February 2006 - Posts

• Back 2 School

  While I haven't formally been accepted back into school I did successfully submit my application for readmission and also made successful contact with my major professor who will welcome me back with open arms. I'm not sure why the head of the program wouldn't approve my readmission application although I did used to fall asleep in his class. And then, to justify it, would go in and tell him how boring it was. Damn I was arrogant back then. I also got a nasty email from my publisher's assistant saying they needed more songs or they'd pull all the ones I have up there. I'm tempted just to tell them to go to hell but in the small world of steel drum music I'm certain that would burn a bridge. Apparently the reason is because they have to keep adding and removing things from the website. I'm not a programmer but if they want to "hide" a piece that isn't ready yet I'm pretty darn sure they can just <!-- Piece to hide --> it out. And that took me all of one minute to do. Now that I look at their site I can't help but notice it's all in HTML with tacky, stolen javascript hunks so maybe they don't realize they can just comment things out. Oh well. Posted Feb 28 2006, 02:25 PM by greysanatomy with no comments

• Death and Transfiguration

  My first really powerful musical experience was when I went to hear our local community college play Strauss' Death and Transfiguration. Without a large pool of classical music (if it wasn't Elvis it wasn't on in my house) to draw from I was totally blown away by their performance. Not to say it was bad; I don't really remember it but surely since I've turned into a snob now I would scoff at their childish performance. That was the day I knew I was supposed to be a composer. Now I just have to write a piece that good. No sweat. Posted Feb 27 2006, 03:15 PM by greysanatomy with no comments

• Dropout

  For you loyal readers (0) that don't know (100% of you), I never formally finished my second masters degree. After my first one I couldn't find a job so I re-enrolled for a second one so I didn't have to face the cold grip of reality. Stupid, stupid decision. I quit about a month before I would have finished simply because I ran out of money. Seriously, I just flat out ran out of money and became a desperate housewives junkie. And now, as I mentally prepare myself for the rigors of rejoining academic life in the next couple years I've decided if Yale and Michigan are going to accept me then they probably don't want to look at a black hole on my CV. And that's that. Posted Feb 26 2006, 11:30 PM by greysanatomy with no comments

• Harmony

  I honestly and truly believe that if you're capable of singing harmony you somehow got that skill before you turned 12. And if by your 13th birthday you couldn't do it you'd never be able to do it. I'm not sure having musical parents is required but surely it can't hurt. Since I come from a relatively non-musical family I'm not surprised I can't do it. Lots of people I can know can do it but my friend Chris has crazy skills in doing it. Most people that can do it can sing 3rds and 6ths with no problem as they contour along with a melody but Chris can not only sing counter-motion but he has no fear of dissonance or moving quartally. It's amazing. Too bad he's not going into music. Posted Feb 26 2006, 06:39 AM by greysanatomy with no comments

• Dog Songs

  My girlfriend and I have two dogs. One is mine and one is hers although since we've been together for about three years I feel as though I have a minority stake in the ownership of her adopted german shepard Abby. greysmusic, my adopted pit bull mix, will always be 100% mine, though. I don't know about you pet owners but I sing at the dogs all the time. The songs are usually really short, really stupid and typically don't make any sense. The lyrics are trite at best but that doesn't stop me from belting it out. Here are some songs: greysmusic and The Ab My two favorite dogs One is black The other's red I told you they were dumb. If I'm in an ambitious mood I'll whip out the guitar and play along while I'm singing or tap out a 2-3 clave pattern on the table with some sort of cascara if a spoon is handy. When time is tight though there's the reprise of the song: greysmusic and Abby My two favorite doggies First off, I know Abby and doggies don't rhyme though I try my damndest to make it sound that way. I also know it's not a true reprise beacuse the melody is totally different even though the lyrics are pretty close. Now, onto the Theme and Variation: When Jamie isn't around I sing it this way: Who's that black and tan dog? It's... Ab Ab And she's my dog! However when Jamie IS around I have to adapt the lyrics to something like Who's that black and tan dog? It's... Ab Ab And she's my other dog! You might not think that adding the word "other" would be that problematic but it really is. It throws the whole pattern off. greysmusic's version of the song is a little more simple: greysmusic greysmusic greysmusic greysmusic greysmusic greysmusic greysmusic You're my dog If I had the ability to to notate that you'd see it's not quite as repetitive as it might seem just look at the text. Haha, I just said "text" as though my dog-song were a Schubert lied. If you those songs were simple you'll be even more shocked by the last song up for display: greysmusic the dog You're my dog And your name is greysmusic Talk about a song that conveys nothing--that's it. The well was really dry for that one. I guess the good news is that you can easily make it about any other dog, provided his/her name is two syllables. And there it is. The worst blog post in the history of Blogiversity. Posted Feb 24 2006, 04:35 PM by greysanatomy with no comments

