bunnies aka my favorite website ever

bunnies with things on their heads

I LEGO NYC

(click picture for more)

patti labelle sings the abcs

awesome

copy and paste

Periodically throughout our class, we were reminded of the copy and paste "trick." But who are we tricking? Ideally, this shortcut can help us use tags that help us figure out how do put things on our pages. But if we take copy and paste too far, aren't we really just cheating? One complication of the internet is the idea of authorship. How much of what we code is creative work that we can take credit for? How much is just the equivalent of selecting options on a multiple choice test? Where is the line between appropriate and inappropriate?

memories

I have two favorite pieces that I have performed in orchestras.

The first is Morton Feldman's "Intersection 1"
Everyone read off the entire score. There were different line for different instruments groups. There were three pitch markings: high, medium, and low. The beat remained constant, and the pitch markings lasted for a certain number of beats. This was the most thoughtful playing I think many of us had ever done.




The second is Wojciech Kilar's Krzesany.

Kilar is a Polish composer. This work had strains of Polish folk music running through it, but also many tone clusters. The piece ended with the strings playing a folk tune and the winds playing anything they desired, loudly.






















Both of these pieces expanded my ideas of music, notation, and composition.
I think it is interesting that they are both smoking in these pictures...

socialist media?

Anyone can be a star.

Perhaps this is what makes some technologies so excited and terrifying. People can connect with people without any middlemen.

Those in control no longer have it, because anyone can produce professional quality recordings from their living room.

Composition for the people, music for the people, videos for the people.
Hm.

Audacity

editing sound samples is not easy. perhaps the learning curve is a very different shape from composing a contrapuntal fugue or even learning to play an instrument, but it is challenging, can be frustrating, and requires a great deal of direction and creativity to create a satisfying final product. i'm not sure if i've reached it.


My thoughts on my experience with audacity are scattered and I'm not sure exactly what the appropriate terminology is, but here is what I'm thinking about:

Too often, I think people see composing with computers as some kind of junior composing. After working to create my :40 song, I can no longer identify with that position at all. Composition and editing technologies give a very different sense of control to the author.

The prerequisite skills in editing sounds in audacity and composing a piece with traditional notation do not necessarily overlap. I think this scares people away from creating music on computers, as that might send a message that more traditional composition is no longer worthwhile (the medium is the message, perhaps...can anyone tell me if I'm using this phrase correctly? I still get a bit confused).

In a way, the instruments on Audacity are sound samples that exist within the computer. The notation is illustrated in waves rather than notes. Form can remain a guiding principle. In some ways, I think audacity allows people to experiment with music making in a medium that does not have strict rules of right and wrong, inappropriate or otherwise. It can open the doors to composition in way that three semesters of music theory just can't do.



I think the following clip uses sound/video editing to spectacular effect (see 1:40, though the whole clip is rather hilarious and that bit with the copy machine is kind of staggering...)