It’s the weekend!

No more classes till Monday! I’m going to sleep in and do homework!

Email to Mitch is bouncing. Bad Mitch!
there’s a percussionist giving a master class on saturday. If people who up with sheet music, he’ll play it and comment on it. I should try to write a percussion pice by then. or should i?

Lovely Day

Not only was it a Wednesday, a relatively happy day during the week, since I don’t have too many stressful classes, but the weather was so nice that it felt like home. I could walk around with only a shirt and light swearer and feel nice.

I gave my presentation about tuning during class today. It was a bit of a disaster. Aaron said it was ok and that people were just scared of math, but I think maybe he was just being nice. Nobody knows what it means to be out of tune. I said, “out of tune notes beat. Beating is out of tune. the paino beats, so therefore it is out of tune.” I didn’t help that I was showing them a Pythagorean Tuning Lattice. That lattice has really nice fifths, fourths and octaves and horrible thirds, so it’s very very similar to Equal Temperment. I was on the way to talking about 5 limit intonation (which has wonderful thirds), when I played an example of the 7th and said, “that’s a terrible 7th.” and then I said something about how it didn’t matter that thirds were terrible because they weren’t considered consonant. And then the ethno types wanted to argue with me about consonance and dissonance. The ancient greeks thought it was consonant!! No, only string players would have used this tuning because it’s horribly out of tune. No, it’s in tune according to what they thought. Tuning is culturally constructed!
tuning is based on the overtone series. It is not socially constructed because it is centered around a physical fact. some notes are out of tune. the piano is out of tune and you’re wrong, because not everything is culturally constructed.
uh yeah

the to-do list of doom

old items

  • pedagogy things is done, now i need to write a syllabus for an intro to harmony class, due in 2 weeks
  • i now owe six instrument definitions, and i’ve done none of them.
  • still the world’s most clueless TA. I think we might be doing a realization of I am Sitting in a Room
  • I’m on the ITS comittee of the OtherMinds Board now. they didn’t ask me to run for secretary. (If you are a potential donor and want to go to a party wihtout me, let me know, and I’ll get you onto the list)
  • listened to Krystalnacht by John Zorn. Too many issues on top of the piece to say much about it, really. If you try to look at it abstractly and not as a programatic work, some of the tracks do not stand up on their own. the second track could never have been written about a non-programatic topic.
  • so, this morning, i thought i should put the JJICalc on Aaron’s computer before I left for school, to see if it would be loud enough. the program wouldn’t run. I ran out the door and charged off to school. got to the bike rack and realized that I left my keys sitting on my porch railing. Went back for my keys. Went back to school, now late for class and printed my handouts. Walked late into class. at the break went to try to find a key to the room where the Mac Truck is kept, so I could grab a laptop from it. the secretaries say that it’s very strictly against the rules and this is exactly why the mac truck is kept locked (and why grad students don’t get keys). then they let me have one anyway and it runs JJICalc just fine. The problem is that I compiled the calc on a new version of java and some macs are running older version of java and apparently there’s no backwards compatibility. I need to compile the program on an old machine so that it can run on other old machines. Write once, compile everywhere.
  • Haven’t touched OSC, but my perl script can get themes off of moo objects
  • emailed music prof about Joan of Arc mystery play. this prof doesn’t send prompt replies, so i may have to drop the research.
  • I’m going to analyze Turtle Dreams by Meredith Monk for my composition seminar. I don’t know if a score exists. Neely seems to think that a score is unnecessary.
  • The five minute piece is for piano. It’s started. Only god knows when it’s due.
  • none of the other composers know what’s going on either

new things

  • Must read inch-thick handout about Stravinsky by next wednesday
  • Aaron has organized a house concert where all the composition students will present five minutes worth of stuff. I must figure out what to do, as it is this saturday, I don’t think I can make people learn my SolReSol duet
  • Must return overdue library books and enquire as to the status of the books that i requested via inter-library loan
  • Must find and speak with a bell maker, but first, must find out how to find and speak with a bell maker.

Esperanto names

(cxjo is Mitch. It’s pronounced like “chjo.” It is an Esperanto suffix for a male nickname. The female equivalent is njo, pronounced like “nyo.” normally these go at the end of names. For example, instead of being Micxelo (Mitchell), one would be Micxjo (pronounced Meechjo). Or instead of being Celeste one would be called Cenjo (pronounced Tsenjo).

