this patch that isn't very performance-friendly, and needs some debugging (the random number generator provides the same number to all 16 patches) but still got a solid 8 1/2 minutes of waves from it. At its peak, there are 16 oscillators going at once, all at different frequencies. It works like this:
16 instances of this patch, 8 on the left and 8 on the right channel, all with independent volume controls. Each patch has a cosine wave at its own frequency: 12 Hz, in the picture. Then, there's a random-number function that picks a number from 0-15 (default) every 25 (default) milliseconds. You can hear, at the beginning, it's only a new number every 1000 milliseconds (one second), but that must be changed manually. Then, that number is x in the function 2^x.
So, you have a number (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, etc.) randomly generated to multiply your base frequency by. Your frequency (12, in this case) is then 12, 24, 48, 96, etc. Now--who knew?--those are all octaves. So, what you get is a randomly generated octave jump every 25 milliseconds, and instead of a particular melody you just get weird waves of harmony.
It begins with 1 Hz (frequencies are inaudible under about 20 Hz, so you get sort of this weird clicking instead for some of the parts), then you hear the 3 Hz (perfect fifth up) enter. Later, the 5 Hz (major third up) enters, and you've got this pretty triad. Eventually, the 7 Hz (lowered 7th), 9 Hz (perfect fifth of perfect fifth, a.k.a. roughly a major second), and 13 Hz (sort of a major sixth, but way cooler than your mother's major sixth) all enter.
I save the 11 Hz for towards the end--know why? Because it's amazing. It's probably one of the wildest notes of creation. I think of it as the bastard child of the harmonic series. At least we tried to accommodate roughly the major third (5/1), sixth (1/5), the perfect fifth (3/1), the dominant seventh (7/1)--but we didn't even bother with 11/1. It's almost exactly halfway between two equal-tempered (piano-scale) notes. And one of those notes we called "diablo en musica," the tritone. Needless to say, I love the eleventh harmonic.
I'm going to London tomorrow.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!
So I'm plunging headlong into sine waves, stacking them on top of each other and finding octaves and harmonics and exponential amplitudes with formulas like:
x^[10 * (y/20)], given that y is amplitude in decibels and x is amplitude in a decimal from 0-1.
I don't really understand it either, except that it is interesting how we hear volume on a logarithmic scale at log10, while we hear pitch at log2. Though pitches in the lower register can change pitch with a change of 10 Hz (55 Hz = A, 65 Hz = C, almost), pitches in the higher ranges take longer to shift (the same A-to-C interval would be 80 Hz at a higher range). It makes you (me) wonder if we see on this same scale: imagine a car hurtling towards you on a back road, a half-mile off. Now imagine a car hurtling towards you about 10 feet away. Aside from the clear terror you're feeling, the car seems to be going much faster when it's about to hit you.
(Aside: remember that scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail when the knight, I forget which one, is charging the camera in a continuous loop, then all of a sudden he is there and stabs the poor man? Clearly, they share my theory.)
---
I just got my visa extended for the summer, so I'm a legitimate entity again. I'm starting my first interview Monday, going to London on Tuesday, interviewing again Wednesday, coming back Thursday, and interviewing again Friday, and probably Saturday as well. It seems like I'd be busy, but between sending out a few e-mails a day and going to at least one concert a week I still manage to spend most of my time learning to make noises on the keyboard.
The main purpose of the noises is for the Autopsy section of the opera, using the text of Jorie Graham's poem "San Sepolcro." The entire section will be voice and drones of spectral-tuned waves, very ambient. No need for an orchestra, just a laptop (maybe more than one, a laptop orchestra) and about a thousand speakers.
---
I didn't know where to put this, but I thought it was funny. Finnegan's Wake in Wiki-format, so that you can add your own references for every single word or phrase. I read about five or six pages of it last night (on actual paper, from the library) but then when I pulled up the site it just made it less fun. If you read it aloud and don't click on the links it makes much more sense, or at least it's pretty. There's something to be said for picking apart every note/word of a great work, but it certainly helps to play/read it through once or twice to hear it.
x^[10 * (y/20)], given that y is amplitude in decibels and x is amplitude in a decimal from 0-1.
I don't really understand it either, except that it is interesting how we hear volume on a logarithmic scale at log10, while we hear pitch at log2. Though pitches in the lower register can change pitch with a change of 10 Hz (55 Hz = A, 65 Hz = C, almost), pitches in the higher ranges take longer to shift (the same A-to-C interval would be 80 Hz at a higher range). It makes you (me) wonder if we see on this same scale: imagine a car hurtling towards you on a back road, a half-mile off. Now imagine a car hurtling towards you about 10 feet away. Aside from the clear terror you're feeling, the car seems to be going much faster when it's about to hit you.
(Aside: remember that scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail when the knight, I forget which one, is charging the camera in a continuous loop, then all of a sudden he is there and stabs the poor man? Clearly, they share my theory.)
---
I just got my visa extended for the summer, so I'm a legitimate entity again. I'm starting my first interview Monday, going to London on Tuesday, interviewing again Wednesday, coming back Thursday, and interviewing again Friday, and probably Saturday as well. It seems like I'd be busy, but between sending out a few e-mails a day and going to at least one concert a week I still manage to spend most of my time learning to make noises on the keyboard.
The main purpose of the noises is for the Autopsy section of the opera, using the text of Jorie Graham's poem "San Sepolcro." The entire section will be voice and drones of spectral-tuned waves, very ambient. No need for an orchestra, just a laptop (maybe more than one, a laptop orchestra) and about a thousand speakers.
---
I didn't know where to put this, but I thought it was funny. Finnegan's Wake in Wiki-format, so that you can add your own references for every single word or phrase. I read about five or six pages of it last night (on actual paper, from the library) but then when I pulled up the site it just made it less fun. If you read it aloud and don't click on the links it makes much more sense, or at least it's pretty. There's something to be said for picking apart every note/word of a great work, but it certainly helps to play/read it through once or twice to hear it.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
The sun never sets on Dublin
This time of year, in the days around the summer solstice, it's never quite night in Dublin. After the 9:58 sunset light still clings to the western horizon, and the dusk haze slowly circles around until the 4:58 dawn.
During the 10-day visit from my parents we criss-crossed over Ireland, visiting historic sites ranging from c. 3000 BC to 1916 and later, bicycled Inis Oírr a few times in two hours, ran out of gas in villages with stations closing at 10 p.m., and figured a skeleton for an epic opera.
Today, though, after they left, was one of the first sunny days in Dublin for a while. I made it up to Howth Head, 20 miles total, on my bicycle and hiked partway up and around the head, just enough to where I lost sight of the civilized world, and only until the wind started to pick up. About a three hour trip in all, but considering that I have no schedule and can only bother the same people for interviews so many times it wasn't too much trouble.
I would have gotten some great photos, but I don't really take pictures and also don't bring my camera with me anywhere. So you'll have to do with just first imagining nothing, then the sound of seagulls, then a green ocean with a canoe carrying four people in orange life vests, then exhaustion coupled with near vertigo from the sheer cliffs separating you from the water.
During the 10-day visit from my parents we criss-crossed over Ireland, visiting historic sites ranging from c. 3000 BC to 1916 and later, bicycled Inis Oírr a few times in two hours, ran out of gas in villages with stations closing at 10 p.m., and figured a skeleton for an epic opera.
Today, though, after they left, was one of the first sunny days in Dublin for a while. I made it up to Howth Head, 20 miles total, on my bicycle and hiked partway up and around the head, just enough to where I lost sight of the civilized world, and only until the wind started to pick up. About a three hour trip in all, but considering that I have no schedule and can only bother the same people for interviews so many times it wasn't too much trouble.
I would have gotten some great photos, but I don't really take pictures and also don't bring my camera with me anywhere. So you'll have to do with just first imagining nothing, then the sound of seagulls, then a green ocean with a canoe carrying four people in orange life vests, then exhaustion coupled with near vertigo from the sheer cliffs separating you from the water.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
CRASH (again)
Just can't help it: even though I've written about the Crash Ensemble a few hundred times already, I saw them again the other night and it was at least as good. A greatest hits concert, I suppose, with all commissions written specifically for the ensemble--three for roughly the full ensemble (no vocals, though), one string quartet, and one string quintet with two pianos. The second one, "Forced March," was by David Lang, one of the founding members of the Bang on a Can ensemble and the Pulitzer Prize winner for composition in 2008. I shook his hand.
Anyway, the other items on the docket were Terry Riley's Loops for Ancient Giant Nude Hairy Warriors Racing Down the Slopes of Battle, Gerald Barry's First Sorrow ("If someone could figure out how to make a poignancy grid, to attain the greatest level of poignancy..."), Kevin Volans's Connecting the Dots, and Donnacha Dennehy's Gra agus Bas ("Well, folks, looks like poignancy is the name of the game tonight.") I had only heard First Sorrow, the string quartet, before, but I had heard recordings of many of the others from their premieres last year. The string quartet is still my favorite, although Loops for Ancient Giant Nude... is probably the most fun, with a full-distortion electric guitar solo.
In other news: Beckett's "Not I" as a contemporary of bebop jazz, and as a precursor of slam poetry. Discuss.
That's a 151 MB .avi version, but you can find it at YouTube as well. It's free and public domain (I guess? The www.ubu.com site is legal, I think) so I'd recommend just downloading it and watching it when you have 10 minutes of time to block out. It's too good to chop up into bits, and, although it gets exhausting, you must go on.
Anyway, the other items on the docket were Terry Riley's Loops for Ancient Giant Nude Hairy Warriors Racing Down the Slopes of Battle, Gerald Barry's First Sorrow ("If someone could figure out how to make a poignancy grid, to attain the greatest level of poignancy..."), Kevin Volans's Connecting the Dots, and Donnacha Dennehy's Gra agus Bas ("Well, folks, looks like poignancy is the name of the game tonight.") I had only heard First Sorrow, the string quartet, before, but I had heard recordings of many of the others from their premieres last year. The string quartet is still my favorite, although Loops for Ancient Giant Nude... is probably the most fun, with a full-distortion electric guitar solo.
In other news: Beckett's "Not I" as a contemporary of bebop jazz, and as a precursor of slam poetry. Discuss.
That's a 151 MB .avi version, but you can find it at YouTube as well. It's free and public domain (I guess? The www.ubu.com site is legal, I think) so I'd recommend just downloading it and watching it when you have 10 minutes of time to block out. It's too good to chop up into bits, and, although it gets exhausting, you must go on.
Monday, June 9, 2008
Is this preferable to silence? (We are winning the war on terror)
For anyone familiar with This American Life (all of you), you might remember the segment that they excerpted from the WNYC show Radio Lab about a year ago. Radio Lab doesn't have new episodes quite as much as This American Life does, but it's consistently incredible. But that's not the point.
