Tag: music

Bummed

I spent four hours today in the mandatory graduate pedagogy session. We learned not to humiliate students and that people have visible or invisible identities blah blah blah. Four hours. It ws a beautiful day outside. I could see it through the windows. Some people are planning on going to NYC tommorrow, but I wasn’t planning on going. But I probably should . . .
Because it seems like I’m the only dyke grad student in the entire damn school.
People here just aren’t very out. I saw somebody wearing a queer awareness day T shirt, but it was a boy. Het people sometimes want to tell me they’re ok with gay folks, so they tell me about a lesbian that they met at a confrence once. Great. this doesn’t help. But it’s better than the people who find out and then stop talking to me. Which has happened at parties here.

Conversations

God

Other Grad Student: (more or less out of the blue) But even if you don’t beleive in gravity, it still exists.
me: It’s a quantifiable phenomenon
OGS: even if you don’t believe in Jesus, He still rose from the dead.

Later, with same student

Other Other Grad Student From the Sticks: (after passing some people) It’s hard for me to get used to not saying “hi” to people.
me: Then just say hi. It’s a small town.
OGS: those weren’t the sort of people you say hi to.
OOGSFS: Why not?
OGS: Because they’re loitering by a tunnel that smells like urine.
me & OOGSFS: Maybe they want a private place to talk. Hanging out doesn’t mean they’re bad people and you shouldn’t say hi to them
OGS: I’m sure they’re lovely people. Let’s go say hi to them. Maybe we can have them over for dinner
Did I mention they were also people of color? Is it classism? Is it racism? Is it both? why didn’t I remind her that Jesus wants us to love everyone?

with friends like these

So let’s say I’m too confrontation-adverse to do anything but let it drop. Let’s say that as an isolated queer I’m ok, but if I write “dyke power” in chalk on a campus sidewalk, she purses her lips. Let’s say that I really have a massive friend shortage. Let’s say that the only evidence that I have that there are other lesbians over 22 in Middletown is that I found a Naiad Press book at the library sale today. Let’s say that I’m bummed.
Everytime I see an undergrad with blue hair or a mohawk, I have hair envy. But I’m a grad student. If I come across now as serious and studious, that will be the reputation that I have for the next two years. All the evaluations and grades I get will be colored by the image I present during the first six weeks to first semester I spend here. If I want to go on in academia (which I’m not at all sure about, but it is a possible career path), I’m not sure it would be best if all the perceptions of me were Punky Color Blue.

Famous Composer Anecdote

We had the first Colloqium last week. All the faculty introduced themselves. anthony Braxton gave a little speech wich I wish I had a transcription of. He talked about how these were interesting times and like the 1960’s and how he lived in the music house in the 1960s and people not in the music house need to get organized, not just in happy theory, but also in the physical plane. And it’s an exciting time because of all the things that people in the music house could do to get active. He’s looking forward to getting to know all of us better. He went on. I felt inspired. How can we, as musicians, get active to counter imperialism (and other isms…)?
I’m not sure that all the other grad students were equally inspired, but Angela was, which is good, because she lives in the music house, now known as India House.
So how do we get active now on the physical plane? that means, to me, not just talking about “peace through music” in a happy theory, but actually using music to create a utopian model or as propoganda to communicate the meme of peacefulness. something like Rock for Peace is an obvious answer. Also, one could write peace hymns, like Down by the Riverside, that large groups of people can sing in demonstrations. Activist marching bands, like the BLO, are another answer and one that works well with peace hymns. One could write a choral piece or an opera which featured a struggle against imperialsm (like Joan of Arc, for example). Or, as the latest rounds of state based violence have a definte influence of religious-based hatred (was in Anne Coulter who said that we should invade the entire Middle East and make them all convert to Christianity?), one could strive to create rituals replacing functions currently filled by religious institutuions. Secular funeral services and hymns. Secular naming (“christening”) ceremonies. Secular weddings. Secular regular meetings to build community, listen to speakers and sing hymns. the sorts of music one might write for these secular functions may also be good practice if one were later planning on writing an opera.
I have a plan. Now I just need friends and a community.
(Just cuz you believe in Jesus doesn’t mean that xtainity isn’t a death cult that venerates images of turture and torture implements.)

Moving on Out

Other Minds’ Newest Board Member

Last Tuesday, I was elected to the board of Otherminds. I was asked to speak about myself and had no idea of what to say. I knew that I would have to, but when asked, my mind went blank. Things that I could have mentioned and didn’t were numerous. Despite being in the presence of the founder of the Just Intonation Network, I did not mention my membership nor my work on the Java Just Intionation Calculator. Nor did I talk intellgiently about the music I write. But I did talk about the history of the tuba and related brass instruments. I guess Charles must have said good things about me. anyway, it’s clear that I’m going to have to write a spiel and memorize it. I’ll need to have different versions of it depending on how long I need to speak.
Afterwards, Carl Stone showed up and he, Charles and Jim Newman were going to go out to dinner. Christi and I were waiting around to go to dinner with Mitch, so we all ended up going together to a Tapas place at 16th and Guerro where Carl Stone’s cousin’s husband is the head chef. This translated into free desserts. Charles once again impressed upon me the need to write down witty things that people say and to keep a diary so later when someone asks about what composers that I’ve met (because they are wirtting the difinite biography of witty things said by a particular famous composer), I’ll be able to regale them with facinating stories about going to restaurants after board meetings. With that in mind, it was a delightful evening. Carl Stone is very charming. I had met him once before at Charles’ Christimas or New Years party and he remembered me from then. He’s been teaching in Japan. He was talking about how terrible meetings there were, but as he cannot read or write Japanese, most of it went over his head and he spent his time in meetings by responding to email. He said they spent over an hour on one occasion discussing the locations of ashtrays around one of the buildings.
The food was great and sufficient vegan-ized things were available. It was nice to get a last visit with Mitch. after dinner, I hopped on Bart to go stay at Polly’s house. “Naiomi” also arrived. (Name changed for reasons that will become clearer as the story progesses.)