• You know what I love?

  You know what I love? That's right nothing but The Language Guy told me I wasn't allowed to write any more posts that started You know what I hate? so today is going to be about something I love. I love riding in the car and only having like three songs at my disposal. That way, regardless of the length of the trip, I can just totally get into those songs and not have to worry about being bothered by hearing a song I'm not 100% into at the moment. Unfortunately, my passengers seem to hate this. I don't know why. You would think that they'd be appreciative of the fact that hearing a song 150 times in a day would give them the opportunity to intimately learn about a song. Instead they get pissed; even if the like the song! Morons. I know people say that variety is the spice of life but what if you REALLY like one spice. Like salt. People put salt on everything. Why use oregano and rosemary when you can just use the all-purpose salt every day. You oregno and rosemary eaters are really missing out. Seriously. Posted Feb 23 2006, 09:28 PM by greysanatomy with no comments

• Shut up and teach

  Last night I was telling the story of my teaching a summer camp for middle and high school students. I had my masters in composition at the time (I think) but I was the only instructor in that field who was teaching music theory. All the rest were either undergrad elementary education (stupid) or choral education (even more stupid) plus one masters candidate in choral education. For the most part I kept to myself since I had nothing in common with them (I knew how to teach and had a basic understand of music). One day my middle school students were being especially unruly so I convinced them we should split into teams and play a game. The game was dumb; writing scales and arpeggios on the board as fast as they could. They were into it though and everything was going along fine. Suddenly the choral education masters student came bursting into the classrom and demanded to know why we were being so loud. But first the 45 year ogre said, "Who's in charge here?". I found that pretty insulting since I was about 12 years older than any of the kids in the class and (I told you they were really stupid) the one sitting at the teachers desk wearing a shirt and tie. Livid I went over to him and told him to get the hell out of my classroom. When I said hell all my students giggled or went "oooh". He continued to lecture me on how he had taught in public schools for almost 20 years and how I didn't know what discipline was blah blah blah blah. I told him to get out immediately before there was trouble (whatever I meant by that since I didn't know karate at the time and even if I did I probably would have made a bad impression on my young students by delivering a flying kick to this ***'s ample midsection). Anyway, he left. With about two minutes until the end of class the director of the camps (and the major professor of Mr. Assface) came in and told all my students to leave because they had to talk to me about what happened. None of the kids got up. It was touching. But then they started to make up crazy stories about how crazy the other guy was and embellished his insanity to make me look like a hero. Eventually they left. The director didn't believe their lies and was totally going off on my teaching, how what we were doing was inappropriate (doing scale reviews in a music theory class...wow, I should have been hung), etc. I eventually told him my name (we had never met until this point since he was obviously in the choral education field [and appropriately stupid]) and he was like, "weren't you the School of Music nominee for TA of the year last year?" I said yes and he left me alone. In your face! Posted Feb 22 2006, 03:25 PM by greysanatomy with no comments

• You know what I hate? (#3)