The point is, Jad Abumrad, the host of Radio Lab, has come out with a 4-part series on WNYC called "Wordless Music," after the Wordless Music festival which features indie rock performers on the same ticket as classical musicians: Beruit will play in the same night as someone performing Osvaldo Golijov, or Jonny Greenwood (guitarist from Radiohead) will just play. Check out Episode Two of this especially--I'm not crazy about the middle piece, but all of you need to hear Arvo Pärt's (pear-t) "Fratres," especially you, Mom. The Crash Ensemble did a whole half concert (part of a Dublin-wide festival) on Pärt, an Estonian-born expatriated composer with strong mystic Eastern (Russian Orthodox) influences.
In other news, I found a sample of George Bush saying, "We are winning the war on terror," and I mapped it to my keyboard, with multiple filters and distortion effects controlled by knobs, looped in layers. Also, if you hold the button down it loops "on terror." It's more of an improvised setup than a real composition, and really the kind of thing that needs to be heard live over giant speakers. So reserve the date of August 16, my backyard, private concert by Andrew Smith feat. George Bush.
The point is, Jad Abumrad, the host of Radio Lab, has come out with a 4-part series on WNYC called "Wordless Music," after the Wordless Music festival which features indie rock performers on the same ticket as classical musicians: Beruit will play in the same night as someone performing Osvaldo Golijov, or Jonny Greenwood (guitarist from Radiohead) will just play. Check out Episode Two of this especially--I'm not crazy about the middle piece, but all of you need to hear Arvo Pärt's (pear-t) "Fratres," especially you, Mom. The Crash Ensemble did a whole half concert (part of a Dublin-wide festival) on Pärt, an Estonian-born expatriated composer with strong mystic Eastern (Russian Orthodox) influences.
In other news, I found a sample of George Bush saying, "We are winning the war on terror," and I mapped it to my keyboard, with multiple filters and distortion effects controlled by knobs, looped in layers. Also, if you hold the button down it loops "on terror." It's more of an improvised setup than a real composition, and really the kind of thing that needs to be heard live over giant speakers. So reserve the date of August 16, my backyard, private concert by Andrew Smith feat. George Bush.
Friday, June 6, 2008
The Harmonic of the Fundamental
If you take a particular signal (13 Hz, for example) and you multiply it by 2, you get an octave. If you multiply that by 3, you get a perfect fifth. If you multiply that by 5, you get a major third. If you multiply that by 72, you get the six octaves and a perfect fifth up from your original 13 Hz. If you plot a bunch of these on graph paper in colored pencils (to designate different wave forms), you get my day. Each horizontal square is one second; each vertical square is one harmonic (the first square is 13 Hz, second is 26 Hz, third is 39 Hz, etc.) Blue is a sine wave (obviously), orange is sawtooth, red is triangle, green is parabola, yellow is pulse, and brown is noise with an added sine wave for color. Brown only comes in the 64th harmonic, by the way.
And if you keep wondering to yourself, Why do I keep reading this blog, when it's usually unintelligible rambling about waves and ultimately irritating noises?, then I'll tell you why: Cousin photos.
It's only a minute long; it's not like you haven't listened to more irritating things for 60 seconds.
http://www.willamette.edu/~acsmith/struktur.mp3
And if you keep wondering to yourself, Why do I keep reading this blog, when it's usually unintelligible rambling about waves and ultimately irritating noises?, then I'll tell you why: Cousin photos.
It's only a minute long; it's not like you haven't listened to more irritating things for 60 seconds.
http://www.willamette.edu/~acsmith/struktur.mp3
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Gas Tax Holiday
I figured, call them in the afternoon my time, because how many people are making credit card fraud claims at four in the morning? Apparently enough to keep me on hold for a while. Not that I have anything else to do, while Mozart or something equally vile is playing in the background, and I am adding my own special layer on it with my multi-oscillator software synthesizer and two-octave keyboard. It's something in E major, and it's been going on for ages. I think it's a rondo, either that or it's just on a continuous loop.
7:56
Someone has been using my debit card to buy gas in Beaumont, which I thought meant the Beaumont Shell Station just up the street (near Beaumont Hospital) but which apparently means Beaumont, California, seeing as how whoever it is drove to Pomona, and unless it's an amphibious craft (which would explain why they guy spends $450 on gas in a week) it doesn't look like he lives in Dublin.
12:52
Pretty sure this is Chopin, probably early Chopin, because it still has the minor-key arpeggiated bass with some rocking tuplets in the right hand.
15:28
Turns out it's my OTHER debit card, which I had never cancelled, so I get to keep this one. Good news, although now we're up to about $540 in charges. I'm starting to support Hilary's gas tax holiday.
22:00 or so
Well, getting that credited back to my account temporarily. Plus I get to sign an affidavit and mail it back to them, and keep my current debit card. So, back to programming synthesizers to make weird noises. I found a sweet vocoder effect, but more on that later.
7:56
Someone has been using my debit card to buy gas in Beaumont, which I thought meant the Beaumont Shell Station just up the street (near Beaumont Hospital) but which apparently means Beaumont, California, seeing as how whoever it is drove to Pomona, and unless it's an amphibious craft (which would explain why they guy spends $450 on gas in a week) it doesn't look like he lives in Dublin.
12:52
Pretty sure this is Chopin, probably early Chopin, because it still has the minor-key arpeggiated bass with some rocking tuplets in the right hand.
15:28
Turns out it's my OTHER debit card, which I had never cancelled, so I get to keep this one. Good news, although now we're up to about $540 in charges. I'm starting to support Hilary's gas tax holiday.
22:00 or so
Well, getting that credited back to my account temporarily. Plus I get to sign an affidavit and mail it back to them, and keep my current debit card. So, back to programming synthesizers to make weird noises. I found a sweet vocoder effect, but more on that later.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Okay ja ja ja
When I was in Berlin, I turned on my recorder and held it in my lap on the train. There was this kid in the seat in front of me talking to her mom, and at one point said "Okay, ja ja ja." So, I did what anyone would do: I looped part of it until it sounded like a beautiful singing voice. It took some reverb, equalizers, and a high bandpass filter to cut out the sound of the train, but I think it worked out. Wear headphones for this one. There's some stereo madness going on.
Original sample
Beautiful music
Original sample
Beautiful music
Sunday, May 25, 2008
An Ice Skater and a Violinist?
Seriously, you have to be kidding me. Russia won the Eurovision Song Contest with a cheesy singer, an ice skater, and an over-dramatic violinist. To be fair, Ireland's entry was a puppet making fun of Eurovision.
Background: Eurovision, in its 53rd year, is a song contest between all the European countries (also Israel, for some reason, and Turkey, which is up for election, and Russia apparently, which is pretty anti-EU to begin with) which is pretty much American Idol on a continent-wide scale. The winner of the previous year holds the competition for the next year--Belgrade, Serbia, this year--and the whole thing is fairly political. The Nordic countries all vote for each other, the UK and Ireland vote for each other, all the Eastern Bloc countries vote for each other, and Germany, France, and Spain pretty much just got destroyed. Although, to be fair, Germany did a pretty bad job, France was a bit aloof, and Spain had its own dance (uno! the breakdance, dos! the cross-over(?), tres! the Michael Jackson, cuatro! the Robo Cop).
So, apparently Ireland had won five or six years in a row, due to some pop star with massive club beats and fireworks. It wasn't a total loss, though. Finland had a metal band, complete with pyrotechnics and a guy playing the drums with maces, while the guy from the UK was straight-up disco, and Denmark was probably the happiest song I've heard in years.
Really, you just have to youtube this to believe me.
Spain: http://youtube.com/watch?v=udVl4XNx4PM&feature=related
Ireland: http://youtube.com/watch?v=-n--JnAwirk&feature=related
Background: Eurovision, in its 53rd year, is a song contest between all the European countries (also Israel, for some reason, and Turkey, which is up for election, and Russia apparently, which is pretty anti-EU to begin with) which is pretty much American Idol on a continent-wide scale. The winner of the previous year holds the competition for the next year--Belgrade, Serbia, this year--and the whole thing is fairly political. The Nordic countries all vote for each other, the UK and Ireland vote for each other, all the Eastern Bloc countries vote for each other, and Germany, France, and Spain pretty much just got destroyed. Although, to be fair, Germany did a pretty bad job, France was a bit aloof, and Spain had its own dance (uno! the breakdance, dos! the cross-over(?), tres! the Michael Jackson, cuatro! the Robo Cop).
So, apparently Ireland had won five or six years in a row, due to some pop star with massive club beats and fireworks. It wasn't a total loss, though. Finland had a metal band, complete with pyrotechnics and a guy playing the drums with maces, while the guy from the UK was straight-up disco, and Denmark was probably the happiest song I've heard in years.
Really, you just have to youtube this to believe me.
Spain: http://youtube.com/watch?v=udVl4XNx4PM&feature=related
Ireland: http://youtube.com/watch?v=-n--JnAwirk&feature=related
Friday, May 23, 2008
Review session
On a sunny day like today, the spaces between the houses grow smaller, and the lady on the left suns herself in shorts, reading The Sun, while the construction workers on the right chisel shingles off the neighbor's roof and into our garden. The dog (left) is strangely quiet, either dead or deciding to take a break from its unnecessary and yet dedicated barking.
I, however, am studying for the first time in two or three weeks, and having a tough time with it. Keep in mind that the last time I was working was also the last time I posted something here: try to find a pattern. I re-read the beginning and the end of one of the novels for class (What Are You Like? by Anne Enright), and I highly recommend this practice. Granted, I'm studying like mad after getting my computer working again (power adapter, Madrid) but let's be honest, studying "like mad" is for me like how I do anything else "like mad"--that is, maybe disappointed or a little annoyed, but far from mad.
Let's just review:
1. I finished my score for the string quartet, "Wallace," still looking for players
2. I went to Madrid, got sunburned, left my power adapter there
3. Cousin Adam visited, took a cousin photo on top of Bray Head south of Dublin
4. Played Super Nintendo games on my computer
5. Felt guilty for not studying Community in Contemporary Irish Literature
Yes, this will be on the exam.
I, however, am studying for the first time in two or three weeks, and having a tough time with it. Keep in mind that the last time I was working was also the last time I posted something here: try to find a pattern. I re-read the beginning and the end of one of the novels for class (What Are You Like? by Anne Enright), and I highly recommend this practice. Granted, I'm studying like mad after getting my computer working again (power adapter, Madrid) but let's be honest, studying "like mad" is for me like how I do anything else "like mad"--that is, maybe disappointed or a little annoyed, but far from mad.
