Going to NYC

as a part of my plan to see five concerts in five days, I’m going to NYC tommorrow (whoah, actually today) and returning the next day. Two nights ago, I saw weird electronic music made with tweaked guitar pedals. Last night, I saw undergrads do a Fluxus concert. Tonight I saw a bunch of popish bands play at a club/house called Ecclectic. It was fun. I was unable to incite a mosh pit, however. Tommorrow night, something in NYC + checking out the gallery at the Kitchen and an installation in Times Square. Sunday, undergrad Tim Eastman’s thesis concert. My camera finally came, so pictures will be forthcoming.

After going through all my papers and not finding my w2 form, but stumbling on several wedding cards (arrrg), I went off to do some Deep Listening meditation. It was quite nice. I felt much calmer afterwards. and Buddhist House, the location we met at, is conviently located right next to a Dunkin Donuts. I’d never been in one before. They don’t actually have very many donuts. I was surprised.

Checklist

Yes, you feel gloomy today. (ok, maybe you don’t but pretend you do for a minute.) It’s a gloomy day. Maybe a day to go back to bed or to be grump or to cry or to yell at the dog. Let’s say. But first, let’s check a few things: When was the last time, dear one, that you ate anything? Have you had all the meals you should have by this time of day? Would a snack possibly be a good thing? When was the last time you ate anything with protien in it? When was the last time you ate a green vegetable? How long has it been since broccoli crossed your lips? When was the last time you injested a vitamin sort of thing of any kind? What about those omega-3s? Hrm? Been eating right?

Ok, so after a nice snack of broccoli, tofu and brown rice with hemp oil drizzled over it, still feeling blue? Well, what about sleeping? too little? too much? yo-yo-ing between too little and too much? Four hour nights followed by 12 hour nights is a bit bumpy. And what times have you been sleeping? 3:00 am – 11:00 am is eight hours, but it’s kind of weird hours. and you miss the morning sunshine, provided there exists some. Daylight waking is good for you. And when I sleep in the late morning, it’s not good, solid sleep. it’s more like napping. or what if you’re going to sleep, waking at a normal time and then turning off your alarm and sleeping until the afternoon? Oh, it’s thursday. no class! i’ll just nod off for a minute. oh my god, it’s 2:00! Not good. Maybe schedule things in the morning?
Ok, eating right, sleeping right, still grumpy? Maybe you should leave the house! When is the last tiem you had a social encounter with another human? Invite somebody to have dinner with you (at least you know you’ll be awake by then).
And when I say “you,” I of course, mean “me.”
I had dinner with Angela last night. She does not read my blog. I was kind of grumpy at the begining of the evening. Spent a lot of yesterday afternoon on taxes. Going through financial paperwork looking for tax stuff is stressful. And I can’t find some of it! But what’s the worst that could happen? I would have to file an extension. Thinking Wtwtch is very helpful. Ok, so I was still stressed and just got out of many hours of class and sleeping oddly. And I said, “I’m thinking about getting on porzac.” And she said, “wait until a sunny day to make that descision.” ok, so i’m obviously solar powered. But then I had tofu with mixed vegeatbles and some ice cream and felt happier, so there’s something to consider there. figure out what makes me happy and do a bit of it every day.
I’ve been thinking about priorities lately, because my number one priority has sort of left my life, so what’s important now? And I’ve been putting school/career first, even though that doesn’t seem quite right. Shouldn’t people come before career? But if that’s true, what the heck am I doing in Connecticut so far away from my people? And so I think having a heirarchial list might be the wrong way to go about it. Follow my goals, but do a bit of what makes me happy every day. If it’s so stupidly obvious, why did I have to go through the trouble of figuring it out? Everything is so blindingly obvious once I blog it.