she said, “let’s go to Vegas, man

The next morning, we got the rental van and drove it back to Polly’s house. Actually, Naomi drove it. We weren’t in a hurry, but she drove as if we were. She was a terrifying driver. I swear she alomst rolled the van. Well, I dunno how hard something has to pull to the side before it actually rolls, but it was the most sideways force I’ve yet experienced. “Oh, it doesn’t corner well.” she said. As she was driving in the fast lane down the freeway at highspeeds, she was about five feet behind the car in front of her. “Oh it doesn’t break well.” she said. We got mightily lost, but finally arrived to load the gear and set off for Vegas, and, thankfully, Polly drove the whole way.
It was my first time seeing the Mojave desert. It’s got big basins surrounded by hills. Really big, crater-like basins. And darn, is it hot! It’s hot all the way to Vegas. Really darn hot. We got to the Vegas strip just as the sun was setting. In case you have never been there (and this was my first time), It’s not nearly as glamorous as the movies make it to be. At least the end I was on was not as glamorous. I think “glamorous” means “a lot of lightbulbs.” We were staying at the Rivera Hotel. The bellhop cmae to help us with our gear and started dropping everything. Polly made a wild grab and caught her mixer as it tumbled towards the pavement. We clustered nervously around the lacsidasical belhop, on the ready in case he dropped anything else. After he left, I anxiously called Christi and asked her to repack all the boxes of dishes that I had just packed. Polly came and introduced me to Robert Dick. We chatted for a few minutes and then they went to catch up. Naiomi and I decided to go to Circus Circus. I know of this casino because of the movie Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas. In the movie, the lead charecter takes acid and then sits at a Merry-go-round themed bar while surrealist, scary clowns lurk menacingly. We found the rotating, merry go round bar, but there was nothing menacing about any part of the casino. It was crawling with children who were excitedly playing midway games. I was slightly disappointed. Vegas seems to be like american culture concentrate. Add water and you get a strip mall. they did have a short free show have fantastically talented jump rope acrobats. Naiomi dumped several quarters into the slot machines. She won all of the first several games that she played. Then she wanted to buy stuff, so we went to several gift shops. Then I was tired, so I went to bed, but we stayed up talking far later than I anticipated.
Naiomi and I slept late the next morning, although Polly got up when the clock radio, set by the previous occupant, went off at 7:00. Christi called and said that I could have Tiffany’s Bjork ticket if I could get back in time. Bjork was playing on Friday night in San Francisco. I hadn’t bought my own ticket because I was supossed to drive the van home that day and didn’t think I could make it in time and didn’t think I could make it in time. But the offer was tempting, so I approached Naomi and asked if she would be willing to leave early and drop me and my gear off in Berkeley and take the van and Polly’s gear south by heself. (Polly was planning on staying for the rest of the convention to network with flutists and try to get gigs based on our show.) As Naiomi lives in the city, I figured she would have an easy time getting back via BART. She became very excited and called someone to find out if there will still tickets to Bjork available, so she could go to the show too. She wondered if we could leave extra early. I said that 8:00 would be a good time to set out and added that I thought we could come back faster if we went throught Yosemite rather than Bakersfield. I called Christi and found out that Bakersfield really was the fastest route. Naiomi wanted to leave earlier, maybe 6:00 AM, maybe right after the show and we could drive all night? I said no, since I was anticipating staying upp all night friday night packing. I need as much sleep as I can while in Vegas. I could sleep while she drove? No, I can’t sleep in cars. She was getting agitated, wanting to leave earlier and perhaps drive as fast as possible. I was becoming increasingly concerned about becoming a traffic fatality statistic, since her driving was irratic when she wasn’t in a hurry. I told Polly about Naiomi’s driving. We had been planning on adding my name to the rental car contract anyway (they would only allow two drivers when we got the car, and I won at rock paper scissors), so we looked up the location of the closest office for our rental agency. It was only a mile and a half down the strip, so we had the very bright idea of walking. It was 3:00 in the afternoon and the heat seemed to be at least 105 F, perhaps higher. I was dying by the time we got to the parking lot to get the paperwork, but I’m on a mission to combat my whinyness and did not contest the plan to walk. Clearly, it seems, there are times when being whiny is essential.
We walked more than a mile and a half in 45 minutes in the scortching midday heat. Only mad dogs, englishmen and stupid tourists… There are vending machines on the strip that sell water for a dollar a bottle. It’s a racket. They could charge $10 a bottle. We stopped at drug store on the way and I bought cold chocolate almond milk (vegan food in vegas? arg! I was hungry hungry. All I could find for lunch was “chinese” food: boiled cabbage in sauce). We got to the car office and collapsed. We rode the bus back to the hotel. I felt like I might loose all my almond milk. We were all dizzy and sick. I stuck my head in the bathtub and ran cold water on it and then conked out for a nap and then woke and drank a lot of water. Naiomi went out, while I napped and put a lot of money into slot machines and other games of chance. She came back later and was feeling extremely ill. She was trying to “win back” the $50 she lost on her previous Vegas trip. At some point, we had a conversation about how gaming is regulated. She was surprised to hear that the amount of money the casino gets to keep and has to give away in prizes is set by state law. The odds are titled in the favor of casinos, it is not random. The slots by the door really do win more often. Seriously.