Let's just review:
1. I finished my score for the string quartet, "Wallace," still looking for players
2. I went to Madrid, got sunburned, left my power adapter there
3. Cousin Adam visited, took a cousin photo on top of Bray Head south of Dublin
4. Played Super Nintendo games on my computer
5. Felt guilty for not studying Community in Contemporary Irish Literature
Yes, this will be on the exam.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Of Mere Being
It was a great success. The performance (re-listening) had a few mistakes, but I would much, much rather have mistakes than a flawless, lifeless performance. Here's the recording from tonight. It cuts off weirdly at the end, before the applause, but that's my own fault since I was the one recording it. Really, there was applause at the end, trust me.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
The proof is in the 'stache
You requested proof (in blog title), sorry it took so long. I grew comedy facial hair, in case it's too faint to see. Yes, it's there.
World Premiere of "Of Mere Being" tonight, at the Trinity College chapel. 8:30. 3 euros. Admission pays for drinks for all the players and composers after the concert. Feeling pretty good about this one, and I've come to terms with the speed of it. It's slower than I originally intended, and on classical instead of electric guitar, but more serene. I'd still like to try it with flute and electric guitar, but I can now see it two ways. I'll print the program notes for you, then I should be off:
The name of this piece is taken from Wallace Stevens’s late poem of the same name. It is separated into four short movements just as the poem itself is four short, three-line stanzas. Each movement takes its texture from the rhythm of each corresponding stanza, although it was not originally intended as a programmatic piece. Particularly, there is a feeling of opacity and nonsense to the poem that I wanted to evoke most clearly; as the narrative structures of the both the piece and the poem dissolve, the entire form becomes tranquil, almost static. It ends in three tableax: “The palm stands on the edge of space. / The wind moves slowly through the branches. / The bird’s fire-fangled feathers dangle down.”
World Premiere of "Of Mere Being" tonight, at the Trinity College chapel. 8:30. 3 euros. Admission pays for drinks for all the players and composers after the concert. Feeling pretty good about this one, and I've come to terms with the speed of it. It's slower than I originally intended, and on classical instead of electric guitar, but more serene. I'd still like to try it with flute and electric guitar, but I can now see it two ways. I'll print the program notes for you, then I should be off:
The name of this piece is taken from Wallace Stevens’s late poem of the same name. It is separated into four short movements just as the poem itself is four short, three-line stanzas. Each movement takes its texture from the rhythm of each corresponding stanza, although it was not originally intended as a programmatic piece. Particularly, there is a feeling of opacity and nonsense to the poem that I wanted to evoke most clearly; as the narrative structures of the both the piece and the poem dissolve, the entire form becomes tranquil, almost static. It ends in three tableax: “The palm stands on the edge of space. / The wind moves slowly through the branches. / The bird’s fire-fangled feathers dangle down.”
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Pictures 3: The Wall
This is the East Side Gallery, an open-air graffiti gallery on the east side of what's left of the Berlin Wall. It's pretty great.
I love this text. Not sure what it says.
Cute.
I just like this photo.
Just outside of one of the checkpoints, that's one of the fellow couch surfers taking a picture there.
I love this text. Not sure what it says.
Cute.
I just like this photo.
Just outside of one of the checkpoints, that's one of the fellow couch surfers taking a picture there.
Pictures 2: Treptow Park
During de-Stalinification they apparently overlooked this huge statue of Stalin in the middle of a park, surrounded by Stalin quotes, with hammers and sickles everywhere.
The main view from way, way back. There's more past that weird Soviet gate.
The hammer and sickle is on the top of that very, very red brick gate thing, closer than the last one.
Here's a statue of one of the soldiers, zoomed in from the gates in the first and second photos.
Just past the gate, those little things on the far right and left edges are Soviet scenes with Stalin quotes, in German on the right and in Russian on the left.
Under the statue of Stalin there was this mausoleum it seemed like. At the base of that little box in the center there are flowers.
The main view from way, way back. There's more past that weird Soviet gate.
The hammer and sickle is on the top of that very, very red brick gate thing, closer than the last one.
Here's a statue of one of the soldiers, zoomed in from the gates in the first and second photos.
Just past the gate, those little things on the far right and left edges are Soviet scenes with Stalin quotes, in German on the right and in Russian on the left.
Under the statue of Stalin there was this mausoleum it seemed like. At the base of that little box in the center there are flowers.
Pictures 1: Berlin, in general
I'm separating these into different posts, so make sure you check out all of the recent ones. Berlin in general, Treptow park, and the Wall. At that point, about day 4, my memory card was full and I had forgotten both my camera cable and my charger, so that's all you get.
The first picture I took, getting off the train at Alexanderplatz. Really not that exciting.
"All Art Has Been Contemporary" it says, in English, in neon, at the front of one of the museums. I didn't go in, because I was tired, but I loved that neon sign in front of an art gallery.
Pierre Boulez, taking his eighth curtain call or something. I circled him, because it got a bit blurry and you may not know which one he is. He's very old.
Two buildings, so Berlin. One is perfectly kept, the other is lovingly bohemian. This was near one of the contemporary art galleries.
You can see the TV tower of Alexanderplatz in the background, the most visible achievement of GDR Berlin. This was near the Wall, at the train station.
A train. I like the color, and the industrial buildings (actually minimalist electro clubs) in the background.
Another train. Abstract.
The first picture I took, getting off the train at Alexanderplatz. Really not that exciting.
"All Art Has Been Contemporary" it says, in English, in neon, at the front of one of the museums. I didn't go in, because I was tired, but I loved that neon sign in front of an art gallery.
Pierre Boulez, taking his eighth curtain call or something. I circled him, because it got a bit blurry and you may not know which one he is. He's very old.
Two buildings, so Berlin. One is perfectly kept, the other is lovingly bohemian. This was near one of the contemporary art galleries.
You can see the TV tower of Alexanderplatz in the background, the most visible achievement of GDR Berlin. This was near the Wall, at the train station.
A train. I like the color, and the industrial buildings (actually minimalist electro clubs) in the background.
Another train. Abstract.
Tannhäuser: fünf uhr
I'm reconstructing this from my intermission notes, now that I'm back in Dublin and can finally sit down at a desk to write. The opera that I went to Tuesday at the Staatsoper, Tannhäuser (Wagner), lasted for five hours, including intermissions. And, seeing as how I don't speak German or know the libretto by heart, it was a long five hours. I actually managed to read all of Act III in the intermission, about 15 minutes. I didn't really understand it, but could pick up on the flow of the dialogue and what was happening when. I think the last act is probably the most exciting anyway, but it also helped that I was just fully engaged, as opposed to the first act when I drifted in and out.
I must say, it seemed like the staging went downhill after that. It's almost like they had a few pyrotechnics then lots of down time until the next run of great sets.
The second act, in which Tannhäuser competes in a song contest (at the Sängenhalle, no less), had an entire chorus dressed up as audience members facing out. It made me think of Midsummer Night's Dream, or any number of other things, just the oldest trick in the staging book. But it was good, and it worked, especially from my point of view just looking at the people around me. I should also say that each act fewer and fewer people were in the rows--apparently not everyone can take five hours of Wagner. Which, considering everything by Wagner is at least that long, makes me concerned as to why they came at all. One lady I saw rushed out with an empty bottle of wine right at the end of Act I to go to the bar and get another bottle of wine to bring back to her seat. Overall, it was not a spectacular opera--I also could only see about half the stage--but then again I've never been to the opera before.
The Seattle Opera is putting on the entire Ring cycle in the fall of 2009. That one is a series of four operas, taking about 15 hours total. I want to go.
Pictures coming.
From here I can mostly just see the timpani and a few horns. The highlight thus far has been the opening of the first act, in which the orchestra narrated Tannhäuser's movement away from the world with tableaux of weird sea people.
I must say, it seemed like the staging went downhill after that. It's almost like they had a few pyrotechnics then lots of down time until the next run of great sets.
The opera audience is a spectacle in itself. The man near me was weirdly shouting near the start of Act I, and people are leaning over the balcony (third balcony) rails, or sometimes sleeping. So far from the audience at the symphony--somehow more elitist but less interested.
The second act, in which Tannhäuser competes in a song contest (at the Sängenhalle, no less), had an entire chorus dressed up as audience members facing out. It made me think of Midsummer Night's Dream, or any number of other things, just the oldest trick in the staging book. But it was good, and it worked, especially from my point of view just looking at the people around me. I should also say that each act fewer and fewer people were in the rows--apparently not everyone can take five hours of Wagner. Which, considering everything by Wagner is at least that long, makes me concerned as to why they came at all. One lady I saw rushed out with an empty bottle of wine right at the end of Act I to go to the bar and get another bottle of wine to bring back to her seat. Overall, it was not a spectacular opera--I also could only see about half the stage--but then again I've never been to the opera before.
The Seattle Opera is putting on the entire Ring cycle in the fall of 2009. That one is a series of four operas, taking about 15 hours total. I want to go.
Pictures coming.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Unspeakable Terror
Those are really the two words that best describe the feeling of last night's musical event. It was the kind of thing where, if you're into that, it was probably incredible, and if you're not, maybe once or twice a year would be okay. Maybe once. But, when in Berlin.
The concert opened with a guy on tenor sax--pretty nerdy looking white guy with glasses--who then hooked up his mic on the sax through a distortion pedal and a loop machine and proceeded to circular-breathe a very long, deafeningly loud distorted low note. Then, if you thought that was loud, he looped it and continued to blow more on top of that loop, slowly bending the pitch so that you could hear that beating in your ears that happens when two tones are barely apart from one another, but not quite distinct, just wave-interference. Then he looped that, and squawked some high notes on top of it, also distorted. This went on for about fifteen minutes, until the loops started fading out and he just held long, undistorted pitches. It was highly effective, although I'm more into quiet music.
The main act, two guys on electronics, was even weirder. One guy set up his laptop to play this basic bed of noise, ran through some filters so that it had changes in the equalization but not in the actual pitches, since there were no pitches. The other one, I guess he was playing lead, because he had a little keyboard that he smashed his hands on which played distorted samples of people screaming. This was maybe 40 minutes, ending in some sample from a German movie playing as the noise faded out, and as the lead laptop player picked up an electric guitar and instead of a pick just scraped the edge of a piece of plexiglass across the strings. I mean, if you're into that. I, at least, can only handle Unspeakable Terror for a little while before I feel like I need a bit of a break.
Forthcoming:
The East Side Gallery (Berlin Wall)
Another Country (Book Shop)
Jewish Museum (very good architecture)
Philharmonic (Tonight, Beethoven's 4th and 5th, Webern's 5 pieces for orchestra and his settings of Rilke poems)
The concert opened with a guy on tenor sax--pretty nerdy looking white guy with glasses--who then hooked up his mic on the sax through a distortion pedal and a loop machine and proceeded to circular-breathe a very long, deafeningly loud distorted low note. Then, if you thought that was loud, he looped it and continued to blow more on top of that loop, slowly bending the pitch so that you could hear that beating in your ears that happens when two tones are barely apart from one another, but not quite distinct, just wave-interference. Then he looped that, and squawked some high notes on top of it, also distorted. This went on for about fifteen minutes, until the loops started fading out and he just held long, undistorted pitches. It was highly effective, although I'm more into quiet music.
