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.

maybe i should get a navel piercing to gaze at

ok, first note that i caved in to peer pressure: http://celesteh.blogspot.com/2004_03_14_celesteh_archive.html#107972820218639842

and now i’m going to talk about emotions. i feel like i tore myself down and built myself back up again. and maybe it’s too early to say much about that, cuz i’ve felt like i’ve had my feet under me for all of a week now. sometimes i feel aftershocks, but not so often. and maybe i’m just in a good mood because it’s warm and sunny and if it got cold and dark i’d be sad again, but i dunno, i feel changed. i’ve been looking in the mirror the last few days and thinking “i’m cute.” Which is not something I ever remember thinking before. maybe when i was a child in gradeschool or something. and, well, it’s weird. i feel very weird… will it last? i hope so, but you know, it’s nice right now.
I started drinking coffee again and that is fantastic. If I have a latte, I am the smartest person on earth! I had some tea before giving my Freud presentation in class today and I felt like doing laps around the classroom. Presentation went well, I think. People were taking notes on what I said. These kids are able to understand Foucault, and that’s incredible, but I’ve read a lot more than them, so if I can find something familiar, I can make a connection that they might not. Oh, this case study of a male hysteric sounds like something I read in Faludi’s Stiffed, so maybe I can use what she said to talk about what Freud said. and also, i’m the smartest person on earth! well, only metaphorically
And last night, I was out on a supercollider field trip (geek run) to get pizza in New Haven and I was talking too much, without the benefit of coffee . . .. Many CA folks know me as a really talkative person, but I just haven’t been for a while. So…who knows… maybe CT people will have to get used to me talking a lot … Or maybe I’ll stay quiet. It’s just weird.
And you guys all asked for navel gazing, so if I seem arrogant or something, well, you asked for it.
I have a bunch of old noise music on the web at http://www.berkeleynoise.com/celesteh, from my analog phase. The last real analog thing I wrote was about death, but it’s not on the web. My grandma died not that long before my mom did. My poor dad lost his mother and wife less than a year apart. And all the drama played itself out in minature with my grandma. All the dynamics around my mom’s death were there. All of them. Asshole medical health people. Angry me. Christi angrily explaining that she was attached to my grandma too . . ..
I realized at the funeral, that I didn’t know what kind of music my grandma liked. I didn’t know her favorite singers or her favorite hymns and I asked my dad and he didn’t know either. Something incredibly important that I would never know. So I was upset for several months (and mad at my mom because she was acting so weird. oy vey) and finally understood that my grandma was hella old and tired of being alive and had a pretty good life that had to end sometime. so i wrote a piece of music and it turned out to be about that. it sounds like death. less than a week after i finished it, my mom had brain surgery. it’s the best piece of music that i ever wrote and so prescient, it scares me. I had been exploring an asthetic of openness and “air” in analog electronics and I lost it at that point. I’ve been forced to switch to supercollider, which is nice and portable, but kind of bloodless.
Listening to: Laurie Anderson’s song “Oh Superman.” fxcking fantastic

So you like navel-gazing, eh?

I think I had some lint in there, but then I took a shower….

Talked to my shrink today. “And then this happened and then this happened and this happened….” She nodded and said “wow” a lot. I like her because she does a great empathetic expression. I told her this a while ago and she assured me it was sincere, but I actually don’t care if it is or not. Anyway, she said I should feel proud of myself for all the progress I made. So I’m getting an A in mental health. woo! (this is a metaphorical A…)
I’m trying to write some happy music. This started out as a bid to impress CT chicks with mullets, but I think that might be a lost cause. I see them as Thomas Kinkade fans and they see me as the Unibomber. No TV. Doesn’t like driving. Makes weird Noise Music. Eats weird things like avacadoes… Yeah, I’m an alien. But at least I don’t have a mullet.
People who like my music are mostly geek boys or other composers and other mullet-less types. So I’ve decided I’d most like to have geek girl fans, insofar as I might have groupies . . . as if . . .. But I’m not writing for their benefit. I’m writing to impress my teachers. No, just kidding. I still want to write some avant-happy music, cuz I’m running out of angst to tap in to. I don’t have any real problems right now. I could get angsty about the white stuff settling out of my fridge onto my (tightly sealed) food containers, but I think that will go away shortly… I hope.
I was listening to RadioHead Kid A to get some ideas, because I love their synthpop and it might be cool to write some laptop music and then sing along! but maybe they’re not really all that happy? Is my baseline for happiness skewed, or is this just an asthetic issue? Hrm. Been smiling a lot, so that must count for something.
anyway, Kid A is my most recent pop album. Aside from getting all RadioHead since that album, what CDs should I buy? I have some Amazon.com gift certificates. I like indie rock. I like punk rock. I like noise. I like what Sonic Youth has been up to for the last few years. I just got a CD of Laurie Anderson playing live in NYC Townhall Spetember 19th 2001 and I’m not so into it. Not edgy enough, at least in disk 1. I’m not familiar with her work at all, which is why I got the CD. Reccomend me some music so I can buy it based soley on your suggestion!
Today in class, Alvin was talking about a concert that Ellen gave her a few years ago and said it was the best concert that he ever saw. Pretty cool. And I got CVS set up across my home network, so my laoptop will be in synch with my desktop, which will be helpful. yay.