I am ready for winter to be over

Yes, I am technically experiencing what New Englanders describe as “spring,” but to my Bay Area self, this is winter. fall was winter and winter was winter on steroids. It is still bleak out. Yesterday, there were snow flurries as I walked to class. Today, it’s rainging and cold. I guess I should feel happy that it’s not freezing rain. I’m going to go back to wearing thermal underwear, since the warmth of last week was clearly a fluke.

the trees are still baren. Only the grass and the evergreens are green. Everything is brown and dead. No flowers bloom. Few birds sing. A few trees are thinking about waking up, but there are almost no visible buds. It’s a replaying of the desolation of fall, but in reverse. And it’s still desolate.
Let’s emphasize some words: bleak, barren, desolate, cold.
And it is now quite clear that the weather and my mood are strongly linked (one is like a barometer for the other… ha ha ha). Is this like a normal thing?
To do:

  • find tax paper work and mail it to tax guy. (deadline ASAP)… ack i lost my w2 form…
  • modify symphony movement to fit requirements for American Composers Forum content, print it, put it in the mail. (postmark deadline tomorrow)
  • write short paper about Joan of Arc, binary oppositions and the male gaze (due next wednesday).
  • Write one other short paper of undecided topic (also due wednesday).
  • Ask advisor for resume advice, figure out where to send resume, send it off (asap).
  • do paperwork for out of department course (should have done this weeks ago)
  • installation idea for first weekend of may symposium (due?)

And all I want to work on is the ultimate pop song generator…. by which i mean, it’s an idea that i can’t escape. i thinking baout how to do drum patters for Urban Hipster, and I end up thinking about the logics behind the creation of drum patterns and how you might be able to tell a computer to modify a pattern based on song intensity levels or to develop it’s own patterns or what the rules are for drum patterns in different genres and how to represent those grammers…. i’m going to go write a giant drum object thingee while sitting on the radiator and ignoring my giant box of paperwork which contains tax stuff and my readers and umm… not the symphony deadline, cuz i already wrote the dern thing….

update

Ok, I’m not sending in the score. Why? Well, apparently I need a letter of reference and it’s way too late to ask. (curses for not paying attention to this earlier) and also, it’s a week long program in October of next year, not just a reading. On the one hand: awesome. On the other hand: I’ve already got a music program that i’ll be attending on October. Anyway, the Wesleyan Orchestra will be reading it in April, so it will still get a performance. And then I can modify it based on hearing it, which will make it better if I decide to submit it to a contest later. And mostly, I’m flaky for not paying attention to the requirements until the day before it’s due…. But I’ve sent tapes and scores and whatnot to a bunch of these contests and so far all I’ve gotten out of it is the joy of helping support the US Postal Service.

i’ve already been awake for 12 hours

I got up at 5:30 this morning (before some of you west-coasters went to sleep, i’m sure) to give David ride to the airport bright and early this morning. Met him at 6:00 AM. I am not a morning person. David is nifty, though. And I have bad airport karma. At the end of spring break Ellen woke up at 4:00 to give me a lift so I could get back to school. I think I also still have bad moving karma, although I’ve helped so many folks move, I may have worked it off by now. I think that and then I remember Lisa Peña standing with me at the bottom of some stairs with a refrigerator. the stairs were outdoors and kind of steep and painted cement (bright purple, in fact) and all slippery. And it was pouring rain and the gutter was jammed, so all the water from the roof, whose overhang ended exactly in the middle of of the stairs, was running down onto us and onto the fridge, and from there on to us. Think of all the water from the 6 foot wide by however many feet long section of the roof running down the fridge on to us, while we struggled to hoist a refrigerator into the lovely second-floor Casaninja 2. Ah, Casaninja 2, where we had decided to settle forever…. until midway through painting it, the landlord told us that it was for sale. Best laid plans, etc…

So I’ve been drinking coffee! and tea! to stay awake! I was the smartest person on earth and was going to write a bunch of proofs about the fibbonacci series (what a nutty series it is), but it’s wearing off, and now I might just nap or write a paper. zzzzzzz
Saw presentation today by a composer named John McGuire. He’s pretty cool. He talked about the fibonnacci series, which he used for a piece he played a tape of called A Cappella. the piece is lovely.
I’ve been asked about the melody for my latest musical endeavor. There exists a recording of me improvising lyrics. Jess has it. I’ll post mp3 when she passes it along. *hint*

automation

I’ve long had an ambition to write a program that would just make music for me, so I could just press go and it would make tunes. I could teach it a few pop genres and then run it a whole bunch of times and just pick some good outputs until i had an album’s worth. Better yet would be to teach it somehow to evaluate the output. Somebody (a record company or something) actually has a program that will do this. So I could just feed my tunes into the pop analyzer, pick all of them with a high enough score and have instant hits. Even better would be to incorporate a neural net sort of design into the generator, so it could learn from the appraiser and create more consistently catchy music.