The main act, two guys on electronics, was even weirder. One guy set up his laptop to play this basic bed of noise, ran through some filters so that it had changes in the equalization but not in the actual pitches, since there were no pitches. The other one, I guess he was playing lead, because he had a little keyboard that he smashed his hands on which played distorted samples of people screaming. This was maybe 40 minutes, ending in some sample from a German movie playing as the noise faded out, and as the lead laptop player picked up an electric guitar and instead of a pick just scraped the edge of a piece of plexiglass across the strings. I mean, if you're into that. I, at least, can only handle Unspeakable Terror for a little while before I feel like I need a bit of a break.
Forthcoming:
The East Side Gallery (Berlin Wall)
Another Country (Book Shop)
Jewish Museum (very good architecture)
Philharmonic (Tonight, Beethoven's 4th and 5th, Webern's 5 pieces for orchestra and his settings of Rilke poems)
Friday, April 18, 2008
In zarter Bewegung
There are pretzels everywhere. I'm waiting for the S-Bahn, pretzel, .60; waiting for the Scharoun Ensemble Berlin, pretzel, 1.50; leaving the concert, after taking a picture of Pierre Boulez taking his seventh straight curtain call, pretzel again, 2.50. I like to imagine that Pierre, after a long day of rehearsing musicians, comes back to his dressing room, sees it full of pretzels and Pilsner and, c'est la vie, digs into those carbohydrates; he has to get into the Teutonic mindset for this one, after all.
Is Pilsner the same as Lager? Heineken is Lager, Javel is Pilsner, but Carlsburg is "Pilsner Lager." As they get closer to Pilsner, I start to like them a bit more, until finally, with Javel, it's a bit enjoyable. Sounds like a debate for a certain German Enlightenment thinker--a Critique of Pure Pilsners. It's really a spectrum, after all--the common-sense answer only nullifies the question. The question being "Is this beer good?" and the common-sense answer being "It's the only beer here."
I hope you don't mind all this blogging. I just have no one to speak to, even though everyone speaks English. I found a club or lounge (guidebook, also walked by it) called Delicious Doughnuts that's nearby, so they're spinning Funk/Soul music tonight. Really, I've got nothing else to do.
The concert, though, was absolutely incredible. Boulez is so understated as a conductor--no large arm-waving, no closing his eyes and pounding his feet--he is not the spectacle to watch that he is to listen to. Yet, at its best (Schoenberg's Kammersymphonie No. 1, op. 9) the small 15-musician ensemble was a unit, and the lyricism--not something you'd expect from either Boulez or Schoenberg--exploded. Alban Berg's Sieben Fruhe Lieder were good too, and the soloist took three or four bows, but it was more due to Berg's unsurpassed (imho) talent at writing for voice than due to any extraordinary interpretation. Still, the beginning of his third Lieder, Die Nachtigall, was something else entirely, as the piano hits a single note and everything just expands from that, gloriously.
The highlight of the entire night, which almost brought me to tears, had nothing to do with Pierre Boulez. It was the only thing he didn't conduct, because it was Anton Webern's Funf Satze fur Streichquartett, op. 5. String quartets are never (I think this is a safe instance of "never") conducted. At its best, it's like hearing a soloist with eight arms and four hearts. I almost said four brains there, but it's way, way funnier to say hearts. Really, though, there is one brain, the quartet. They will rehearse together, travel together, and therefore have to put up with each other. So, Webern. All funf Satze were pretty excellent, but the last, In zarter Bewegung (I asked the guy sitting next to me, I was just too shaken, "In tender movement") is really where it's at. It's just something else. I can't say much else about it. Go find it on YouTube or something, opus 5.
In other news, I asked a man in German if this train went to Potsdamer Platz and he just responded in a full stream of German, said he wasn't sure which train went there, and pulled out a map to help me. I didn't really understand any of it, but the German just made me so happy, as in, am I faking the accent right? I do have a shaved head now, and people have asked me for directions a couple times since I've been here. So, something to think about. Learning German, I mean.
Is Pilsner the same as Lager? Heineken is Lager, Javel is Pilsner, but Carlsburg is "Pilsner Lager." As they get closer to Pilsner, I start to like them a bit more, until finally, with Javel, it's a bit enjoyable. Sounds like a debate for a certain German Enlightenment thinker--a Critique of Pure Pilsners. It's really a spectrum, after all--the common-sense answer only nullifies the question. The question being "Is this beer good?" and the common-sense answer being "It's the only beer here."
I hope you don't mind all this blogging. I just have no one to speak to, even though everyone speaks English. I found a club or lounge (guidebook, also walked by it) called Delicious Doughnuts that's nearby, so they're spinning Funk/Soul music tonight. Really, I've got nothing else to do.
The concert, though, was absolutely incredible. Boulez is so understated as a conductor--no large arm-waving, no closing his eyes and pounding his feet--he is not the spectacle to watch that he is to listen to. Yet, at its best (Schoenberg's Kammersymphonie No. 1, op. 9) the small 15-musician ensemble was a unit, and the lyricism--not something you'd expect from either Boulez or Schoenberg--exploded. Alban Berg's Sieben Fruhe Lieder were good too, and the soloist took three or four bows, but it was more due to Berg's unsurpassed (imho) talent at writing for voice than due to any extraordinary interpretation. Still, the beginning of his third Lieder, Die Nachtigall, was something else entirely, as the piano hits a single note and everything just expands from that, gloriously.
The highlight of the entire night, which almost brought me to tears, had nothing to do with Pierre Boulez. It was the only thing he didn't conduct, because it was Anton Webern's Funf Satze fur Streichquartett, op. 5. String quartets are never (I think this is a safe instance of "never") conducted. At its best, it's like hearing a soloist with eight arms and four hearts. I almost said four brains there, but it's way, way funnier to say hearts. Really, though, there is one brain, the quartet. They will rehearse together, travel together, and therefore have to put up with each other. So, Webern. All funf Satze were pretty excellent, but the last, In zarter Bewegung (I asked the guy sitting next to me, I was just too shaken, "In tender movement") is really where it's at. It's just something else. I can't say much else about it. Go find it on YouTube or something, opus 5.
In other news, I asked a man in German if this train went to Potsdamer Platz and he just responded in a full stream of German, said he wasn't sure which train went there, and pulled out a map to help me. I didn't really understand any of it, but the German just made me so happy, as in, am I faking the accent right? I do have a shaved head now, and people have asked me for directions a couple times since I've been here. So, something to think about. Learning German, I mean.
Kunst-Werke Berlin
I went to the Kunst-Werke Berlin today, as per the guidebook's suggestion, and it did not disappoint. I should also note that down the street, before the gallery, I stopped at Dada Falafel: a tiny place, with two people working and a line out the very short distance to the door. The light fixture was a series of tangled tubes leading to a bouquet of exposed incandescence. I almost left, because of the line, but then remembered that the best places are those with long lines and slow service. It was the best falafel I have ever had, again.
I knew I was getting close to the contemporary art gallery when I saw Warholian bananas graffitied on the walls (picture forthcoming, I left my camera's cable at home). The gallery had plenty of good spots, but the all-time highlight (for me) was a film Two times 4'33". Most art gallery films just invite walking in and out at will--slightly counter-productive to the slow development in most of them. This one, however, played four times an hour and the audience(?) was asked to wait until the next showing before entering, although some people did leave part way through.
For anyone unfamiliar with the seminal work by John Cage, 4'33" is a piece consisting of three movements; the total time of the movements comes to 4'33". Also, the piece is just a series of bars of rests. No notes. Really, nothing at all. There is always someone in the audience who doesn't know the piece, probably someone who came for the Schubert in the first half, and while the music nerds in the crowd start laughing these Schubert-lovers get increasingly aggravated. Even (in the age of Google) when everyone actually knows what is up, it's still nearly five minutes (there are short pauses between movements) of sitting in complete silence with total strangers. So, this film recorded two performances, one focused entirely on the pianist and the next (once the audience in the film knew what was up) panning around the stoic/napping crowd, eventually settling on the trees outside. The first part (it was in surround sound, ironically) was incredible, though. You hear the cars going by outside, the wind blowing, the pianist turning each page as the rests go by. Anyway, I want to perform this sometime. Preferably at Wulapalooza, Willamette's huge music and art festival.
Really, I'll get around to talking about this English-language bookshop, Another Planet, also known as the Kreutzberg Kulture (kult-URE) Klub. I think I'm going to go back there after the concert; they're showing Apocalypse Now in the basement (the fantasy cellar, because it has all sci-fi and fantasy, explain later). I'm seeing Pierre Boulez conduct tonight, and I'm not sure whether to bring my sound recorder. Not to record the concert, but just because I like to carry it around. Once in a while someone will break out a harmonica in a quiet spot outside a cafe and I won't have it, then I'll kick myself. So many sounds missed out on.
I knew I was getting close to the contemporary art gallery when I saw Warholian bananas graffitied on the walls (picture forthcoming, I left my camera's cable at home). The gallery had plenty of good spots, but the all-time highlight (for me) was a film Two times 4'33". Most art gallery films just invite walking in and out at will--slightly counter-productive to the slow development in most of them. This one, however, played four times an hour and the audience(?) was asked to wait until the next showing before entering, although some people did leave part way through.
For anyone unfamiliar with the seminal work by John Cage, 4'33" is a piece consisting of three movements; the total time of the movements comes to 4'33". Also, the piece is just a series of bars of rests. No notes. Really, nothing at all. There is always someone in the audience who doesn't know the piece, probably someone who came for the Schubert in the first half, and while the music nerds in the crowd start laughing these Schubert-lovers get increasingly aggravated. Even (in the age of Google) when everyone actually knows what is up, it's still nearly five minutes (there are short pauses between movements) of sitting in complete silence with total strangers. So, this film recorded two performances, one focused entirely on the pianist and the next (once the audience in the film knew what was up) panning around the stoic/napping crowd, eventually settling on the trees outside. The first part (it was in surround sound, ironically) was incredible, though. You hear the cars going by outside, the wind blowing, the pianist turning each page as the rests go by. Anyway, I want to perform this sometime. Preferably at Wulapalooza, Willamette's huge music and art festival.
Really, I'll get around to talking about this English-language bookshop, Another Planet, also known as the Kreutzberg Kulture (kult-URE) Klub. I think I'm going to go back there after the concert; they're showing Apocalypse Now in the basement (the fantasy cellar, because it has all sci-fi and fantasy, explain later). I'm seeing Pierre Boulez conduct tonight, and I'm not sure whether to bring my sound recorder. Not to record the concert, but just because I like to carry it around. Once in a while someone will break out a harmonica in a quiet spot outside a cafe and I won't have it, then I'll kick myself. So many sounds missed out on.
