I have a desire to see whimsical things expressed as graphs.

When I was teaching Music Theory, we studied a lot of Bach. This was really a good deal for me, since I really enjoy his music, but many of my students thought differently. “Bach sucks!” from the back of the class. And if it wasn’t Bach, it was something else; country, rap, jazz. I’ve even heard rumors that some people don’t care for classical music.

Whenever I encountered a “Bach sucks” moment, I challenged the student to tell me why. Why does Bach suck? What is it about this music that causes the suck? Rarely did I get an answer, and that’s not surprising because it’s a truly hard question. Going that one or two steps beyond the initial reaction isn’t a place that most people want to go.*

It’s not that one doesn’t have a right to an opinion, but a better understanding of why one doesn’t like something goes a long way. I like to think of it as informed dislike.

*This tends to open up a whole can of worms afterwards, if one pursues further. If I say that rap sucks because of the high pitched glissando loops and the misogynistic lyrics, then we can certainly find a piece of rap music that doesn’t contain those elements. What about then? What sucks now? It’s a very hard thing to dismiss an entire genre with informed dislike.

I took yesterday molasses-slow, and it was delightful. Now it’s time to reorient. The next set of work deadlines are weeks and weeks away, and there are a number of other deadlines to be set, now that Langue is finally finished.

Musically, I’m in Mad Scientist mode, experimenting. At some point I’m going to release another album, which I expect will consist of 50% material posted here and 50% brand spanking new tracks. This is so far down the tracks yet I don’t know the name of the station, and has a lot to do with how the experiments go.

I’ve been enjoying Vlad Spears’ recent updates on his ongoing Max/MSP projects. Artist weblogs (or artists with weblogs?) are fabulous; and serve a very similar function to the old graduate school composers forum, only with 100% less pretension. More accurately it’s like the meetups at the local pub after the composers forum, only (sadly) with 100% less beer. Knowing that other people are being creative creates a place where creativity flourishes.

No rest for the wicked. Well, maybe six hour’s rest; for this morning we were on the banks of the Charles a 5 kilometer jog — the New Charles River Run. Varia has been running up a storm these past few months, and I’ve been running with her, strengthening up my left ankle. So I convinced her to do this race, and she convinced me to run it at my own pace.

It was hot, way hotter than I expected. Hovering a bit above ninety degrees with no wind, at 9am. Trying to escape the heat, I bolted out of the gate, passing this person, passing that person, until after a while there was nobody left that I really was able to pass; my body was saying enough, and at that point I realized that I was running quite a bit faster than I had thought. Add in the heat, and I was feeling bad. Not my best race.

Well, it was my best race. The clock read 22:56 as I crossed the finish line, putting me at a 7:23 pace, a faster than my last race in 2004 (was it that long ago?). I flopped down on the grass, poured water in equal parts on my head in my mouth, and cooled down while I waited for V to finish. She wrote up her own race experiences. I’m so proud of her!

My personal lessons learned are that my feet are not totally broken, and that training in hot weather for a hot race is a good thing. And that I need new shoes.

EDIT 6/26/05 2:54pm: Race results are up already! Official timing was 23:00, a 7:24 pace. I’ll take it.

It’s done! The performance last night went very well, and was enjoyed by the small but enthusiastic crowd. Credits to Mr Cela for a fantastic performance, not only of my piece but the entire program.

A few pictures, snapped by V:

Jeffrey during the sound check.

Orlando during the video check.

Me, the amazing composer Hillary Zipper, who had a piece on the program, and Orlando Cela.

Travelog is now available for sale at the iTunes Music Store. This isn’t groundbreaking, but it is neat! Hooray for digital distribution.

As a note, I’m a bit saddened by the way that their scanning came out. Look how much more colorful and vibrant my image is!

After so so many days of Langue, I felt the need to do something quick and dirty. And so is produced O Driving, an uptempo piece using all sorts of interlocking percussive instruments with a few pads underneath. Notice the lack of a fade out!

O Driving (download, 4.3 MB)

As always, there’s lots more in the Gallery. Now it’s time to collapse.

More Langue; Now we’re in business mode. The score came out really well after last night’s modest Kyrathon, and Orlando seemed to appreciate it. Here’s the entire thing, in super thumbnail mode — at full size it stretches 6 landscape pages.

