I never know what I'm going to write when I start these things. I get a cup of tea and just start typing.
I'll start with improvisation. Every morning, before I brush my teeth or even have a glass of water, before I'm really awake, I start up the digital recorder and start playing the keyboard, for between five and 45 minutes. Whatever happens is what happens. I try to have some chordal integrity, some melody, and that's it. I'd like to have more mental stuff going on when I improvise, but for now that's it. If I think too much I kill everything creative. It's like fishing - sometimes you don't catch anything, and sometimes you reel in a big fish.
Next - RazorLame.I load the mp3 into RazorLame and convert to WAV. It's really reliable, and it's free.
Then, Adobe Audition. I compress the WAV file (the Classical setting) and run eq on it, save it, and it's done. Back to RazorLame, where I convert it back to mp3, and it's ready for long-term storage and listening.
Today I installed the Amazing Midi program on one of my XP machines. I converted a bunch of the files back to WAV using RazorLame, and used Amazing Midi to convert them to midi sequences. I listened to some of them. They've been quantized, which means that all of the rhythmic grace has been taken out of them. But, the ideas can still be extracted with a music notation program, and developed.
What I haven't done yet is to install Keykit, and use it to run a Markov chain analysis on the midi files. That's next.
And, after that, I need to get ahold of a copy of Sibelius. That's my music notation program of choice. I could load midi sequences, Keykit Markov chains, or hook a keyboard up to the computer to improvise directly and develop any of these into compositions.
I just need to devote a corner of my house to this, and the requisite time. And break out that Samuel Adler orchestration book and start reading it again.
I really want to compose again. I 52 for Chris'sakes. I'm tired of putting this off. I've got no shortage of ideas.
Friday, November 16, 2012
Thursday, November 8, 2012
regression
I guess I can only improve my life so much before it starts slipping back. I stopped doing yoga over a week ago, because my back hurts too much. I lost my concentration in one pose, and that was it.
My network studies are getting nowhere fast, because I can't stand not playing music. When I was making a lot of progress, back in '09, I wasn't playing at all, and was unhappy about it. Now I'm playing quite a bit, but not doing networking. Oh well, anyone working on a CCNA has no life, and anyone with a life isn't working on a CCNA, or has a heck of a lot of free time.
What else? I gained three pounds last week. Binging on chocolate Halloween night, eating starchy vegan food Thursday, and eating my work crew's food on Friday. By Sunday it was all over. I'm trying to reform my ways.
And now for the positive stuff. That vegan food Thursday was enjoyed in the presence of Julia Butterfly Hill, the famous activist who lived in a tree for two years to protest logging in the Pacific Northwest. She came up to visit Denton and various What's Your Tree people, one of whom is my wife, who was there too. This was after a visit to Cardo's farm, which I was able to videotape, and before a talk at an art studio near the Square, which I was also able to do. Very cool. It'll probably take me six months to edit this project.
JBH has gone so far out of her comfort zone to do something that was important to her, that we are practically defined by our failure to leave our respective zones to make our statement. She has paid in expensive coin for what she believes in, and many of us look rather contemptible by comparison. At least that's my attitude since I had dinner with her.
JBH has gotten into my head in an unusual way. I first made a video of her initial Denton visit back in '07, and it took months to edit. The event itself was wonderful - she spoke at UNT, and the evening was sponsored by UNT, the City of Denton Libraries, and Denton ISD. I had a crew (which is rare for me) and I got three video sources and four audio. It took months to edit, during which time I stared at her and listened to the wisdom she had painfully accululated during two years of isolation atop a redwood tree named Luna.
At first, she seemed very beautiful to me. Sexy, young, graceful, with a long neck, long black hair, and a beautiful streak of grey appearing from the top of her forehead. I'm guessing she was 33 at the time. But the more I listened to her, and absorbed her knowledge of spiritual things, integrity, and her treetop view of the sickness of the world and our society, the more like an ordinary person she looked. Then, after a year had passed, when I'd long abandoned the project (finishing was not an option - I could've spent years on it), and I'd forgetten many of her words, I looked at my edit again, and there she was, beautiful, again.
So here's the kernel of that phenomenon, which someone had to tell me (I can't take credit for this insight) - where you see beauty, there you see your heart's desire. My desire was not for her, but for her wisdom. She seemed beautiful to me because her wisdom made her look that way. Big lesson for me.
At the dinner last week, I didn't talk much with her. I'd spent so much time looking at her in my video editing software that it was almost dissonant to see her in person, in real life. It was hard to make eye contact with her. Oh well, I hope she wasn't put off by me. My wife & kid were really charmed by her, during the evening session, and she was kind and genuine with both of them.
My network studies are getting nowhere fast, because I can't stand not playing music. When I was making a lot of progress, back in '09, I wasn't playing at all, and was unhappy about it. Now I'm playing quite a bit, but not doing networking. Oh well, anyone working on a CCNA has no life, and anyone with a life isn't working on a CCNA, or has a heck of a lot of free time.
What else? I gained three pounds last week. Binging on chocolate Halloween night, eating starchy vegan food Thursday, and eating my work crew's food on Friday. By Sunday it was all over. I'm trying to reform my ways.
And now for the positive stuff. That vegan food Thursday was enjoyed in the presence of Julia Butterfly Hill, the famous activist who lived in a tree for two years to protest logging in the Pacific Northwest. She came up to visit Denton and various What's Your Tree people, one of whom is my wife, who was there too. This was after a visit to Cardo's farm, which I was able to videotape, and before a talk at an art studio near the Square, which I was also able to do. Very cool. It'll probably take me six months to edit this project.
JBH has gone so far out of her comfort zone to do something that was important to her, that we are practically defined by our failure to leave our respective zones to make our statement. She has paid in expensive coin for what she believes in, and many of us look rather contemptible by comparison. At least that's my attitude since I had dinner with her.
JBH has gotten into my head in an unusual way. I first made a video of her initial Denton visit back in '07, and it took months to edit. The event itself was wonderful - she spoke at UNT, and the evening was sponsored by UNT, the City of Denton Libraries, and Denton ISD. I had a crew (which is rare for me) and I got three video sources and four audio. It took months to edit, during which time I stared at her and listened to the wisdom she had painfully accululated during two years of isolation atop a redwood tree named Luna.
At first, she seemed very beautiful to me. Sexy, young, graceful, with a long neck, long black hair, and a beautiful streak of grey appearing from the top of her forehead. I'm guessing she was 33 at the time. But the more I listened to her, and absorbed her knowledge of spiritual things, integrity, and her treetop view of the sickness of the world and our society, the more like an ordinary person she looked. Then, after a year had passed, when I'd long abandoned the project (finishing was not an option - I could've spent years on it), and I'd forgetten many of her words, I looked at my edit again, and there she was, beautiful, again.
So here's the kernel of that phenomenon, which someone had to tell me (I can't take credit for this insight) - where you see beauty, there you see your heart's desire. My desire was not for her, but for her wisdom. She seemed beautiful to me because her wisdom made her look that way. Big lesson for me.
At the dinner last week, I didn't talk much with her. I'd spent so much time looking at her in my video editing software that it was almost dissonant to see her in person, in real life. It was hard to make eye contact with her. Oh well, I hope she wasn't put off by me. My wife & kid were really charmed by her, during the evening session, and she was kind and genuine with both of them.
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