Welt
Finally thought of a feminine noun. I was up for 36 hours when I went to bed yesterday, if you don't count the one-hour nap some time in the afternoon. Wandering around Friedrichstein late, late at night, not even sure why I was there, (every person I passed on the street, I wondered if he thought the same thing I did, which was 'hope he doesn't rob me.') I went into this falafal shop, and asked for eins Falafel, bitte. 'Ein Falafel,' the middle-eastern man behind the counter said, and nodded his head. The only other people in the restaurant were this group of four sitting at a table, just starting their meal at something like midnight. He slipped me my falafel sandwich first, then after serving the others put a cup of tea on the counter and said something about das Haus. I had probably walked 20 miles yesterday, well over half with my backpack on my back. It was the greatest cup of tea I have ever had. And I don't think I'll make it back to Friedrichstein, either.
I have a hostel for tonight and a couch for tomorrow night, then a different couch for Sunday on. I need to check into my other hostel, though, and probably go to a museum. Philharmonic chamber group tonight, Pierre Boulez conducts. After that, going to this bookshop for a movie. That is a much, much longer story.
I have a hostel for tonight and a couch for tomorrow night, then a different couch for Sunday on. I need to check into my other hostel, though, and probably go to a museum. Philharmonic chamber group tonight, Pierre Boulez conducts. After that, going to this bookshop for a movie. That is a much, much longer story.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Meine kleine something.
I just like that phrase "Meine kleine." So, found a hostel after not sleeping all night and walking for four hours in the rain around Berlin, totally lost, from Alexander Platz to around Potsdamer Platz. The place has free wireless internet, which is good because I'll have to find a new place tomorrow night, since this one is booked up. Pretty cool, though, the uncertainty and all.
I took some excellent samples of the train ride from the airport, about two minutes of just ambient train noise. Each time we went through a tunnel the pitch of the whole train changed, so I'm thinking I could just layer them and get some weird noises. Check for more eventually.
Yes, I brought my computer, and I'm kind of glad. First of all, the hostel has free wifi, and it gives me something to do while resting. Also, my shoes are soaked and I haven't slept for sechtsundzwölf uhr or so. It's not that heavy, anyway. Makes you friends, this guy just asked to use it to look something up. So, heading to Kreutzberg to have some proper dinner or something. Maybe find an electro-noise club somewhere. Wish me glück.
I took some excellent samples of the train ride from the airport, about two minutes of just ambient train noise. Each time we went through a tunnel the pitch of the whole train changed, so I'm thinking I could just layer them and get some weird noises. Check for more eventually.
Yes, I brought my computer, and I'm kind of glad. First of all, the hostel has free wifi, and it gives me something to do while resting. Also, my shoes are soaked and I haven't slept for sechtsundzwölf uhr or so. It's not that heavy, anyway. Makes you friends, this guy just asked to use it to look something up. So, heading to Kreutzberg to have some proper dinner or something. Maybe find an electro-noise club somewhere. Wish me glück.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Homeless in Berlin
Well, I fly out in about 7 1/2 hours (I can't ever sleep before traveling) and don't have a place to stay. I had one originally, but the guy whose couch I was surfing backed out at the last minute, saying his friends were staying a bit longer than normal but that I could stay there Saturday night. I already have a couch for Saturday until Thursday, though, so I'm just seeing if I can show up early or something. Who knows, kind of an adventure.
I don't even own enough clothes for eight days. I mean, if you count all the buttoned shirts it might work out, but I just don't own clothes. I'm bringing (wearing) one pair of pants, plus some pajamas, and maybe 4-5 days worth of everything else. Basically nothing. Then a camera, my sound recorder, iPod, headphones, and maybe (maybe) computer. We'll do a test walk around the block and see if it's heavy at all, but I think it'll work out. It'll give me something to read and do when I sit down somewhere, since I'm not really bringing books (two--Solzhenitzyn's Day in the Life--because it has small print and is light-weight, and a German dictionary, just for fun).
I'm afraid that if I don't bring my computer then I'll fill up my sampler way too fast and have to buy a new memory card or just dump some stuff or something. Who knows. Anyway, wish me luck.
I don't even own enough clothes for eight days. I mean, if you count all the buttoned shirts it might work out, but I just don't own clothes. I'm bringing (wearing) one pair of pants, plus some pajamas, and maybe 4-5 days worth of everything else. Basically nothing. Then a camera, my sound recorder, iPod, headphones, and maybe (maybe) computer. We'll do a test walk around the block and see if it's heavy at all, but I think it'll work out. It'll give me something to read and do when I sit down somewhere, since I'm not really bringing books (two--Solzhenitzyn's Day in the Life--because it has small print and is light-weight, and a German dictionary, just for fun).
I'm afraid that if I don't bring my computer then I'll fill up my sampler way too fast and have to buy a new memory card or just dump some stuff or something. Who knows. Anyway, wish me luck.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Ezra Pound, come home to Idaho
I wrote a song a few months back about Ezra Pound, and since I got this fancy recorder for my summer project, and since I have nothing better to do, I recorded it, with a nice rhythm track of Pound's Italian broadcasts, circa 1942, which later got him jailed for treason. The poem is the first half or so of Canto I. I couldn't find Canto II, which is what I really wanted, so the first one would have to do.
This is an excerpt from the forthcoming opera examining the life and displacement of Ezra Pound, where each act is introduced and closed by a verse from this song. The country guitar (and harmonica, when I get one in the appropriate key) is juxtaposed with the intense modernist aesthetic of Pound's poetry. It will make use of leitmotif.
I also shaved my head and beard, but kept earlobe-long sideburns and a soul patch, because if you're going to have facial hair, why not have funny facial hair. I could probably pass for a youth pastor; all I would need is a guitar. Oh, wait.
And if that fails to load:
http://www.willamette.edu/~acsmith/ezra.mp3
It was first sunny, now it's hailing. I heard some thunder earlier. Audio soon.
This is an excerpt from the forthcoming opera examining the life and displacement of Ezra Pound, where each act is introduced and closed by a verse from this song. The country guitar (and harmonica, when I get one in the appropriate key) is juxtaposed with the intense modernist aesthetic of Pound's poetry. It will make use of leitmotif.
I also shaved my head and beard, but kept earlobe-long sideburns and a soul patch, because if you're going to have facial hair, why not have funny facial hair. I could probably pass for a youth pastor; all I would need is a guitar. Oh, wait.
And if that fails to load:
http://www.willamette.edu/~acsmith/ezra.mp3
It was first sunny, now it's hailing. I heard some thunder earlier. Audio soon.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
REEEEMIIIIIXXXXX
Last year one of Luke's friends recorded a song (and nine others) in our dorm room. It was tough to fit the timpani in there, but we managed.
And if that fails to load:
http://www.willamette.edu/~acsmith/weather.mp3
And if that fails to load:
http://www.willamette.edu/~acsmith/weather.mp3
Friday, April 11, 2008
Call me Ishmael
Against my better judgment (I have no judgment), I am posting the finished chorale. This is the result of basically the entire day. Nine measures. Twenty-seven beats. About 2 1/2 minutes. Anyway, if you're into pdfs, it's here. If you're into mp3s (with me singing, by the way, refer to the pdf.) it's here. The singing is a simulation of what it will sound like when the second violin and viola break out into child-like song while the violin and cello play behind them. The text is from Wallace Stevens's "The Snow Man," now in the public domain.
Additionally, (if you're into pdfs) the "7" markings refer to the 7th harmonic, approximately 1/4 of a half-step down from the equal tempered note, while the naturals with the down-arrows refer to a 5th harmonic, about 1/6 down from the written note. The sharps with one vertical line mean a half sharp, which is roughly the 11th harmonic. This is all in the recording, however. If it sounds like an out-of-tune string quartet, that's because it is actually much more in tune than you're used to hearing.
Additionally, (if you're into pdfs) the "7" markings refer to the 7th harmonic, approximately 1/4 of a half-step down from the equal tempered note, while the naturals with the down-arrows refer to a 5th harmonic, about 1/6 down from the written note. The sharps with one vertical line mean a half sharp, which is roughly the 11th harmonic. This is all in the recording, however. If it sounds like an out-of-tune string quartet, that's because it is actually much more in tune than you're used to hearing.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
This chorale is my white whale
Avast, ye. This chorale melody is one of the first things I wrote all year, something which just came to me. I don't even recall working on it, revising it; it just was. You can heckle it all you like, because frankly now I'm ambivalent. Now it's a challenge. It's like trying to work "vortex" into a conversation, or "various states of disrepair" into a blog post.
I have tried:
1. A chorale prelude, meant to simulate improvisation at the piano; the chorale is like a set of jazz chord changes to improvise upon.
2. A traditional four-part arrangement, slowly dissolving into obscurity.
3. A fugue, a la Die Kunst der Fuge.
4. A four-part canon (it was a disaster).
5. A four-part canon using only eighth notes (it was a [expletive deleted] train wreck).
6. Having two players play the melody, one normal and one inverted, while the other two sing the parts to the words "In the sound of a few leaves, which is the sound of the land full of the same wind," from the Wallace Stevens poem "The Snow Man." This one was just goofy.
It is a 19-note Rasputin. I dare someone to come up with a coherent arrangement of it. If you want, I can lend you my notes and attempted analyses (i.e., bar 1 is D Maj. 7 to F-OCT0, 1; bar 2 pivots from G Lydian to an inverted G harmonic minor scale; bar 3 is roughly B Locrian). Go ahead, I dare you. Call me Ishmael, or something.
Edit: By "one normal and one inverted" I meant that the second melody was inverted, beginning with a fourth down instead of a fourth up. Not the actual player. Not that goofy.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
After Death
I thought I might pick something up from the library, something not involving death. These past few weeks--an essay on Philip Larkin, another on Hamlet, been reading Beckett for fun(?)--just too much death. I pick up Tony Harrison's long poem "v." and read it downstairs in the library (where there are couches), for class on Wednesday. Turns out it takes place in a graveyard. Okay, I need something else. I browse the late-20th century authors and see Thomas Pynchon. I've started his book V. (different book from the long poem), got about 40 pages into it and just didn't get involved, bought and started Against the Day, but after 150-200 pages (it's 1200 pages long) just got exhausted. I've heard great things about Gravity's Rainbow, though, so I pick that one up. I get home, start to read.
The epitaph: "Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation. Everything science has taught me, and continues to teach me, strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death." (Werner von Braun)
One point.
The epitaph: "Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation. Everything science has taught me, and continues to teach me, strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death." (Werner von Braun)
One point.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
L'État, c'est moi
Entering page 22 of death (the first 21 were on Philip Larkin, the last 20-something will be on Hamlet) I thought I should begin including epigraphs in my essays. It seems that all the well-published literary critics do this, and--although I haven't made a spreadsheet--I'd be willing to bet that the quantity and quality of the epigraphs correlates with the quality, or at least scholarly recognition, of the article itself. JSTOR (for those of you who came of age before internet databases, a searchable database of scholarly articles from hundreds of published journals) just added a new feature where you can see other articles which cite that particular article. So, from now on, I will keep score:
Hypothesis: A higher EPiSoLA (Epigraph Pretension in Scholarly or Literary Articles) will correlate with more citations, and also tenure at a major academic institution. This may also be used for especially pretentious poems or fiction.