Orlando came by this morning, first to take a very groggy me to the performance space and then to do run-throughs of the piece. The space is very nice, very intimate, and we’ve got some big white doors to project upon (for Dramatis Personae we had to project at very strange angles on the walls). We worked out a few kinks in the video during the three run-throughs, and it turns out that the piece is around 13′-15′.

All that’s left to do is the schlep on the day, and the performance itself.

Langue for bass flute and video is inspired by semiotics, the study of symbols, in particular by the work of French semiotician Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913). The piece explores the way that we as human beings construct meaning. We’re very good at this, and do it even when we probably shouldn’t.

7:26 pm. Ready to rumble.

Here goes!

8:39 pm. I love coffee!

Koto Music of Japan wafts through the air. I’m gonna git you little transitions! Considering notating the score in a completely new way.

9:35 pm. Xaire!

One visual left. Working on the score.

10:36 pm. Well then.

Considering take-out sushi. Wondering if Orlando is going to kill me for this new score. If so, I’ll leave a remarkably festive score for posterity (it’s being done in OmniGraffle).

11:33 pm. I’m a little teapot!

Mmmm, sushi. One more visual to do, which is of course being incredibly stubborn.

12:47 am. Aces!

And we’re done.

I don’t like cutting it close, but life isn’t giving me the endless studio time I sent in a request for.

I have all the pieces. I know what needs to be done. All I need is time.

I summon the spirits of late-night Kinkos, of desperate deadlines, of needless orchestral doublings. Of all-hours diner food, of bottomless coffee cups. Shambu Bharti Baba naked covered with ash! Khaki Baba fat-bellied, mad with the dogs! I here declare a Kyrathon. It starts tonight. It ends when it’s done.

These days I get one live performance every other year. I’m sure that these occurrences will be more frequent now that I’ve once again set my hooks into The Art, but what’s true is that this Saturday will be the first time since May 2003 that I’ve had a performer and an audience.

If you’d like to be a part of the audience and are in the Boston area, you can come down to the Brookline Music School at 8pm. Feel free to contact me if you need more details.

I have a what could be considered a bad habit. If I hear enough people tell me that I have to watch something, I become for some reason resolute to never ever ever listen to it. This seems to affect the most with film, but now and then music is proscribed. Sometimes, of course, I’m just flat out wrong in my pig-headedness.

I’m not sure how Radiohead got on to the “you just have to listen to this” list, but I wish that it hadn’t. I’ve had a copy of OK Computer for ages now, but never listened to it up until a few days ago. But it’s Kid A that is really doing it for me. As a whole album it hangs together in ways that make me tingle with delight.

Of course, there are a few people who when they say “you have to listen to this” I drop what I’m doing and listen. These people tend to recommend bands from (to me) obscure corners of the musical world, but once they make it into my sound world I can’t imagine myself without them. Robb Monn is one of my best and truest guides in this world, and having brought me The Sea and Cake and Insides among others, he pointed me to the 10 piece Norwegian ensemble Jaga Jazzist. It’s acoustic, it’s electronic, and then it doesn’t really matter. They’re doing amazing things with sound, making it rich, complex, and toe-tapping all at once.

Then there are groups that take a while to warm to. I wasn’t really excited by Autechre last year, but I’m in the mood for it right now. Tri Repetae++ and Confield get played once a day, at least.

Busy! I’m a ball of busy hurtling toward this time next week, steeling myself for a big plate of work on three fronts, including a probable Kyrathon. The piece is coming along, but snagging in a few places, as a rehearsal tonight highlighted. Still time to work out the kinks.

I’m working on Langue. The first half of the morning I was getting the flute part notated, and currently I’m making sure I can do what I want for the second half in Jitter before I work out how to notate it.

The time is last night. I go out, without purpose or destination. The idea is to gather experience, if nothing else the experience of wandering around the city with no purpose or destination.

There’s a sense of thickness to the present; everything is a potential door or a window or a road to the next place. Strange things catch the attention, a flickering porch light, a stone owl looming Athena-like from a third story balcony. Instructions on how to play ‘Marco Polo’ in a shop window. Portents.

I go into a few bars, sat with people wrapped up with their own business. I walk through shopping districts and neighborhoods, passed by people on their way to or from somewhere. The city seems designed for that, for knowing where you are going. I feel as if it tolerates me, but nothing more.