Well, I now have a little program that creates avant-happy tunes [listen] (when i said “pop”, Aaron encouraged me to re-evaluate the pop genre…) and it repeats rhythms, but it has a different melody everytime. And it’s kind of catchy, I think.
so…. now what? it’s always kind of the same song. I guess I could generalize it, so the rhythms would change with every run too. But… somehow it’s not as satisfying as i thought it would be. I guess it would make good video game music, since then it would get run over and over again and the repeating non-sameness of it would be interesting.
What would I do with myself once I had written the uber-music generator and it said everything I had to say?

Springtime!

When people’s thoughts turn to cheesy pop songs! As heard in my shower this morning:

Urban Hipster

[intro]
lemme show you a picture of the girl i like
black and white photo
she’s the one on the right

Lemme tell you about the girl i like
urban hipster keeps me up at night

[verse 1]
really pretty with curly hair
she wears t shirts with funny slogans

little glasses, converse shoes
she’s the coolest thing in oakland

[refrain]
she’s a little bit younger and hipper than me
she gets pop culture cuz she watches tv
[repeat]
[verse 2]
Urban hipster in a miniskirt
I want to get to know her better

Urban hipster in a miniskirt
she’ll steal my heart if i let her

slow learner

There’s an episode of the Simpsons where Lisa places an electrified donut someplace in the house and tracks how long it takes Homerto learn not to touch the donut. “mmmmm donut…. ouch!” “mmmmm donut… ouch!” “mmmmmm donut …. ouch!” of course, the joke is that he never learns.

So it is with me and recreational alchohol consumption this year. Note to self: stop after second beer. too skinny for third beer. third beer will make me act stoopid.

fun filled friday

So I went to buy tickets to see Aaron play percussion in a dance recital, but it was sold out. Alas. But when I talked to Aaron, he told me he could get me in as his roadie. So I sat and chatted with him and Charlie and Angela before they went on. Topic: Belle and Sebastian. Are they excusable? Are they good makeout music? What is good makeout music? I mostly spectated as I really have no clue about Belle and Sebastian. I’m not sure about good makeout music, but it might be an interesting summer project. (ummm.. to produce some, I mean…. although further research is requied) Do Gen Y types really make out to Marvin Gaye?
The trio was really excellent. I’d never heard Angela play clarinet before. She has a beautiful tone. The piece was lovely. Charlie composed it. His pieces that I’ve heard all have a nice thoughtfulness and an asthetic sensibility that’s just right, not heavy handed at all. He allows beauty to emerge.
Since I just watched the one piece, we got out of the recital pretty early and Angela and I decided to go to a dance called the Girl Twirl (I kid you not) at the harbor park. It’s a women’s dance party.
Consequences of high self-esteem: I really like dancing and I don’t need to be drunk to do it. Of course, drinking is fun! So we danced for quite a while. I requested Baby Got Back by Sir Mix-a-lot, one of the finest pop songs from the 90’s. This time, I didn’t talk to strangers, but that’s ok.
Fortunately, it was completely warm out and we were able to walk to and from Girl Twirling, which was good cuz I went ahead and drank beer number 3. I’m lucky I didn’t fall off the ladder to my bunk bed when I got home.
The beautiful bleakness and desolation of grad school is such that people expect you to occassionally drink to excess. So much the more so if you have recently experienced woes in love, which is so dern common it should be in those “so you want to go to grad school books.”

So You Want to Go to Grad School?

You have a surplus or life savings, or you think you can survive on the piteously meager stipend, or the economy is bad and your parents are generous and the economic sacrfices seem reasonable, or heck, an improvement over your current statis. Well, say goodbye to your girlfriend, becuase even if the stays with you (give it less than 50% odds), you’re not going to have a lot of time for her. And say goodbye to all those hours of sleep you’re used to. Say goodbye to your pre-existing social life. You’ll have time for that on breaks, if you can afford to get home. Used to living in a clean house? Forget it. It’s not compatible with your current situation, unless you pay too much for campus housing and then they’ll send somebody around periodically to make an attempt at cleaning your kitchen, in which, by the way, very few green things will reside… assuming by “green things” we mean things that started out as green. Look in that fridge. What do you see? spots of mold. beer. good, maybe it’s time to go to the store. after class. and rehersal. and doing some reading for tommorrow. don’t worry, you’ll have time to clean at the end of the semester when you’re also trying to pack to leave. You do have time, however, for intense personal crisises, inner turmoil and angst. Make sure to pick a school which offeres mental health services included with tuition. you’ll need it.
why would you want to do this? Do you love your subject? Really love your subject? Do you want to dedicate years of your life to living in semi-monastic cloistered conditions just to focus on your subject? (this isn’t like your undergrad.) Are you willing to endure mortification fo the flesh and the spirit in the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom? turn to page 2 for preparing for the GREs.