The EPiSoLA is calculated on a point scale, as follows:
1 - Epigraph in English or translated living Continental language (e.g., T.S. Eliot, Nicholas Sarkozy)
2 - Epigraph in English by someone dead more than 200 years (e.g., Christopher Marlowe, Adam Smith)
2 - Epigraph in a living Continental language (e.g., Flaubert, Nietzsche)
2 - Epigraph in an non-Continental language, translated (e.g., Omar Khayyam, Sun Tzu)
3 - Epigraph in a living Continental language by someone dead more than 200 years (e.g., Kant, Voltaire)
4 - Epigraph in either Greek or Latin (e.g., Ovid, the Latin Mass)
5 - Epigraph in a living Continental language by either Derrida or Heidegger
10 - Epigraph in Chinese or Persian, actually written with the Chinese or Persian characters (see: anything by Ezra Pound)
I think this covers all the bases. By this account, the article "Bad Taste and Bad Hamlet" receives a 2, for its quote from David Hume, while Basil Bunting's poem "Briggflatts" gets a 5, 3 for "Son los pasariellos del mal pelo exidos," and 1 for "The spuggies are fledged," and 1 bonus point for juxtaposing a 13th-Century Spanish account of Alexander the Great with a Northern English colloquialism.
I encourage all of you to compile your own lists of epigraph pretension. For now, I'm starting out at a healthy 3, with "L'État, c'est moi," or "I am the State," attributed to Louis XIV--you know, because old King Hamlet dies, and thus the characters fight to retain the state of sanity/State of Denmark. Should probably shower/get to the library.
Hypothesis: A higher EPiSoLA (Epigraph Pretension in Scholarly or Literary Articles) will correlate with more citations, and also tenure at a major academic institution. This may also be used for especially pretentious poems or fiction.
The EPiSoLA is calculated on a point scale, as follows:
1 - Epigraph in English or translated living Continental language (e.g., T.S. Eliot, Nicholas Sarkozy)
2 - Epigraph in English by someone dead more than 200 years (e.g., Christopher Marlowe, Adam Smith)
2 - Epigraph in a living Continental language (e.g., Flaubert, Nietzsche)
2 - Epigraph in an non-Continental language, translated (e.g., Omar Khayyam, Sun Tzu)
3 - Epigraph in a living Continental language by someone dead more than 200 years (e.g., Kant, Voltaire)
4 - Epigraph in either Greek or Latin (e.g., Ovid, the Latin Mass)
5 - Epigraph in a living Continental language by either Derrida or Heidegger
10 - Epigraph in Chinese or Persian, actually written with the Chinese or Persian characters (see: anything by Ezra Pound)
I think this covers all the bases. By this account, the article "Bad Taste and Bad Hamlet" receives a 2, for its quote from David Hume, while Basil Bunting's poem "Briggflatts" gets a 5, 3 for "Son los pasariellos del mal pelo exidos," and 1 for "The spuggies are fledged," and 1 bonus point for juxtaposing a 13th-Century Spanish account of Alexander the Great with a Northern English colloquialism.
I encourage all of you to compile your own lists of epigraph pretension. For now, I'm starting out at a healthy 3, with "L'État, c'est moi," or "I am the State," attributed to Louis XIV--you know, because old King Hamlet dies, and thus the characters fight to retain the state of sanity/State of Denmark. Should probably shower/get to the library.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
More fresh than Will Smith circa 1990
The farmer's market is absolutely brilliant. I don't know why I never knew about it, because it's year-round every Saturday in Temple Bar (Meetinghouse Square, named after the long-standing Quaker Meeting House there). I circled the entire place six or seven times, bought some coffee (Kenya), a veggie burrito (salsa was good, not believably Mexican though), went to the cash machine, bought more produce (garlic, peppers, parsley, portabellos), natural yogurt with plum compote, organic granola (€7 / kg. -- very cheap), fresh goat's cheese (€2!), and kalamata olive oil (€8 for 75 cl!). Really, my new Saturday ritual. In fact, I'll just try to do all my shopping weekly there.
It feels good getting back into the city when the sun is out and there are people. A huge mix of tourists, immigrants (one cheese stand was speaking Russian, or maybe Polish, while the olive oil girl was probably French), and Dublin natives, just browsing the produce, usually friendly enough. Aside from any environmental issues, farmer's markets are the most social interaction you'll ever get out of grocery shopping, not to mention the health benefits of being surrounded by produce instead of by boxed meals.
That got a bit didactic there. But, then again, I'm cooking my goats cheese and portabello omelet in kalamata olive oil, using organic garlic. And beautiful, beautiful tomatoes.
Update: It was the greatest omelet I have ever had in my life, ever.
It feels good getting back into the city when the sun is out and there are people. A huge mix of tourists, immigrants (one cheese stand was speaking Russian, or maybe Polish, while the olive oil girl was probably French), and Dublin natives, just browsing the produce, usually friendly enough. Aside from any environmental issues, farmer's markets are the most social interaction you'll ever get out of grocery shopping, not to mention the health benefits of being surrounded by produce instead of by boxed meals.
That got a bit didactic there. But, then again, I'm cooking my goats cheese and portabello omelet in kalamata olive oil, using organic garlic. And beautiful, beautiful tomatoes.
Update: It was the greatest omelet I have ever had in my life, ever.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
You can check out, but I have to clean up
Two roommates are gone to Japan, so visitors stayed at my house four nights this past week. Tuesday, someone from Willamette visiting the Galway kids, Friday, Sheila and Colleen, then Saturday and Sunday, Dylan with a total of five friends--three one night, two others the next. Needless to say, the house and I were in various states of disrepair by the time Fiona came back from Denmark on Monday morning.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Holy Thursday
It's been so long, why apologize. I went to Galway; it was nice; I'm back.
Tonight I was in town to mail a letter (grant acceptance letter) and remembered it's Holy Thursday, so I went to the Quaker meeting house in Temple Bar. Sat in silence for about a half hour, except one time when someone said something. Me, four students from a Quaker college in Iowa (really cool), and two other older Friends. There's something about sitting in silence with a few other people that is just more potent than any structured event.
So, here's a poem for you by Paul Muldoon, on the occasion:
Holy Thursday
They're kindly here, to let us linger so late,
Long after the shutters are up.
A waiter glides from the kitchen with a plate
Of stew or some thick soup,
And settles himself at the next table but one.
We know, you and I, that it's over,
That something or other has come between
Us, whatever we are, or were.
The waiter swabs his plate with bread
And drains what's left of his wine,
Then rearranges, one by one,
The knife, the fork, the spoon, the napkin,
The table itself, the chair he's simply borrowed,
And smiles, and bows to his own absence.
Tonight I was in town to mail a letter (grant acceptance letter) and remembered it's Holy Thursday, so I went to the Quaker meeting house in Temple Bar. Sat in silence for about a half hour, except one time when someone said something. Me, four students from a Quaker college in Iowa (really cool), and two other older Friends. There's something about sitting in silence with a few other people that is just more potent than any structured event.
So, here's a poem for you by Paul Muldoon, on the occasion:
Holy Thursday
They're kindly here, to let us linger so late,
Long after the shutters are up.
A waiter glides from the kitchen with a plate
Of stew or some thick soup,
And settles himself at the next table but one.
We know, you and I, that it's over,
That something or other has come between
Us, whatever we are, or were.
The waiter swabs his plate with bread
And drains what's left of his wine,
Then rearranges, one by one,
The knife, the fork, the spoon, the napkin,
The table itself, the chair he's simply borrowed,
And smiles, and bows to his own absence.
Monday, March 3, 2008
Do you ever get tired of soup? No, I don't.
When I make soup, I make enough for
four people, because I'll probably be
hungry tomorrow. And the day after.
And the day after that.
four people, because I'll probably be
hungry tomorrow. And the day after.
And the day after that.
Friday, February 29, 2008
You know then that it is not the reason
It looks as if the Fates have conspired to make me stay inside and compose all day. I woke up at 9, willingly no less, to slight cold and a drizzle of rain. It looks like Dublin again, finally.
The other night, after scrapping that Node Ensemble stück once I missed the deadline, Ben called me to tell me that they were planning on programming it for their April concert. So, no rehearsals have happened yet; I minimized it to electric guitar, violin, and recorder, hopefully to decrease rehearsal time and make it more precise. Four short movements, less ambition than the original, but I think it will turn out far better. Plus it gives me a chance to use that movement for electric guitar trio, without having to bother with an extra four instruments. It's still the poem "Of Mere Being," by Wallace Stevens; the electric guitar trio movement is the stanza:
Four more days (I hope) of work. This Sunday, and all next weekend. Oh, and I got the grant from Willamette to study the community of living Irish composers, so I'll be here all summer, until late July or early August. Stop by. It's a nice place; I hear it rains all summer. I'm really getting into delicious mushrooms now. The yuppie grocery store (Fallon & Byrne) has all their specialty mushrooms at a mix-n-match price, so I just get a bit of each and throw it into an risotto (two days ago) or an omelet (this morning) or maybe even a pasta dish, with caraway seeds (T.B.D.).
I haven't been up this early (willingly) in ages. I don't know what to do with myself.
The other night, after scrapping that Node Ensemble stück once I missed the deadline, Ben called me to tell me that they were planning on programming it for their April concert. So, no rehearsals have happened yet; I minimized it to electric guitar, violin, and recorder, hopefully to decrease rehearsal time and make it more precise. Four short movements, less ambition than the original, but I think it will turn out far better. Plus it gives me a chance to use that movement for electric guitar trio, without having to bother with an extra four instruments. It's still the poem "Of Mere Being," by Wallace Stevens; the electric guitar trio movement is the stanza:
You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.
Four more days (I hope) of work. This Sunday, and all next weekend. Oh, and I got the grant from Willamette to study the community of living Irish composers, so I'll be here all summer, until late July or early August. Stop by. It's a nice place; I hear it rains all summer. I'm really getting into delicious mushrooms now. The yuppie grocery store (Fallon & Byrne) has all their specialty mushrooms at a mix-n-match price, so I just get a bit of each and throw it into an risotto (two days ago) or an omelet (this morning) or maybe even a pasta dish, with caraway seeds (T.B.D.).
I haven't been up this early (willingly) in ages. I don't know what to do with myself.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Red Rice Risotto; Deutschland
It was 4 a.m. and I couldn't sleep, so I bought tickets to Berlin (26 euros, return). I also got tickets to a chamber orchestra performance of some Webern, Berg, and Schoenberg works at the Berlin Philharmonic hall (18 euros) and a performance of Wagner's Tannhauser at the Berlin Philharmonic (16 euros). All in all, a productive evening. I also read all of Philip Larkin's collection The Whitsun Weddings, which mostly just made me think about death and still not be able to sleep. More about that another day. Today is light-reading Wednesday.