Finally, after we had all recovered, it was time for our sound check. Will, Polly’s brother, was running our sound for us. He’s an actor and is perfectly and completely charming. The hotel’s sound guy did not understand how we were going to set up. I talked to him for several minutes but was unable to convey any meaning. Will explained that it was ok and started running cables. He set things up in the only way that the sound guy said would work. The drums were way too low in the monitors. I had several ideas about how they could be raised, but this was the only was it would work. We played a few songs and souldn’t hear the drums when suddenly Will had an idea about how to raise the drum level. Later, Will told me that he knew how to have a seperate monitor mix all along, but there’s a certain way that union sound guys must be approached about sound. First, they must be befriended. Polly’s idea of using her brother for sound was perfectly brilliant.
We hung around waiting for our time to go on, while Naiomi pushed me to consider leaving earlier to get the Bjork show and I became pretty certain that a traffic accident was in my future. Naiomi had a pink mohawk, which strangers would comment on. Of course, making comments to strangers about their hair is rude, even if it’s as benign as telling her that she should spike it up instead of letting it lie flat. She had confessed to me that she wanted to punch people who made comments. In my past, I had a blue mohawk and when I had it, many, many peple commented on it. People would regularly tell me to spike it up or ask how it got to be blue and generally wanted to ask questions about it. Such is life when one has a mohawk. Naiomi just got angry. She also became extremely angry when the elevator stopped for someone on the way down and the guy got on a different elevator that also stopped. “That asshole stopped our elevator and didn’t even get on it, he got on that other one first.” I suggested that it might not be his fault and perhaps it was the fault of the hotel for summoning multiple elevators on a single button push. “You think so?” she asked, quite seriously and still angry at the hapless elevator traveller.
anyway, while we were waiting to go on, the opnening act was becoming alarmed since it was time for him to go on and his bassist had not yet arrived. since folks at home keep telling me what a great bassist I am, I told the guy that I could fill in, especially if he had charts that I could read. Thank goodness that his bassist arrived. That guy was one of the finest bassists that I’ve ever heard. He was playing a five string Carvin bass with a fantastic tone. Since the band had never played togteher before, the flutist would play the bassline to him once at the start of the song and the bassist would play it perfectly, as funky as you’ve ever heard, occassionaly making appropriate and highly funky fills. In nearly every song, he also improvised extremely textured and intricate bass solos. In one of them, we was simultaneously playing an improvised bassline and tapping out a solo on the high strings. It was synchopated and perfectly in time. That is what a great bassist can do. And that guy was just another Vegas bassist, once of hundreds if not thousands of bassist in this country who make a living just playing gigs as needed or as a studio musician. The world is crawling with highly proficient, professional and completely musical bassists, of which I am not one. Not that I don’t appreciate compliments. I must not beleive my own hype.
So I spent the whole first act comparing myself to the amazing bassist and consequently, when I got on stage, I was terrified of screwing up. I normally get stage fright. My heart beats fast. My palms sweat. I act foolishly before I go on. When I play with Tennis Roberts, I calm down as soon as it becomes clear that a train wreck is not going to destory us. However, Polly had a much larger audience and I psyched myself out more than usual. I thought I must have looked terrified through the first several songs. It didn’t help that Naiomi was playing guitar very tentatively and came in late several times. She ended one song many bars too early and, of course, the drum track kept going. I felt like we were in danger of slipping from the beat. Normally, it is the repsoncibility of the bassist to keep the beat together (so says Bass Player Magazine), but it is doubly so when the drum are pre-set. Anyway, as a consequence of being highly fearful, I was also highly focussed. I knew exactly where I was in every song and exactly where the beat was to a degree that I don’t normally in practice. I realized that I was playing very solidly. I was on FIRE! And as I became confident, the break came and Polly did some solo pieces without backup and I got nervous all over again and was definitely not on fire during the second half. As the show went on, I felt like my playing was getting weaker, but it was getting later and later. We didn’t start until almost midnight, so by the time I was on the wrong beat on the last song, there were only five people in the audience. If I’m going to screw up, I’m going to do so as confidently as possible in front of only a few people. I tried to look as if the one was not ususally on the one.
afterwards, the few remaining folks, who were all friends of Polly’s talked to us and when I said that I had been pretty much terrified the entire time and been off-beat on the last song, they said that I looked “cool as a cucumber” and that it had all sounded very solid. And it was easy to tell at the start of the show that the audience was loving it (at the end of the show it was very late and everyone had gone to bed). Several people were chair dancing. There was cheering when Polly announced that she was going to play a Dead Can Dance cover. Polly was definitely on fire. She had a great stage presence throughout. The folks watching soaked up every naunce and would go anywhere that Polly lead them. she was completely fabulous.
Polly’s mother, Polly, Robert Dick, Naiomi and I went to get beers afterwards. Robert is extremely friendly and it was very nice to get to talk to him. He told me to say to Ron Kuivilla and Alvin Lucier from him. Polly’s mother is also very charming. She was extremely proud of Polly’s performance. She is really sweet. Finally, we went to go to sleep. At 3:00 AM, I was sleeping sitting up, leaning over my gear, waiting for my turn to use the bathroom. Polly went back out to do more partying and just Naiomi and I were left in the hotel room. She was setting the alarm to off earlier than our agreed-upon time. I said, “Naiomi, there’s no way I’m going to be able to get up before 8:00 tommorrow morning. I’ve got too much stuff to do this weekend. I’m moving and stuff. I’m really sorry, but this is why I didn’t buy my own ticket to the concert.” I then passed out as I said “goodnight.”
