|| General || § ¶Earthquakes Happen
There was a 6.0 earthquake in Southern California this morning (10:15am PDT). We didn't feel it up here in Oakland, and there is no report of damages so far. But earthquakes are happening all the time all over the planet. There's an updated list at the USGS website. Earthquakes, hurricanes and tornados, pestilences. Is somebody trying to tell us something?
|| General || § ¶More Music for Threads
Section 3 of Threads (see item below) is a trio for a "fat" flute, clarinet, and "grand" guitar. These are all totally digital instruments generated using Reason. I created this 6 minute piece by first designing the flute sound, using a sampled flute but adding some processing to the sound to make it "fatter". Then, using a sampled clarinet, I added the second track in a sort of call/response scheme. The dance for this section is a duet where the dancers start off in opposite parts of the stage and come together by the end of the piece. The music follows this scheme somewhat, starting with two independent voices but becoming more similar by the end. Finally I added a sampled guitar track playing in contrast to the woodwind sound. But the guitar samples have also been postprocessed to sound much deeper. In fact, there is a very large low frequency component to these sounds which may not translate well coming out of small computer speakers. I am expecting a very deep sound when played in performance.
I edited the notes for all three tracks much the same way one edits a text, using cut/copy/paste, and thickened some sections with more notes, and thinned other sections taking notes away.
The music is not intended to stand alone, but to accompany the dancers. We tried it out last weekend and altho the dancers were not used to it just yet, we could see that it was going to work very well.
More on my music for Threads
|| General || § ¶Composing Music
Over the past couple of months (in my spare time) I've been working on some music for a dance performance. Its going to happen in November.Its called "Threads" and the dance group is Kate Mitchell's.
The performance is at ODC in San Francisco, Nov 12-13.
Composing the music for this hour-long performance has been quite a trip! I must admit I haven't done anything like this since the 1970's when I did a lot of (analog) electronic and tape music.
But these days its all digital, and quite amazing. I'm using a combination of Apple's SoundTrack and Reason from Propellerhead Software in Sweden.
Reason is totally incredible. Everything I used to be able to do with tape manipulation and voltage-controlled synthesizers 30 years ago is now doable in the digital domain plus lots more. It boggles the mind. The program is doing real-time FFTs and digital signal processing that at one time could only be performed by supercomputers. And it barely pushes the limits on my 1GHz Apple G4.
Composing music is hard. Its especially difficult when you have in front of you so many possibilities. Trying to figure out how to implement the sounds in my head with the Reason software is a challenge. But like, any musical instrument, it demands practice. Stay tuned.
(More on my music for Threads....)
|| default || § ¶Joys of a Grandfather
Dig those pants! Thank you , Hazel.
|| General || § ¶Sins of the Grandfather...?
This makes for some very interesting reading:How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power
Rumours of a link between the US first family and the Nazi war machine have circulated for decades. Now the Guardian can reveal how repercussions of events that culminated in action under the Trading with the Enemy Act are still being felt by today's president.
George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany....
Read the original article in The Guardian, Saturday September 25, 2004
|| General || § ¶Licorice
This morning, driving into work at the start of a beautiful and sunny day, my van became infused with the smell of something sweet. Like licorice. This was while I was approaching the Dumbarton Bridge, passing the great salt flats of the East Bay.How strange and wild. Licorice, or was it anise?
Was I suddenly transported to Karnak, or was this an aromatic hallucination indicating the onset of brain damage.
No. No cause for alarm. Cal Trans was cutting down the weeds and overgrowth along the edge of the road.
Everything seemingly wonderful these days tends to have a much more mundane cause.
But licorice! Or, more probably, anise. We need more sweet aromatics along the highway.
|| General || § ¶September 11, Three Years Later
From the conservative Le Temps in Geneva, Switz.
|| General || § ¶Cousins
From our trip to Port Angeles, WA in August:
Granddaughters Hazel and Ciel, flowergirls at Demian and Suzanne's wedding.
|| General || § ¶We’re Not in Lake Wobegon Anymore - Garrison Keillor
This article from Lake Wobegon's great chronicler is making its rounds along the Internet.How did the Party of Lincoln and Liberty transmogrify into the party of Newt Gingrich’s evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk?
Something has gone seriously haywire with the Republican Party. Once, it was the party of pragmatic Main Street businessmen in steel-rimmed spectacles who decried profligacy and waste, were devoted to their communities and supported the sort of prosperity that raises all ships. They were good-hearted people who vanquished the gnarlier elements of their party, the paranoid Roosevelt-haters, the flat Earthers and Prohibitionists, the antipapist antiforeigner element. The genial Eisenhower was their man, a genuine American hero of D-Day, who made it OK for reasonable people to vote Republican. He brought the Korean War to a stalemate, produced the Interstate Highway System, declined to rescue the French colonial army in Vietnam, and gave us a period of peace and prosperity, in which (oddly) American arts and letters flourished and higher education burgeoned—and there was a degree of plain decency in the country. Fifties Republicans were giants compared to today’s. Richard Nixon was the last Republican leader to feel a Christian obligation toward the poor.
Read the full article from In These Times...
|| Music || § ¶Very Unusual Radio
Postclassic Radio - Weirdly beautiful new music from composers who've left the classical world far behind.
Kyle Gann, music reviewer and writer for the Village Voice, among other things (composer, music collector, blogger) now has his own internet "radio station" on Live365: PostClassic Radio.
So far I've listened for a couple of hours on and off and never heard anything I'd ever heard before. Kyle's music collection must be something incredible. From Tom Johnson's Bonhoeffer-Oratorium to Jim Fox's City the Wind Blew Away, and a so-far unreleased clarinet concerto by the Finnish composer Juhani Nuorvala! I can't turn it off. I don't want to go to bed. I want to hear more!
|| Science || § ¶Sunspots
Fast-growing sunspot 671 might soon pose a threat for strong solar flares. And now is the time to see spectacular auroras like this one
Check spaceweather.com for latest cosmic weather reports.
|| General || § ¶Vacation Slides Arrived!
The seven rolls of 36x Fujichrome came back yesterday. Now I need to sort out the good pictures and throw out the bad. Then I have to scan the good ones in and create some web pages. Sounds like a weekend project if there ever was one.Anyway, here is a preview:
This is Buttle Lake, in Strathcona Provincial Park, near the center of Vancouver Island
|| Art || § ¶Katchor on Jet Lag
For everyone travelling across time zones this summer, a dose of Ben Katchor is required:
linkFrom www.katchor.com
|| General || § ¶World's in Chaos - So Make Wine!
Early this morning we got together with some of our neighbors to press and transfer into two oak barrels 1500 lbs of crushed Shiraz grapes that have been fermenting in neighbor Bob's basement in large plastic buckets.
Here Bob deals with the mash. Great time had by all. Now the wine in barrels will sit for as long as it takes.
More pictures.
|| General || § ¶Working with Suede
Victoria spent some quality time with Suede today at the stables in the Berkeley hills. It was very hot! But the horse (and Victoria) seemed to enjoy the attention.
|| default || § ¶Suede is Here!
My wife, Victoria, has inherited her late brother John's 12-year old Arabian, Suede. And Suede has just arrived at the Grizzly Peak Stables in the Berkeley hills from Chatsworth, near L.A. He looks pretty happy, with Victoria and granddaughter Hazel.