I love grad school. No really. What should I work on first? Should I read Foucault? Should I read the Boulez-Cage correspondences? Should I write a second movement for my symphony? Should I finish my song in progress? Should I record some analog noise? Should I write lyrics for my “Urban Hipster” song? Should I start my string quartet? Should I work on an installation for the May symposium? In what lovely way should I consume myslef? I mean, as soon as this hangover wears off.

Resume Draft

Celeste Hutchins
(860) 301-2508
celesteh@casaninja.com
www.berkeleynoise.com/celesteh

Objective:

Summer internship doing audio programming, sound engineering or sound design

Education:

Mills College B.A. May 1998
Majors: Computer Science and Electronic Music
Wesleyan University MA in Music Composition anticipated May 2005

Skills:

Languages: Java, C/C++, SuperCollider, MAX/MSP, Perl, CGI scripting, HTML
Operating Systems: OSX, Linux, Solaris, MacOS, IRIX
Programs: Pro Tools, Digital Performer

Experience:

Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT
TA August 2003 – Present

  • Teach workshops in using Digital Performer and sound recording

Java Just Intonation Calculator
http://jjicalc.sourceforge.net/
Lead Programmer Spring 2002 – Present

  • Took over the abandoned open source Just Intonation Calculator
  • Added support for multiple file formats

Other Minds, San Francisco, CA
Volunteer Sound Engineer 2002-2003

  • Edited sounds for the web

AOL/Netscape, Mountain View, CA
AOL Online Music
Product Manager October 2000 – February 2001

  • Product design
  • Wrote PRDs
  • Researched webcast technology

Open Directory Project
Software Engineer February 1999 – October 2000

  • Wrote web-based tools for editors in perl
  • Apache Server configuration
  • Processed and pushed RDF and search data to http://search.netscape.com

Isadra Inc., Palo Alto, CA
Software Engineer August 1998 – February 1999

  • Java Servlet programming for JavaWebServer
  • Finding and fixing software bugs
  • Set up intranet

Whole Bean Software, Oakland, CA

Founder December 1996 – October 1997

  • Attempted to start a software company to produce a real time java chat application for the web.

Multimedia Resources Inc.,
Portland, OR
Intern
May – August 1996

  • Wrote Java applets
  • Wrote CGI Scripts in Perl / server parsed HTML

Tetherless Access Limited,
Sunnyvale, CA
Intern
May – August 1995

  • Tested / fixed software for wireless routers
  • Implemented new features for the wireless router software
  • Documented router software and networking

Mills College Information Technical Services,
Oakland, CA
Student Worker
August 1994 – November 1996

  • Maintained subnets of NeXT machines and Macintoshes
  • System administration including user support
  • HTML Authoring and user documentation

Informal Experience:

  • Electronic musician with a home recording studio
  • Belong to a co-location coop, where members share root responsibilities and keep the server up
  • Run and program for a MOO (similar to a MUD but object oriented)

Does anyone care about my internships in 1995 anymore or should i cut those? any feedback?

still more faq

see questions 1 – 2 and 3 – 8

  1. How was your break?
    Cathartic.
  2. Is that good?
    yes.
  3. How’s school? How do you like Wesleyan?
    School is cool.
    Teachers are great. classes are useful. i’m writing a lot of music.
  4. what are you going to do after you graduate?
    Um… I dunno. I might do the german exachange program. I think I will. After that, I dunno. Look for a teaching job? Get a PhD? Go back to work for the computer industry?
  5. What Cds did you order?
    Movement By: Gossip
    Geogaddi
    By: Boards of Canada
    Fever To Tell
    By: Yeah Yeah Yeahs
    Amnesiac
    By: Radiohead
    Hail To The Thief
    By: Radiohead
    Draft 7.30
    By: Autechre
    Additional records will have to wait until I get to Amoeba where I can buy them used for cheeper.
  6. What times can I call you?
    10 am to midnight eastern standard time. If you know i’m awake after midnight, cuz i’m responding to email or something, you can call me later.