Naiomi did not say anything. She did not turn out the light. As far as I know, she didn’t move. I felt tingling at the back of my neck and finally turned to look at her. she was glaring at me with narrowed eyes and a bitter rage. She said that she wanted to leave at our agreed-upon time. I had been thinking about our schedule and had realized that there was no way we could get to an 7:00 PM concert in San Francisco if we left Vegas at 8:30 AM. There was likely to be traffic at both ends and we had to unload the gear in Berkeley and Burlingame and then return the van to the San Jose airport. I could clearly picture the trip. I would be driving, refusing to give up the drivers seat while Naiomi angrily urged me to go faster and constantly offering to drive and finally demanding that she should drive, which I could not let her do or I would end up rolled over on the side of the road. I could also picture the return trip if we left later. It would be exactly the same except she would be bitter towards me from the start. Maybe we would ride in silence the entire way. I was already counting the hours until I never had to see her again and it looked the last hours were going to be very long. So I declined leaving at the earlier time and said goodnight again and fell back asleep.
The light still did not go out. I was exhausted. The day had not been relaxing. I had heat stroke and then I had been in the grips of stage fright for more than an hour long show. It was a whole lot later than I normally go to sleep. Maybe a minute later, maybe and hour, maybe a second (certainly after I had again faded from consciousness), she yelled, “I just don’t see why we can’t leave now and you can sleep in the car!” It’s hard sleeping when one is convinced that one is about to be horribly maimed in a car wreck, even if one is already completely exhausted. And regardless, I’ve never been able to sleep in a car. (This conversation, btw, is recorded here very near verbatim)
“Naiomi, we’re not dating. Please don’t wake me up to yell at me. I can’t sleep in cars. goodnight.”
“Why can’t you?”
“Alas, I’ve never been able to. Perhaps it is an as yet untreatable physiological condition. goodnight.”
“I’ve always wanted to see Bjork and I might never again get a chnce to see her in my whole life!”
“It’s highly probable that she will survive this tour and decide to emabrk upon another one during which time you would likely be presented with an oppotrunity to see her.” I gave up on the ending goodnights as a good night was seeming to be an increasingly remote possibility.
“She’s a huge influence of mine . . .” she started into a speech which I don’t recall (and probably tuned out at the time) about how it was imperative that she go to see Bjork.
I pointed out that she had not known about the concert until I had told her about it. She argued further, hoping to wear me down rather than convince me, I think, since she was too threatening to be convicing.
“This is not my problem. Parhaps you can take a cab.” I was not going to give up.
“You can’t take a cab to the City from here, but You could fly!” she exclaimed, siezing upon a possible solution.
I considered it. Travelling seperately had never looked so attractive. I would get back much earlier, have time to do more packing, get to see the concert, etc. But how would I get my gear back? And moving expenses alone were going to hit my credit card pretty hard. And I was not going to give up. “Alas, it’s not in my budget. Perhaps you could fly”
“Well, it’s not in my budget either!” she yelled quite angrily. I think that around then she stomped out.
I lay in bed with wide open eyes and my heart racing from tremendous amounts of adrenaline. Her bitter rage plus dregs of stage fright anxiety made for a very powerful fight or flight responce. I began imagining the things that she was plotting to do to get revenge. “Fly!” my instincts ordered. But where could I go? The casinos would be open all night, but to be in there, I would have to be awake, and this entire conflict revolved around whether or not I was willing to stay awake all night. I still needed to get whatever sleep that I could if I was going to be prepared for the mvoers coming on Saturday. Tracking down Polly also seemed like a bad idea. She had her cell phone, but I doubted that she wanted to hear about squabbling in her rythm section. And due to her boy craziness and the late hour, I figured that I would probably not see her again until morning. Anyway, I was being unreasonable. Naiomi wouldn’t strike out in revenge. True, she had said she wanted to assualt someone for stopping our elevator, but . . . uh . . .. I was in the grips of creeping paranoia.
A while later she came back in. I feigned sleep, but knew extactly where she was at every moment. She started digging through a drawer. I looked up. “What are you up to?” I asked.
“I’m going to see about getting a flight,” she said holding her cell phone. She no longer looked murderous, but merely the kind of very annoyed that I had expected from trying to change our plans.
This was a wonderful idea! “Continental has a hub here. you can get up to 70% off last minute flights from them,” I told her. She brightened and returned to her normal state and thanked me genuinely and gratefully and left again to make calls.
And I lay in bed wide awake, still considering revenge schemes she might launch upon me. She came back in later and started packing up stuff. I pretended to be alseep. What if she was stealing all my stuff? My run-away paranoia promted. That would be ok, I reasoned and stayed still. she came back two or three more times, waking me one of them to ask where the rental van keys were. Still paranoid, way beyond reason as she had completely calmed down and was acting normally and anyway had never threatened me, I wondered if she might be planning on taking the rental van. That would also be ok. Finally, around 5:00 AM, she left a perfectly friendly note to Polly and I explained that she had all her stuff and wishing us good trips home.
5:00 AM, coincidentally, is about the time that people start waking up to take showers. The pipes started making loud pipe noises, which I could not identify. I had not yet slept. I wondered if one of the flute convention attendees was fighting insomnia by practicing long tones on a newly purchased bass flute. I wondered if Naiomi had somehow sabotaged the bathroom. I wondered if I was a big loser for getting in a giant argument defending my desire to sleep, only to have it result in my getting no sleep whatsoever.
Polly came back around 7:00 and started quizically looking around for Naiomi. I sat up and explained what had happened. “She’s fired.” Polly said. I said that Polly shouldn’t fire her on my account, sicne I was quitting anyway. Polly said, “As far as I’m concerned, she abandoned her band mates to have to deal with all the gear by themselves.”
I’ve never been so happy to drive alone through the boring, miserable desert. And I never have to see Naiomi again.