In Esperantio, I keep my name with it’s current spelling, which in Esperanto is then pronounced Tselesteh. (that ‘h’ is not a typo, it’s to show that the last ‘e’ isn’t silent). Female names can also end with an ‘o’ or an ‘a’, so I could be Celesto or Celesta. (some folks want to end all female names with ‘a,’ but it’s not a standard at all. As far as esperantizing names goes, I don’t think anyone would tack an ‘a’ on to the end of a male name. Mitchell would not become Micxela, unless there’s a woman named Mitchell.) If I don’t like the ‘ts’ sound and want to have my sibilant at the sart, I can respell my name to Seleste, Selesto, or Selesta. Or to have it sound just like it’s english pronunciation, I could spell it Selest, but I feel so naked without a vowel at the end. Also, there’s an advantage to not changing the spelling if the pronunciation is similar enough, so people could recognize it written down. and I’m used to people who speak Spanish and Italian and others pronouncing it in their own languages.
there you have it. now i must get back to work. I need to write a five minute piano piece. I wonder if i should just have the player plays keys or do something more silly inside the piano.)

who is governor?

the suspence is killing me

Other News

the wife

christi really likes her Paris apt (maybe she posted this in her own blog). she called my housemate today and said he should tell me that she loves me. awww. 🙂 She’s apparently fighting jetlag. and I’m not supossed to mail her brownies because they’ll rot while sitting in customs.

the house

My home away from home now has a futon, so if you want to <subliminal>come visit</subliminal>, there is now a place for you to sleep. Visitors are highly encouraged to first stop by my house in Berkeley and grab a set of queen size sheets before coming (flying out of Oakland is cheep). Don’t worry. Although I don’t have any queen size sheets here (although I have many sets in Berkley, including a flanel set that Tiffany gave me to use here that I thought I packed, but can’t find), I do have a hostel-style sleep sack to put you in. You will have a warm and squishy (but not too squishy) place to sleep.

Bells in France

No, not Belles. For news on Christi, see the wife item. Church Bells in France.
Archeologists have dug up casting molds for medival church bells in France. from these casts, one can tell the height, shape and thickness of the bells. I learned this by chatting with the Monastic Utopia professor. He says that he knows of no reasearch determining the tuning of these bells, nor any sound modelling. (!!!!) I asked Ron about this and he got really excited and told me to go talk to bell makers about materials. It might be that the material is very important for the pitch and tambre (tambre is tone or “color”) and that’s why nobody has written a paper on it. Or it may be that nobody has thougt about writing a paper on it because the computer modelling is hard, not yet developed, or so new that nobody has yet applied it to this research. I’m strongly hoping that it’s the later. I’m hoping that I can create a bell program in SuperCollider that takes archeological measurements and returns a synthesized bell tone. If I can’t do that, I hope to be able to at least determine the tuning of the bells.
this is a fantastic research project because once the computer program is written, the project becomes really easy. Just dig through mountains of archeological records to find bell measurements, plug them into the prgram and get results out the other end. and if nobody’s done it before, it qualifies as a possible thesis. I can’t do it for my final project in supercollider, though, because I need to play my final project at SUNY.

SUNY Gig

Because of the disasterous Rhode Island nightclub fire last year, the SUNY firemarshall now requires that out-of-state acts submit the names of two contacts who are willing to certify that the act in question does not contain pyrotechnics.
I need to find two people to swear that I don’t set things on fire as a part of my laptop music (which has never been peformed). So much for my idea of hooking up heat sensors to giant fireballs.
I’m hoping that I can get Jack Straw to be my one witness and Ron to be my other, since it’s going to be a class project.

Celeste hutchins
Graduate Pedagogy

I attended ARHA 213: Monastic Utopias. The class topic is architecture of Christian monastic buildings before 1300. to talk about this, the teacher uses two slide projectors which show pictures of architectural drawings and photographs of extant buildings or ruins or woodcuts of what the buildings used to look like or art from said buildings. He uses a laser pointer to point out whatever features that he is discussing. This class takes place early in the morning in a dark classroom, but when I was there, all the students appeared to be awake.