And what's lighter than a cookbook? With no plot, no characters, and the self-consciousness of itself as a text to be interacted with, there's a fine line between a cookbook and a postmodern novel. So, think of this post as whichever you feel more comfortable with.
You start with 2 to 3 cups of water, I can't remember which. Maybe it's somewhere in between. You boil it, anyway. While it's coming to a boil you consider what it means to boil. To boil over, after all, is to fail to boil. To boil over is to spill all over the stove, cooling the water, and preventing it from reaching its premium state. So, don't boil over. Boil steadily, and as the boil begins add some salt and about a cup of red rice. The boiling should stop; the simmering should begin. We are in the grey area between boiling and not boiling. This is where we want to be. We're going to simmer for a while, so start chopping some mushrooms. We've got some shiitake, some oyster, and some other strangely shaped mushrooms. We're going to thinly dice the gouda that is still in our fridge, because it's about time to get rid of it and we don't have a cheese grater. We also bought some Parmesean, which is pretty good, so let's chop some of that up. We're heating up a second saucepan now, throwing in some butter and garlic and black pepper (ground). We toss in the mushrooms and let them simmer for longer than seems prudent, but trust me it's worth it. We add olive oil, take the thickness off of the butter and give it this strange interplay of flavors, the animal and the vegetable combined into one bubbly oily mess. Add the cheese. Add the white wine, maybe about a 3-4 second pour. Really let it get in there. The rice should be done, if it's been about 30 minutes. You used extra water than you thought was necessary, but that's because this is risotto not just standard white rice. You've also been stirring the whole time. So, now I add the rice to the mushroom mixture, stir for a while. Taste every one in a while, because I'm really hungry at this point and just want to eat. Finally, while it's still chewy, take it off the stove. It is the best thing I've cooked all week, which includes last week.
I have another jazz gig this Saturday, Ballsbridge Court Hotel. Also, I quit my job.
And what's lighter than a cookbook? With no plot, no characters, and the self-consciousness of itself as a text to be interacted with, there's a fine line between a cookbook and a postmodern novel. So, think of this post as whichever you feel more comfortable with.
You start with 2 to 3 cups of water, I can't remember which. Maybe it's somewhere in between. You boil it, anyway. While it's coming to a boil you consider what it means to boil. To boil over, after all, is to fail to boil. To boil over is to spill all over the stove, cooling the water, and preventing it from reaching its premium state. So, don't boil over. Boil steadily, and as the boil begins add some salt and about a cup of red rice. The boiling should stop; the simmering should begin. We are in the grey area between boiling and not boiling. This is where we want to be. We're going to simmer for a while, so start chopping some mushrooms. We've got some shiitake, some oyster, and some other strangely shaped mushrooms. We're going to thinly dice the gouda that is still in our fridge, because it's about time to get rid of it and we don't have a cheese grater. We also bought some Parmesean, which is pretty good, so let's chop some of that up. We're heating up a second saucepan now, throwing in some butter and garlic and black pepper (ground). We toss in the mushrooms and let them simmer for longer than seems prudent, but trust me it's worth it. We add olive oil, take the thickness off of the butter and give it this strange interplay of flavors, the animal and the vegetable combined into one bubbly oily mess. Add the cheese. Add the white wine, maybe about a 3-4 second pour. Really let it get in there. The rice should be done, if it's been about 30 minutes. You used extra water than you thought was necessary, but that's because this is risotto not just standard white rice. You've also been stirring the whole time. So, now I add the rice to the mushroom mixture, stir for a while. Taste every one in a while, because I'm really hungry at this point and just want to eat. Finally, while it's still chewy, take it off the stove. It is the best thing I've cooked all week, which includes last week.
I have another jazz gig this Saturday, Ballsbridge Court Hotel. Also, I quit my job.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
The text shows the inability of leaving Ireland
I went to a talk on Irish writing in the 50s this evening, and one main topic was the problem of emigration. The best, they say, leave Ireland (usually meaning go to London or Dublin, which doesn't qualify as "Irish") while the slackers stay behind and drink away their inheritances on the ruined family farm. Now, Claire Wills (wrote a good book on Paul Muldoon as well) did a fine job deconstructing that monster of a commission--something about population policy--but she also did a fine job of making me want to get out. So, going to Galway next weekend. I feel like that's a start. First Galway, then maybe Vienna. Ich bin aus Österreich.
I've taken to learning German online. It gives me something mechanical to do, anyway. I probably should have learned Italian or something, but I have less of a desire to go to Italy. Too warm, too sunny, too delicious. I almost bought tickets to the Dresden music festival, but I'm not sure when my exams are. We'll work on that.
In other news, I finished four of my nine movements for this desert suite. They are, played by my computer:
1. Presto (score)
2. Allegro Pizzicato (score)
5. Geese (score)
9. Very Slow (score)
The first two movements are meant to be directly conjoined--the first, slowing down from presto to allegro, also becomes pizzicato.
In case you missed it, they get slower as the suite goes on. That haunting chord you hear the cello and viola play (and the two violins outline) at the beginning of Presto is (I know you're sweating with anticipation, sweating everywhere) a perfect fifth, D and A, in the viola, played as a double-stop on strings III and IV, and a very, very flat (49 cents flat, almost halfway to the next lower note) G#. Pretty mad. A vicious 3/4-tone leap there in the violins; you think it's a leading tone but oh you are so wrong. It's so flat it wants to pull you down to the G, not up to the A. It's almost exactly between the F# and the A, even, (the F# being the major third of the elusive triad) so it may as well just suck it up and pretend it's an out-of-tune 4-3 suspension.
I finished applying for the summer grant as well. Something changed a bit, so it's more community-oriented. Probably make things easier to get a grant than some esoteric ethnomusicological project practiced by one or two other people.
And, as a plug, our community blog slaughter and laughter is back, thanks to Alyssa. I'll throw up a new color scheme some time. I'm thinking rot und schwartz.
I've taken to learning German online. It gives me something mechanical to do, anyway. I probably should have learned Italian or something, but I have less of a desire to go to Italy. Too warm, too sunny, too delicious. I almost bought tickets to the Dresden music festival, but I'm not sure when my exams are. We'll work on that.
In other news, I finished four of my nine movements for this desert suite. They are, played by my computer:
1. Presto (score)
2. Allegro Pizzicato (score)
5. Geese (score)
9. Very Slow (score)
The first two movements are meant to be directly conjoined--the first, slowing down from presto to allegro, also becomes pizzicato.
In case you missed it, they get slower as the suite goes on. That haunting chord you hear the cello and viola play (and the two violins outline) at the beginning of Presto is (I know you're sweating with anticipation, sweating everywhere) a perfect fifth, D and A, in the viola, played as a double-stop on strings III and IV, and a very, very flat (49 cents flat, almost halfway to the next lower note) G#. Pretty mad. A vicious 3/4-tone leap there in the violins; you think it's a leading tone but oh you are so wrong. It's so flat it wants to pull you down to the G, not up to the A. It's almost exactly between the F# and the A, even, (the F# being the major third of the elusive triad) so it may as well just suck it up and pretend it's an out-of-tune 4-3 suspension.
I finished applying for the summer grant as well. Something changed a bit, so it's more community-oriented. Probably make things easier to get a grant than some esoteric ethnomusicological project practiced by one or two other people.
And, as a plug, our community blog slaughter and laughter is back, thanks to Alyssa. I'll throw up a new color scheme some time. I'm thinking rot und schwartz.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Reduce; reuse; recycle
Such a good motto. I have been drinking more water in the past week, because of a new program (falling under the "reuse" category) in which I fill old whiskey bottles up with water and bring them to my room so that I don't have to go downstairs for water, thereby increasing my water intake. Then, eventually, I recycle them when the time is right and I feel like I need to change it up a little. Still working on the third part, though. Wish me luck.
I'm branching out on this grant now, encompassing pretty much all living Irish composers. I just think that a broader topic will lead to a better project, especially in allowing me to follow leads which develop along the way.
Had another dinner party last night. Fresh pita, hummus, tabouleh, soup, and some other store-bought dips. More pudding, but vanilla this time. Never gets old. David requested a cast list last week ("I checked your blog, and you listed the recipes but not us."): David, Niamh, Julia, Kate, Paula, Francis, and I'm sure I'm forgetting someone. I feel pretty bad about this. Anyway, pretty nice time.
The Crash Ensemble plays again next Sunday. Also, the UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers is being held here from July 9-13, and the Crash Ensemble is playing on June 10. I've heard two of the five pieces they're playing, and the other three composers are excellent. So, try to stop by. Buy your tickets today.
I wrote a country/blues song about Ezra Pound. The chorus goes "Ezra Pound come home, Ezra Pound come home, Ezra Pound come home to Idaho." If you come to Dublin you can hear it.
I'm branching out on this grant now, encompassing pretty much all living Irish composers. I just think that a broader topic will lead to a better project, especially in allowing me to follow leads which develop along the way.
Had another dinner party last night. Fresh pita, hummus, tabouleh, soup, and some other store-bought dips. More pudding, but vanilla this time. Never gets old. David requested a cast list last week ("I checked your blog, and you listed the recipes but not us."): David, Niamh, Julia, Kate, Paula, Francis, and I'm sure I'm forgetting someone. I feel pretty bad about this. Anyway, pretty nice time.
The Crash Ensemble plays again next Sunday. Also, the UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers is being held here from July 9-13, and the Crash Ensemble is playing on June 10. I've heard two of the five pieces they're playing, and the other three composers are excellent. So, try to stop by. Buy your tickets today.
I wrote a country/blues song about Ezra Pound. The chorus goes "Ezra Pound come home, Ezra Pound come home, Ezra Pound come home to Idaho." If you come to Dublin you can hear it.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
As promised
But first, before we get to the main attraction (for me), let's tell some dinner party stories. It went will, the dinner party. Six of us, from my Monday Irish lit class. I really have no stories. Just, you know, had dinner, sat around the table for a while. Perfected my Irish coffee recipe, including the method of using empty whiskey bottles to shake the cream so that you can float it on top of the drink delicately, with a spoon, as we know all things done with spoons are inherently delicate. One swash of whiskey at the bottom, blended with extra-dark brown sugar. Make double-strength french press coffee; don't use a french roast or anything too dark, as the cream really enhances a lighter Guatemalan or Nicaraguan origin (I used Ethiopia). Delicately (did I say with a spoon?) float the shaken cream (NOT WHIPPED CREAM, ESPECIALLY NOT FROM A CAN) on top of the coffee. Imbibe.