  I hate it when people send you the lyrics of songs instead of real content to convey some bizzarro emotion they're feeling. I once got an email from an ex-girlfriend that only had the lyrics to Led Zeppelin's Tangerine. The email looked something like this: Measuring a summer's day, I only finds it slips away to grey, The hours, they bring me pain. Tangerine, Tangerine, Living reflections from a dream; I was her his love, she he was my queen king, And now a thousand years between. Thinking how it used to be, Does she he still remember times like these? To think of us again? And I do. I'm probably giving her HTML skills too much credit (knowing how to <strike> and all) but you get the idea. What's weird is that I really don't really associate that song with her at all. Sure, I learned it on the guitar during our tumultuous two year relationship but when I think of the song I think of one of my grad school girlfriends who used to joke the sliding guitar part sounded like someone squeezing a cat in time with the song. Ah, Kathy, those were the days. Anyway, the obvious intent of the email was to be like, "Hey, I know I'm married now to that guy I started dating a week after we broke up but I'm still totally hot for you." but she decided to let Robert Plant do it for her. Little does she know that now when I hear it I think of how crazy she was and how I had to bring her to a mental hospital as I left Milwaukee. Posted Feb 21 2006, 03:05 PM by greysanatomy with no comments

• You know what I hate? (#2)

  You know what I hate? People that teach music that can't play their instruments. I wouldn't want to be taught economics by someone who lost all their money in the stock market and I wouldn't want to be taught anything musical by anyone who couldn't play an instrument. The classic cop-out is that there's no need to know how to play anything if you're just going to be standing in front of a classroom lecturing on music theory, history, compositon or education. But if you can't play how are you supposed to go through what your students need from you? You don't have to be a virtuoso but when I was in graduate school I only knew of ONE Ph.D candidate would could actually play his instrument at a graduate level. I knew two that would have failed a sophomore recital yet they still got their doctoral degrees even though there was supposed to be a competency test to make sure you could play at an incoming-masters level. Funny how those things get looked over by professors who are equally incompetent at actually making music. But who cares about MAKING music when you can just talk about it instead. Posted Feb 20 2006, 03:53 PM by greysanatomy with no comments

• Music in our Schools

  When politicians and other scum-eating blowhards talk about wrastling down the cost of educating our youth it seems the first thing to be cut are the fine arts. God forbid we cut gym because as we all know, 99.8% of all Americans are morbidly obese and having a semester of bowling or pickleball is the only thing from keeping that 0.2% where they are. I think when the subject of music getting cut comes up the basic mindset is something along the lines of "Do we need more musicians?" Well no, we don't. There are plenty. But what's not taken into consideration is that people who perform in music do better in general. To take my small office as an example our .NET programmer played music throughout her education. Our PHP programmer played music throughout her education. Our financial manager played music throughout his education. Our Vice President of Business (oh, oh, that's me) played music throughout his education. Not too sure about our COO or CEO but even if they didn't the four of us who did make up the majority of our office. And we're all pretty damn smart. And pretty damn good at what we do. All I'm saying is that it's not a coincidence that we have jobs that require our brains. We should really look into cutting things like Economics and Government. The people with no musical talent all fill up those positions anyway. Posted Feb 20 2006, 04:46 AM by greysanatomy with no comments

• Free Mp3s!!

  Ok not really. That's just one of my many spam techniques. I have about 700 CDs and they're all in my dining room in two large stacks that tower of my weekly games of poker. I used to by lots of classical music CDs on eBay to build my collection but after a while you have to ask yourself how many copies of Beethoven 5 do you really need? Of course you want to hear a piece played by mulitple orchestras but is having the 1993 version by the Hells Gate Montana Community Orchestra's version really going to enrich your music life? Probably not. Starting today I'm going to start ripping all of these CDs to mp3s. It'll probably take a month or so but once it's done then maybe I'll have more incentive to start listening to them. Who wants to look through a sea of CDs to find some R.E.M. import to hear one stupid song when they can just make Google Desktop* look for it. (((* = Not the most current version of Google desktop; that one infringes waaaaay too much on your privacy. Whether their company slogan is Do No Evil or not until they change it to We Won't Steal Your Credit Card Information I'm not upgrading.))) Posted Feb 18 2006, 07:01 PM by greysanatomy with no comments

• One time at band camp...