The use of slides leads to students facing away from the professor, since he sits at the back of the classroom by the slide projectors and the slides are projected onto the front wall.

Periodically, the professor will stop lecturing and ask the class leading questions, either ones that they know the answer to or ones that the only know part of the answer to. He will use their answers to fill in gaps in discussed material or to go on to new topics. Sometimes he asks questions which they can only guess at and when someone makes an obvious answer, he will say something like, “I would completely agree, but other evidence says it’s exactly the opposite.” His initial agreement acts as praise to the student and his subsequent disagreement gets the other students attention and helps point out that answers are not obvious. He may then explicitly discuss pedagogy and talk to students about how to reason from evidence. I talked to him after class and he said that his highest hope was that students learn to ask the right sort of historically relevant questions.

When the professor makes an important point, he may highlight it by spelling out the vocabulary word that he just used, thus cueing students to write it down. He uses the history of architecture to explain trends in Christianity, for instance that pointing out that one church’s crypt is an exact replica of another church’s crypt, because the second church was gaining power and the first church wanted to ally themselves with the power and legitimacy of the first church. Thus, he talks about political developments through architecture and architectural copying. this is like a music history class, which also touches on politics and how it affects written music.

The teacher will break up the class a bit. He spends a while lecturing from the slides and then will pause to take or ask questions. He might then return to the slides or lecture without the aid of pictures. When he’s taking questions, he may quietly advance the slide, thus cueing students that he’s ready to move on when they are. when he’s giving the lecture he may signal important points through spelling, or stress in his voice. He occasionally will make a joke about the material, lightening the mood and perhaps signaling a change in importance in the material. for instance, he mentioned something in passing about St Cruddedon and made a remark that the saint’s parents must not have liked him very much, or they would have named him David or Bill. The students only laughed a little at this (it only deserves a little laugh), but it did relax them a bit.

arg

didn’t do any work all weekend and slept in today and now i’m behind behind behind. a mountain of stuff is about to fall on me.

I can’t get supercollider to record my stupid sound samples. all the time spent on that is wasted
Just talked to a second year masters guy who talked about how his relationship of 8 years completely fell apart while he went to wesleyan last year because they were seperated and he was too busy to call frequently or write frequently and they became completely estranged. this was during gamelan. i’m blaming this conversation for why i cannot play any of the music. weeks of practcing and i have not gotten better. i still get lost all the time. i have no idea how to play the instrument i was on tonight. it’s only the first piece of music that he gave us. i should have done intro gamelan instead.

To do

  • attend a class on medival monastic architecture and then write up a report on the pedagological methods employed by the teacher. (class is 9:00-10:20. paper is due at 5:00)
  • write an instrument definition for supercollider and mail it to TA (due asap. class is at noon)
  • I have no idea what i should have prepared for the class I TA tomorrow. I haven’t done any of the reading in ages. I don’t know what I’m supossed to be doing. Maybe my job as a TA is too look decorative so that the students beleive that the tution must be worth it. that class is at 2:30
  • 8:30 PM must call in the OtherMinds Board Meeting
  • Must listen to enough John Zorn to be able to talk intelligently about it (due for class 9:00 AM wed)
  • Need sound samples and handouts for 15 minute talk on just intonation also due for 9:00 am wed class. think i will have to generate them very slowly in the CFA lab with some program that the undergrads in my TA class thing are taking. I actually have no idea how to use the software, but somehow I’ve been giving them advice on it. No wonder the TA-A is more popular than I am.
  • midterm SuperCollider project is due sometime in the future. need to be able to have SC talk to MOO. For this I need to open an OSC socket in perl. OSC support for Perl is alpha. documentation does not exist.
  • Must talk to early music prof about Joan of Arc mystery play. Must find out if written music exists before fall break
  • compositon seminar wants to know what major work i’m going to analyze. i have no idea. can it be a really old work?
  • Compositon seminar may also require that I have to write a five minute piece. For what instruments? due when?
  • what the heck else is due for that class? I’m so confused. i think an avelanche is looming overhead. the syllabus is no help. I must corner other composers and get the to explain.

i’m supossed to be sleeping right now so i get up on time to look at slides of medival ruins.