My Growing Collection of Rejection Letters

So I got a rejection from Bowling Green in my email yesterday. It’s not surprising, since the piece,a woodwind dectet, had some problems. For starters, part of it was in three, but is written in four. I need to fix it. I would have fixed it before sending it, but the deadline was looming and I had already put a lot of time into it. I probably should have sent a tape instead, but I thought they would be more willing to play a score rather than a tape. The key things is that the score has to be up to snuff.
Of course, I learned my lesson about doing things at the last minute. I check the email with the rejection letter even as I was rushingly re-mixing a piece for Sonic Circuits (due date: yesterday) that I had recorded the night before. Ok, so I didn’t learn my lesson. Even a little bit. the Sonic Circuit piece is boring and sounds completely different on headphones versus speakers. I delayed buying monitor speakers cuz they’re expensive, but clearly, I need them. But I went ahead and mailed my boring, sparse, flat sounding tape off to Sonic Circuits anyway, priority mail, since I wasn’t sure if yesterday was a receipt deadline or a postmark deadline. Costs of postage plus media was about $6. so it will be a $6 rejection. Not counting the cost of computer, synthesizer, headphones (but not monitor speakers) needed to make the boring CD-r.
So my real estate agent in Connecticut has yet to dig anything up. I wonder how long I should wait before becoming concerned.
Speaking of more profitable skills, the Just Intionation Calculator now opens Scala files, but it approximates cents as fractins, since this is the Just intonation calculator.
No other new news

Tuning, Bass, Gigs, etc

Since last I typed . . .

I digitized that tape of Tennis Roberts first gig. There’s about 40 minutes of music, but on most of it, the guitars are inaudible. Apparently, the guitar players are shy. Anyway, I’m hoping to be able to pull out more guitar by EQing up the mid range and high end. And then maybe mix in a bit of reverb throughout to hide any artifacts. Maybe this will make it sound worse. I dunno. I tried recording our last practice, with the idea of getting a better demo tape, but mitch saw ProTools running and was inspired to start shouting/sining “happy elves” for several minutes.
I called Tammy about her fretless bass after the gig, because it’s such a great bass. Tammy called back and gave the bass to me. Not sold. Gave. Wow. She said that she wasn’t using it and I was, and so I should have it.
Several weeks ago, I lent a Moog Taurus II “brain” to Zeppie, since I wasn’t using it and I thought he might dig it. He called me back and asked to buy it and I didn’t get back to him. I had been thinking that I could sell it to him and use the cash for a fretless bass (since they’re worth about the same). But I don’t need to buy a bass now and I wasn’t using the Moog and he is, so I think that I’m karmatically obligated to pass the economic benefits of Tammy’s generosity along. I like the idea of musical instruments being traded around in an extra-capitalists, semi-anarchist system of use-based ownership.
I spent a few days trying to figure out why the Java Just Intonation Calculator didn’t make sounds, before I figured out that the answe is to ctrl-click it (equal to a right button mouse click). Unfortunately, this were days actively spent going through the code and futzing with it. So, throwing good time after bad, I added a piano keyboard interface to the program. It’s beta software, released in May of 2000, but folks I suspect were college students. I’m thinking of taking over the project, since they seem to have abandoned it, as it is pretty buggy and has . . . um . . . unusual design principles employed in it. All the heavy lifting is done, I would just do a little redesign and fix problems with layout, GUI, sound, file IO, and object oriented-ness. In the mean time, if you want a GUI piano keyboard add-on, send me email.
Christi wants me to take up the standup bass. She’s inspired by the bassist in Glass Beads and wants me to be equally hip and talented. I suggested that I should just get more tatoos to more closley resemble a professional bassist, but she insisted, so I’m making inquiries into renting a doublebass. Best Music rents them, but with a three month minimum, and I’ll be leaving in two. Forrest’s Music says that the instument is complicated and I’ll want a real symphony-type teacher, not just cheesy lessons in the back of a music store. Perhaps this will all come together this summer.
Speaking of tatoos, Christi says that I should not get an anarchist symbol tatooed on my arm. Nor should I get a small portrait of Che. I didn’t ask about a hammer and sickle. A peace sign is ok, as is a bass clef. These aren’t ultimatiums, but Christi is wiser than I am about body modification. If it were not for her wisdom, I might have gone ahead with plans for a Tazmanian Devil tatoo, that I wanted when I was young and foolish. I would have had to pay royalties for the image to AOL Time Warner. But are Che protraits just a passing fad or a leftist symbol that will stand the test of time?
Jerry Brown’s warehouse is for sale. I think I will try to get a tour of it.
I had practice today with the flute band. Tomorrow, I’m going to 100% memorize everything. And tommorrow is a recption or concert or something for Chen Yi that I failed to RSVP for, but will try to buy tickets for anyway. If that doesn’t work, there’s a protest against Clear Channel in front of thier building at the same time, which I could play tuba at. So my todo list is: get Chen Yi tix, memorize bass parts, find double bass, get tatoos, (maybe) get haircut, write Ratio class for the JJICalc.
Friday, the flute band travels to Eugene for a gig. My first with them. And it’s the first time that I’ve been paid to perform music not composed by me since 1994.
There’s not much else going on around here. Christi’s foot is still broken. The dog is scared of the dark and doesn’t want to go outside at night. Christi is reading a bio of Virginia Woolf. I just read Terrorism and War by Howard Zinn and am currently reading a book of shoirt stories by Phillip K Dick and a nonfiction called Trotskyism After Trotsky. Sometimes I stumble through the Just Intonation Primer and I’ve ordered a book on Smalltalk from Powells, as I continue to try to figure out SuperCollider, the music programming language of choice at Wesleyan. My strategy of late has been to install SuperCollider on computers that other people use, in the hope that those people will start programming in it and share information with me. I put it on Christi’s laptop and the imac that Tiffany uses, but have had no luck so far. Tonight, I tried putting it on Mitch’s computer, but there is a syntax error in some file, so it won’t compile. Alas. Goodnight.