  I'm not ashamed to admit it; you probably would have been able to guess as much anyway: I went to band camp. While I never did anything perverse with any instruments, I did manage to ruin about a week's worth of clothes. Since it was a three week camp that had only one laundry day I figured I'd save money by simply washing (but not drying) my clothes. Once my tighty whities were sparkling white I just tossed them in this plastic garbage bag and went off to the Wal-Mart to spend my "newfound" money on some grape Bubblicious. Foolishly, I did not come across my bag o' wet clothes for another couple days and in that time the moist air of central Wisconsin had taken its toll. Alas. I dinstinctly recall being in love with a violin player from Paducah, KY. She had the sweetest voice and I had figured that if she had come all the way to Egg Harbor, WI we were destined to be together forever. I'm not sure if it was my chiseled physique or my stylish glasses or my deep, melodic voice but we fell deeply and profoundly in love. Oh, wait a minute. Let me try that again. I'm not sure if it was my impressive stature of 5'3"/100lb or my 30 year old, 4" thick glasses, or my helium-without-the-balloon voice but she didn't even realize I existed. One day we played football and this tall Asian kid named Kevin tackled me way too hard. He was one of those assholes who was just as big of a nerd as you were but wanted, desperately wanted, to be thought of as cool. Anyway, it's not like we had pads or referees at our band/orchestra camp so when he tackled me from behind (clipping) he also gave my face an extra rub in the dirt (unsportsmanlike conduct). Naturally when I got up I tried to punch him. It landed safely in the folds of his too-big flannel shirt and he walked away. Now, though, he was my sworn enemy. Since Kevin and I lived in the same one-room cabin on the band/orchestra campus I made it my goal for the third week to make his life a living hell. I'd steal his music and throw it away when he went off to fraternize with the nerd-girls. I'd stealthily follow behind him when he went to shower then flush all urinals when he started singing. I even reported him for creeping out the girls dorm late one night when in reality he was fast asleep in his pre-Tommy Hillfiger PJs. In my section there were five of us: the instructor (some woman), some grad student from some tiny Christian College no one has ever heard of, a college student, me and some other higher schooler. The grad student was from Russia and her name was Ingrid. She claimed to be a badass marimba player but since we didn't have a marimba she tried to impress us by using four brass mallets on the bells. Nerd. Behind her back I called Ingrid the Imbred Invalid even though her face wasn't contorted enough to imbred (nor could she play the banjo) and all of her limbs worked fine enough to prove she wasn't an invalid either. I thought it was clever at the time. My only "friend" was this kid named Ari. He was a red-headed violist from Chicago and would not, ever, under any circumstance shut up about playing in the Chicago Youth Symphony. I somehow came home and discovered a pair of his underwear with my clothes. I wrote him a letter (email was just science fiction in 1993) asking him if he wanted them back but he never replied. I think my mom thought I liked boys for about a year after that until I started dating the sluttist girl in my high school. Score! Posted Feb 17 2006, 02:09 PM by greysanatomy with no comments

• You know what I hate?

  You know what I hate? When people say they like all types of music. It's simply not true. When I taught I'd always take the first day to make everyone introduce themselves and tell the class a group they loved and a group they hated. For me it's easy: I love Led Zepplin and I hate U2. Some of my students seemed to have a harder time..."I love Chopin but I hate...uhm, rap". No you don't. You can't hate all of one genre. Sorry. If you do you shouldn't be allowed to be a musician. You can't tell me Busta Rhymes does not kick ass. He does. Period. If you can't appreciate Johnny Cash how can I trust you, oh beloved student, to trust what I have to say? If you clearly cannot discern between good music and bad music how the hell am I supposed to get you to understand how music works? The only thing worse than someone who hates a whole genre is some who loves a whole genre. "Oh, I hate Janis Joplin but I love classic rock." No! No no no! Blind love is more dangerous than blind hate because you'll never be able to find "wrong" things with music you love. You'll let it slide and that's no good. Music is filled with love and hate; if it wasn't there'd be no reason to write it in the first place. As a musician you need to be able to feel the pulls of both and I will always wonder about the musical integrity of people who feel only one (or neither). Posted Feb 16 2006, 09:22 PM by greysanatomy with no comments