The rest of the menu was:
Butternut squash and parsnip soup
Whole wheat pasta with pecorino cheese and black pepper
Salad
German chocolate pudding dessert thing, actually from Germany
---
First, read some of Beckett's Watt while listening to Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 1, Op. 2, preferably the last movement. Youtube it (This is all right, This kid is wretched, but funny). So, you have an almost crude sense of humor here, repetition to excess. Op. 2's last movement, the endless barrage of eighth-note triplets, Beckett's endless permutations of every possible instance (which he will keep throughout his career). Conventional, but almost. Paragraph breaks where they make sense; cadences and repeat signs at the end of the very clear development--Beckett writes a clear "II," one of his few chapter headings (which seems more like a movement marker than a chapter marker) at the point of completion of development, Watt's entrance into Knott's servitude. It is even somewhat crude, but yet it doesn't seem to care. Actually, it's very crude, rhyming Watt with Knott with pot--at what point does the pot stop being a pot; at what point do the eighth-note triplets become the beat? We claim to be in 2:4, cut time, yet we hear nothing but triplets. Is it 6:8, then? Has the pot become something else?
Now listen to Beethoven's Appassionata Sonata No. 23, Op. 57 while watching your local theatre troupe perform Waiting for Godot. Delicate banter, arpeggios of a minor triad--ominous, but not crushing. Quick eighth-notes of things to come (specifically, the fifth symphony) in the bass. And bam, it breaks into pounding chords, juxtaposed with delicate lines. Minute 1:41 of the recording (when played with more melancholy, as I believe it should be) is, in itself the phrase "Nothing to be done." Yet, it still clings to a semblance of form, even as it continually rehashes the same phrases punctuated by silence.
This is the point at which Beethoven is coming to grips with his total deafness; it is also one of the first works which Beckett writes in French. He said he wanted to write in French so as to strip himself of all style, of all conventions of the English language. He could not have that hanging over his head, the whole past of the language--it must be new, it must be constructed based on no preconceptions. In the starkest sense, it must come from his head, not his heart. This theme, this motive of the Appassionata seems to go nowhere, it leads only to itself. It is melancholy; it is earnest.
Now (if you've made it this far) read Molloy while listening to Beethoven's Große Fuge (Op. 133). Better yet, try to find some of Beckett's later pieces for theatre (Breath, a 35 second pan over a trash heap, or Not I, a mouth in darkness). Not I is, itself, a Große Fuge, Große Fuge apparently meaning large joint, according to my computer's translation program. It is beyond earnest; it is truly nuts. It is beyond (my) words. It is Beethoven at his most deaf, Beckett rejecting not only English but well over 99%of the human form. It is manic, above all else, unsettled. There is a determination, however. They are not nihilists, after all. After the violins play unresolved lines, like a last lament, they just dig in, they get frustrated, more silence, more repetitions of this broken cadence, until it finally succeeds.
Beckett's closing of The Unnamable, his last extended work of prose, is the most cadence-like of any: "I can't go on, I'll go on."
Happy pancake tuesday.
The rest of the menu was:
Butternut squash and parsnip soup
Whole wheat pasta with pecorino cheese and black pepper
Salad
German chocolate pudding dessert thing, actually from Germany
---
First, read some of Beckett's Watt while listening to Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 1, Op. 2, preferably the last movement. Youtube it (This is all right, This kid is wretched, but funny). So, you have an almost crude sense of humor here, repetition to excess. Op. 2's last movement, the endless barrage of eighth-note triplets, Beckett's endless permutations of every possible instance (which he will keep throughout his career). Conventional, but almost. Paragraph breaks where they make sense; cadences and repeat signs at the end of the very clear development--Beckett writes a clear "II," one of his few chapter headings (which seems more like a movement marker than a chapter marker) at the point of completion of development, Watt's entrance into Knott's servitude. It is even somewhat crude, but yet it doesn't seem to care. Actually, it's very crude, rhyming Watt with Knott with pot--at what point does the pot stop being a pot; at what point do the eighth-note triplets become the beat? We claim to be in 2:4, cut time, yet we hear nothing but triplets. Is it 6:8, then? Has the pot become something else?
Now listen to Beethoven's Appassionata Sonata No. 23, Op. 57 while watching your local theatre troupe perform Waiting for Godot. Delicate banter, arpeggios of a minor triad--ominous, but not crushing. Quick eighth-notes of things to come (specifically, the fifth symphony) in the bass. And bam, it breaks into pounding chords, juxtaposed with delicate lines. Minute 1:41 of the recording (when played with more melancholy, as I believe it should be) is, in itself the phrase "Nothing to be done." Yet, it still clings to a semblance of form, even as it continually rehashes the same phrases punctuated by silence.
This is the point at which Beethoven is coming to grips with his total deafness; it is also one of the first works which Beckett writes in French. He said he wanted to write in French so as to strip himself of all style, of all conventions of the English language. He could not have that hanging over his head, the whole past of the language--it must be new, it must be constructed based on no preconceptions. In the starkest sense, it must come from his head, not his heart. This theme, this motive of the Appassionata seems to go nowhere, it leads only to itself. It is melancholy; it is earnest.
Now (if you've made it this far) read Molloy while listening to Beethoven's Große Fuge (Op. 133). Better yet, try to find some of Beckett's later pieces for theatre (Breath, a 35 second pan over a trash heap, or Not I, a mouth in darkness). Not I is, itself, a Große Fuge, Große Fuge apparently meaning large joint, according to my computer's translation program. It is beyond earnest; it is truly nuts. It is beyond (my) words. It is Beethoven at his most deaf, Beckett rejecting not only English but well over 99%of the human form. It is manic, above all else, unsettled. There is a determination, however. They are not nihilists, after all. After the violins play unresolved lines, like a last lament, they just dig in, they get frustrated, more silence, more repetitions of this broken cadence, until it finally succeeds.
Beckett's closing of The Unnamable, his last extended work of prose, is the most cadence-like of any: "I can't go on, I'll go on."
Happy pancake tuesday.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Der Platz ist verflucht!
One of the many phrases learned in my new program, Learning German Through Opera. Hopefully I'll run into a lot of conversations involving love and/or death. So, as Berg's Wozzeck throws his wife into the river, I'm just taking a break from reading Irish plays (also about love and/or death) to read the online libretto. I've never really listened to opera before, and I have to say that it gets stuck in your head a bit. There's more dialogue than I originally thought, and even the recitative (speak-singing) is almost just intoned talking. It's really kind of a disappointment; I was expecting uninterrupted atonal arias.
One of my favorite arias, Maria's (Wozzeck's wife, pre-drowning) first, where she sings "eia popeia," crops up again just after Wozzeck kills her on some scrambled ragtime-esque saloon piano riff. Genius. The Viennese are like the stoic grandpa: when he makes a joke, it's such a shock you're not sure whether to laugh.
Went to another new-music concert last night, this time a choral one. The choir moved around the audience, rearranging itself for each piece. It was in the chapel, so the pews were facing each other ("These Protestants must have straight backs") and the choir split itself up between the two sides, with half the choir on the furthest-back pew of each side. Kind of a cool effect, but it takes a special type of writing, which didn't always work out. You would need to sacrifice the traditional choral idea of blending and purity of sound for a distinctly individual performance; for the people in the back pews, there was always one person blasting into your ear. Some of them worked, some didn't. One that did was a German translation of the e.e. cummings poem
silence
.is
a
looking
bird:the
turn
ing;edge,of
life
(inquiry before snow
If you were wondering, the title means "This place is haunted!" said by Wozzeck at the start of Act I, Scene ii.
One of my favorite arias, Maria's (Wozzeck's wife, pre-drowning) first, where she sings "eia popeia," crops up again just after Wozzeck kills her on some scrambled ragtime-esque saloon piano riff. Genius. The Viennese are like the stoic grandpa: when he makes a joke, it's such a shock you're not sure whether to laugh.
Went to another new-music concert last night, this time a choral one. The choir moved around the audience, rearranging itself for each piece. It was in the chapel, so the pews were facing each other ("These Protestants must have straight backs") and the choir split itself up between the two sides, with half the choir on the furthest-back pew of each side. Kind of a cool effect, but it takes a special type of writing, which didn't always work out. You would need to sacrifice the traditional choral idea of blending and purity of sound for a distinctly individual performance; for the people in the back pews, there was always one person blasting into your ear. Some of them worked, some didn't. One that did was a German translation of the e.e. cummings poem
silence
.is
a
looking
bird:the
turn
ing;edge,of
life
(inquiry before snow
If you were wondering, the title means "This place is haunted!" said by Wozzeck at the start of Act I, Scene ii.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
For aspiring violinists, cellists, and electric guitarists
If you want to be the first to perform my newly written piece (written in the last three hours) "Movement for Electric Guitar Trio I," then the first Electric Guitar Trio (like a piano trio but with an electric guitar instead) that e-mails me gets the score, first performance rights are free. About 3-4', lots of glissandi, and it must be played with the guitar on your lap, slide in your left hand (if you're right-handed). Good luck.
Friday, January 25, 2008
The palm stands on the edge of space
Oh man. I mean, a solid minute of 5-against-4, just destroying the piano. One moment a delicate consonance, suspensions hanging in the air, then a fortissimo crashing dissonance.
It's true that I do a lot of composing on the computer, but that seems to be a last resort. If you write a poem on the computer, you edit it, you pare the lines, you seem to interrupt yourself mid-sentence with the delete key. But if you write it on paper, you get a series of parenthetical comments, cross-outs where you can still see the
word, lines circled and moved, stanzas displaced. I won't diminish the invention of the musical typewriter, (Finale 2007, Garritan Personal Orchestra edition) but the last thing I need is for someone to interrupt the music in my brain with poorly humanized piano samples.
So, the pieces of my compositions that I keep are invariably the parts that go down on paper, straight from my brain. Anything added in the computer stage is tenuous at best, drivel at worst. I just wrote out, by hand, the eight-measure (each measure repeated 2-4 times) piano interlude bringing us back from the B section (B D Eb F Gb A) to the A section (C Db F Gb Ab Bb). And when I put it into the computer, I didn't change a note.
Hear the bad computer synthesis: Piano Etude
It's true that I do a lot of composing on the computer, but that seems to be a last resort. If you write a poem on the computer, you edit it, you pare the lines, you seem to interrupt yourself mid-sentence with the delete key. But if you write it on paper, you get a series of parenthetical comments, cross-outs where you can still see the
word, lines circled and moved, stanzas displaced. I won't diminish the invention of the musical typewriter, (Finale 2007, Garritan Personal Orchestra edition) but the last thing I need is for someone to interrupt the music in my brain with poorly humanized piano samples.
So, the pieces of my compositions that I keep are invariably the parts that go down on paper, straight from my brain. Anything added in the computer stage is tenuous at best, drivel at worst. I just wrote out, by hand, the eight-measure (each measure repeated 2-4 times) piano interlude bringing us back from the B section (B D Eb F Gb A) to the A section (C Db F Gb Ab Bb). And when I put it into the computer, I didn't change a note.
Hear the bad computer synthesis: Piano Etude
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