Musically Inclined

Well, yesterday was mother’s day, a day I had been actively dreading since October. It wasn’t actually that bad. I guess I worked it all out in the pre-dread. Unlike my birthday, where I didn’t expect to feel miserable around at all, and yet I did. It was horrible, despite cool people and cool events. Anyway, the next date on the dread calendar is June 21st, when my mom would turn 66, but will not. Christi is playing that night at the Chapel of the chimes concert. Yes, the one you’ve heard of. Yes, the huge, big deal. Yes, it’s in a mausoleum. I’m estatic for Christi, but still full of dread.
Perhaps keeping busy is what made Mother’s Day ok. I had band practice for about five hours with Tennis Roberts. Our songs are now ending ok. Chand has taken to mixing his electronic drum sounds (he plays an electronic kit) with a vocoder to other source sounds. It sounds very industrial and awesome with pink noise. With other source files, I’m not so sure about it. We’re a sort of a tonal band and it’s hard to play along with a tape where you don’t know the tones, especially if the tones are from a random sample and hold thing, so they’re not in any particular temperment. Which would be the tones on the mp3s that I made that Chand is using. Anyway, it doesn’t matter that much, since I don’t play in any particular temperment anyway. The open notes are in tune, but the rest is not.
I’m sort of getting into tuning right now. Ellen Fullman has a piece called “Harmonic Cross Sweep” on her album Change of Direction. The piece blows my mind. Go listen to the mp3. It’s just intoned microtonal coolness. So I started reading Harry Partch, since he wrote about Just Intonation and influenced everyone just intoned these days. But he can’t stop ranting. In his book Genesis of a Music, he complains about how cello players are so anal they won’t even let you take an awl to their finger board. It takes him a long time to explain the tuning thing, so I joined the Just Intonation Network and I’m reading their primer text on tunings. It’s a much easier read than Partch and is very informative. But really, the biggest influence on my thoughts about tuning was Kendon.
The last time I played bass guitar in a band before this one, it was called Trap Door Spirder Woman or the Kraft Ebbings or somehting. We never played outside of Kendon’s basement, except to play in my basement. Kendon had this guitar where the nech was cracked. It was nearly broken in two. He was always tuning it in between ever song. I kind of got into the sound of him tuning. It was very cool. It should have been a song. And he always had to tune because after the first three chords, everything was different, since the guitar neck wasn’t rigid. The situation made Kendon unhappy. He was saving up for a new guitar. But it was awesome. It was so completely out of tune screwed up bad that it was great. Really, equal temperment is all out of tune. This broken guitar was just the next step on a broken tuning. But it was beautifully broken.
So with Tennis Roberts, I started playing Tammy’s fretless bass with the thought that I could be out of tune all the time. I could put notes in between the notes. I could put four steps where three belong. I could be always completely, sharply off. It’s awesome.

Band Practice

Rehersal with the flute band went for four hours today. 4.25 hours, actually. That’s a long time to be pressing a scab to a string. And I had an important realization: I like Tammy’s bass a lot more than I like my bass. I thought it was 3/4 size, but it’s actually the same, but the neck is narrower, so it feels smaller and is easier to play. But maybe it is smaller than a fretless would normally be. Anyway, it has a great sound and is very comfortable. My bass is theoretically considered to be better than hers. Maybe she’ll trade. OTOH, my grandma gave me my bass as a graduation present, from highschool. Everything becomes sentimental when it’s a gift from a dead person. I have a copy of the book Lonesome Dove, which I have zero desire to read, but don’t want to get rid of because my mom lent it to me. Anyway, maybe I could trade something else to Tammy for her bass, like a semi-functional church organ. Or we could just trade while I’m at school with an option to trade back later? Perhaps I should discuss this with her instead of rambling on about it in my blog.
My other band, Tennis Roberts may or may not have a gig tomorrow night, but I have no idea because Mitch has not called or emailed. I guess I’ll find out tomorrow morning when we’re hanging installations in the castro for the IDEA Ensemble as a part of the thingamajigs festival. It’s a very musical weekend. Anyway, if it turns out that TR will be playing tomorrow night, I’ll be playing Tammy’s bass! Isn’t that exciting? It would be nice if I knew, cuz we could make an email list and tell folks, and maybe somebody could make little quarter-size flyers about the band with contact info, so that if anybody wanted to book us or something, they could do that. It’s the sort of thing you want to know ahead of time. *cough*cough*

Learn Language Audio Course

Man, those things are useless. what’s the gender of the noun? who knows? but my suitcase is on the train! (oh no!)
Piece idea: Audio course in esperanto. starts out straightforward with sections you would expect. “Section 1 – Greetings” “Aro Unu – Salutojn” But starts getting progressively stranger. and the “boing” between sections gets more elaborate, until it starts overlapping with the language section and turns into full pieces of music. “boooing zooom bewww bweeee excuse me, my hamster is rabid…” etc. all of this will be microtonal, of course…
I need a fluent esperanto collaborator. i wonder if ed would do it?
wait, maybe i should do it in german, since i’ll have to take a test in it. Verzeihung! Mein Hamster hat die Tollwut. (I wonder if “rabies” will be on the exam…)
Joanna Russ, author of The Female Man, did a funny, short phrasebook for interstellar travellers. It has phrases like, “That is my travelling companion. It is not a tip. I will call the manager.” It would be perfect, especially with “hello”, “goodbye”, “nice to meet you” spliced in at the beginning. The language would have to be Esperanto or Klingon or something, since a national language might be offensive in that context. I wonder if she would go for it.

