Titles bore me

Maybe I'm not cut out to be a blogger.  I find few instances where I feel a need to say something that can be put down in writing.  Most of what I want to say, I say out loud whether anyone's listening or not.  Perhaps if I force myself to keep up on this I'll be able to write about more little things, like I'm about to do …

Musically, things are going quite nicely, as usual.  In just two short weeks I managed to start and complete a short piano trio (piano, violin, and cello).  I wanted to expand it, but Youngmi convinced me to leave it where it is and follow it with another movement.  What I just composed will be read and recorded a week from next Wednesday, so I'll be able to show it to you then.  Why do we have a verb for presenting a sight but not for presenting a sound?  I won't ever be able to show you my music - I can play it, but that's not what I'm trying to do.  I'm trying to "listen" you my newest piano trio.  That is, I'm trying to create a situation in which it will be possible for you to listen to the movement; a movement that involves no physical motion except for the sound waves hitting your ear drums.  Whew!  Music can be so complicated sometimes.  I like what Frank Zappa once said about writing music:

  A composer is someone who goes around forcing his will

          on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance

          of unsuspecting musicians.

We're a manipulative bunch.

In other news between the frequencies of 20 and 20,000 Hz, I'm really getting into this sound design course I'm taking.  It's not that I'm suddenly aspiring to be a Hollywood sound editor like Frank Warner or my professor, but it wouldn't be a bad life.  I spent a good chunk of the morning in a Foley booth trying to recreate the sound of Mrs. Doubtfire frantically slopping on perfume and falling off a chair.  It was great!

I know most people don't give any noises not considered musical a second thought, but I do.  I suppose I've always paid attention to sounds.  Now I"m starting to hear the spaces I'm in.  I don't just meant the clinking of a subway train rolling down the tracks or the ear-splitting squeal of worn brake pads as it arrives at a station.  I'm hearing the way these sounds interact with the environment and with each other and even with no acute noises I'm beginning - just beginning - to hear empty spaces.  I won't be dogmatic about my view (again, a linguistic bias towards sight over sound) and demand others feel the same way.  I couldn't care less about how  other people hear the world, I already know sound is a very important sense to most.  I'm not gonna get all Cagean about it either and try to classify all audible waves as music.  It is what it is, and I like it.

Here's Dani and me dressed as ceiling fans.  Our t-shirts say "Go Ceiling!"  (Get it?)