Tuning (or Math Is Hard)

I’m readin Harry Partch’s Genesis of a Music to try to find out how this just intonation thing works. Briefly, Just intonation is “natural” tuning based on ratios. Think of a guitar string: if you divide it in half, you get an octave. If you divide it by three you get a fith (sort of). All tunings until recently were based on fractions. Then we switched to irrational numbers. So your piano is now tuned irrationally. (I always suspected as much.)
Harry Partch’s book is out of print. This is not actually shocking. The first section is a history of opera and vocal music from Plato through the early twentieth century, seen as a fight between those who think notes out to mirror words and those who think words ought to be bended or exaggerated to fit notes. There are definitely bits of wisdom in there, but my goodness, it’s not an easy read. He certainly has a liking for five dollar words. Why use a short word when a longer one will do? His thesis (whatever it is) becomes a victim of unintended irony. The notes ought to be working for the words, but with the words he uses, I think Webster’s dictionary is driving his writing. Or maybe he studied for the GREs much harder than I did.
Then comes the mathematical part. I foolishly thought I had some idea of just intonation because of a computer program I wrote around fifth or eigth grade. I had programmed the computer (in BASIC, of course) to play several Christmas Carols. But I thought it would be cool if I could program it (in BASIC) to write new songs and play them. This started very simply:
playsound(random(), 2); play a “random” pitch for two miliseconds. This is, incidentally, the sound played by the computer game Gauntlet when you exit a level. My brother was kind of excited. But it’s not really very musical, so I decided to generate arpegios.
An arpegio is a “broken chord.” It is all the notes of a particular chord played sequentially instead of all at once. An arpegio on C would play C, then E, then G, (then maybe high C followed by G,) then E, then C. Do Mi Sol Mi Do. My program picked a pitch in the scales that we’re used to (A= 440 Hz) and generated an arpegio on top of it using fractions. Let $N be the starting pitch.
$sol = $N * 3 / 2; This is easy to deduce because of the overtone series on a brass instrument. (I’m ignoring transposition here.) The pedal tone on a trumpet is C. The low open note on a trumpet is C, one octave higher. The next open note is G. A pedal tone is a note that isn’t usually played as it’s too low and hard to produce. The wavelength of a pedaltone is equal to the length of the horn. The low open note, one octave higher, has a wavelength equal to half the length of the horn. The next open note is one third of the length of the horn. The next note, another octave of C, is equal to one quarter the length of the horn. All open notes on a trumpet or baritone or tuba or whatever have a whole number relationship to the length of the horn.
The frequncies are related by the same whole note ratio, but inversely. The first open note (above the pedal tone) uses half the horn and is double the frequency (in Hz). The next open note uses one third of the horn and is triple the frequency of the pedal tone. So it you had a brass horn where the pedal tone was A (220 Hz), the first open tone would be 440 hz (the note A) and the next open tone would be 660 Hz (the note E). Ok, now, see how A is both 220 and 440? It’s also 110 and 880. Every octave is a doubling of frequency. If you want to find a pitch one octave higher, then you multiply by 2. If you want the octave lower, you divide by two. This sounds right. If your piano is perefctly in tune, every A on it will be double the frequency of the A below and half the frequency of the A above. If you could see the sine waves, they would line up exactly and be perfectly in tune with each other.
Ok, back to my arpegio program from my youth. The fifth note in the major scale, Sol, is the second open note on my trumpet and the frequency is equal to three times the pedal tone. So if you take the first note of your arpegio and mutiply the Hz by three, you get a fifth, but it’s one octave too high. Ah, but we can lower it one octave by dividing the frequency in half. So
$sol = $n * 3 / 2; Yay!
I also figured out the third and was able to play arpegios with wild abandon. I’d pick some pitch from an array that contained the Hz for one octave to the Equally Tempered Scale, generate an arpegio on top of it, then pick another pitch from the same array and then play an arpegio on top of it, then pick . . .. I really liked infinite loops. My favorite command in BASIC was “goto.”
And so, with great anticipation, I started up my program and the first arpegio sounded great, but the on the next one, the first note sounded . . . off. And on the next one, the first note sounded terrible! What was going on?
Luckily for me, my father had designed an electronic organ only a few years earlier. (He wasn’t great for camping trips, but man, he was 100% there for technology explainations, even if he couldn’t quite manage to disuade me from my goto obessision, he was great for helping me debug stuff.) The problem? Mixing tuning systems! things that sound “right” in fractional, just intoned systems, sound really really right. But it has some problems. Everything is tuned perfectly to the starting pitch. But if you switch keys, without retuning, everything sounds off. All the distances are perfect from C for the notes in the C scale, for example, but the fractions are off from what they ought to be if you start playing in D. Take my word for this, I don’t have a soundfile to illustrate it, nor the math to work it all out here. But this a problem in tuning, for every tuning, is that the tuning can only be perfect in one key at a time.
this was “solved” with equal temperment. everything in equal temperment is equally out of tune. Tuning is based on irrational numbers instead of re-tweaked fractions. All the octaves in equal temperment are perfect. Everything else is off. If you have pitch N, to figure out the pictch one semitone above N (remember that there are twelve “semitones”, or “half steps” or distinct piches in every octave),
N[m+1] = N[m] * (1 + N[m] *2^^(1/12)); or, more generally, N[m+x] = N[m] * (1 + N[m] *2^^(x/12)); Got that? It’s irrational. It’s logarythmic. All the thirds sound kind of wrong. It’s lead to all sort of dissonance and twelve-tone systems and post-diatonic harmony and hell, post-tuned music like noise. Or maybe all the debauchery would have happned anyway. But you can see how fractions are a LOT easier to think about.
which brings us back to Harry Partch, whom I am reading to better understand tuning, so I can do perfectly just intoned, tuned works for computer. Because the computer can re-tune instantly, should a key change be required. Also, there’s no reason why the octave need have twelve tones in it. It could have thirteen, or twenty, or five. And with a perfect understand of these fractional systems, I could write even more music-producing computer programs, but not in BASIC and with fewer GOTO staements (you can see that this has been a work-in-progress for a long time.)
So you’d think, with my (admittedly, minimal) experience with just intonation, I would be able to get something out of this book. This is what it says:

In the ratio 3/2, 2 represents 1/1, the lower limit of the 2/1. the tone at the upper limit of the 2/1 may be represented by 4 (a doubling of 2); hence the interval from the 3 of 3/2 to this upper limit of the 2/1 is the interval from 3 to 4, or 4/3, which is therefor the complement of 3/2 within the 2/1; the two intervals might be expressed thus: 2:3:4. . ..

ummmmmm  yeah  ummmmm  I have no idea what that says. Not even a little clue. It cuold all be in German, for what I can understand of it (disturbingly, I have forgotten all of my German…). Maybe I should stick to equal temperment. Or to noise.

Improv Music

Not long ago, I comment to a friend, “I don’t like improv music.” That’s not actually true. I love Deep Listening Band and I enjoy the Circle Trio, both headed up by Pauline Oliveros. And heck, I play in an improv rock band. And I like jazz solos. I like non-competitive improv music. For a while, I thought I could make a claim about female-dominated improv, versus male dominated improv, but it doesn’t work. Pauline Oliveros may well be the best improv artist ever, but Anthony Braxton is also very good and he’s definitely not female. I think it just must be very difficult to play improv music and many bands, for whatever reason, become competitive and play thoughtlessly. Certainly competitive, thoughtless music is not limitted to improv, but I think that it’s harder to get to the next level while improving. So, I’d like to clarify my comment. “I don’t like improv music unless it’s good.”
I think I also need to make a resolution to be less negative. What I mean is, to be more positive. Yeah. I love making resolutions for the same reason I like predictability. I can keep making the same resolutions year after year after year. I just need to change the date. I resolve to be more positive, to quit picking on Christi and to play more gigs, put out a new CD and generally improve my music career. yeah. this year will be different. this year will be great. I know it’s April and not January, but it takes me a few months to get the hang of new years.

Where do tires come from?

My car needs new ones. Are these petroleum products? Who is being killed for tire ingredients? I don’t know where they come from, but I know where they go: gigantic landfills. Two such landfills are on fire right now in California and will burn for years, inflaming asthma and reducing air quality. You can’t really do anything with them. The rubber is “vulcanized” which means you can’t shred it and melt the shreds into new tires. Sometimes they are used as ingredients in asphalt or rubber tracks around highschools. Most of them just get dumped. Also, they wear down on the highways and tire dust settles across the landscape or runs off into streams. What are the long and short term effects of this? I’ve heard that tires are one of the biggest environmental problems around cars.
Christi’s nonprofit laid of two people and cut Christi’s hours. They are trying to raise money by auctioning off a Lou Harrison score on ebay: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2517100659&category=2331. So far, no bidders. Even though the seller has a feeback rating of zero, I can vouch for their integrity.
I went to the last evening of MFA thesis concerts at Mills last night, to get a feel for what the kids are up to. It’s one of the most prominent schools at which to study composition in the US, so I thought it would give me an idea what’s going on these days. The first student had a piece in the gym with a bunch people playing alto instruments: violin, flute, sax, clarinet, oboe, etc. The started out in a large figure-8 and walked inwards and then back out again. It was more about texture than meoldy. It was beautiful ot listen to and interrresting to watch. The composer said people could walk amongst the musicians, which I think diminished the performance aspect a bit, since I stayed seated the whole time. It guilded the lilly. But it was a beautiful piece.
The second student did something with two laptops in the concert hall. What did he do? Who knows. Maybe he checked his email while a tape played. I hope that if he were going to plan something in advance, it sould have been more thought-out tho. Also, he played a quicktime movie of a giant pound sign jiggling. For half an hour? Longer? While he checked his email. And repetititve, loud popping souns came out of the speakers. Or maybe the sound system was actually broken and nobody caught it. At the risk of seeming reactionary, I would like to bann the laptop from the concert hall. It is not a solo instrument. The program notes said the artist wanted to embrace “radical superflousness.” I think he succeeded admirably.
The third student moved us all out to the Greek Theatre, behind the concert hall. There was a large fire burning in a big pit thing. A string quartet was poised someplace up the hill from the theatre. A woman wearing black came down, read a short text and then sung it several times, circling the theatre, then the string quartet played. It was all very exciting. Then, for unknown reasons, a tape of Sun Ra started playing, looping on the part where the band sings, “Venus, Venus.” Someone yelled “Space is the Place” from a window. It was a mixed performance and went on too long. All the tape parts should have been cut. She should have stuck with the woman in black and the string quartet and the other ensemble of percussionist, singer and PVC didgeridu. I think she took everything she did while at Mills, including her homework for her introduction to recording techniques class and used it in her concert. Which, um, I kind of did the same thing at my concert at Mills, but I was an undergrad. Anyway, she was an excellent singing vioce and her quartetes were quite good and her work was not apolitical, as, I’ve heard, almost all the works presented over the course of the festival were.
So, it was a mixed bag and not at all different from what I remember as an undergraduate. I’ve heard rumors t the effect that absolutely nothing has changed. Who says you can’t go home again?