When I checked the live video feeds on the CBC website and saw that there was going to be a beach volleyball match between Rogers/Dalhausser (USA) and Geor/Gia (GEO), I assumed it was a typo, as with their accidental use of "pantathlon" (what exactly would that consist of?). Not at all! When the Brazilian players Gomes and Terceiro took Georgian citizenship in order to play volleyball for that country, they chose Geor and Gia as competition nicknames. Ha! Where are Can and Ada?
It's worth pointing out that these live video feeds from the CBC website are great. An ad or two at the start, and then uninterrupted footage without commentary (at least for the events that aren't being broadcast on CBC television). It's just the raw video from the event. That's certainly a welcome change after watching a week's worth of Olympic coverage in the US on NMPBC, the National Michael Phelps Broadcasting Company. Mind you, CBC's coverage has become a little breathless and patriotic this year too.
I was in the Netherlands from the 22nd until the 30th of July. Ideally I would have produced a Minute of Music on the 31st, but between catching up with family, catching up with work, and general tiredness, there was no way it was going to happen. All of which explains why the eager listening audience has had to wait until today for this:
This month's opus weighs in at 1:19. It was thrown together
hastily, in an attempt simply to get something out there that I could
label "July" before the end of the month had retreated too far into
the past.
There's not much to say about it except that it's a blatant attempt
to rip off the style of David Holmes's background music in
Ocean's Eleven and Out of Sight. The obvious
element that's missing (aside from his much richer orchestrations)
is a snippet of witty dialogue at the beginning, spoken by George
Clooney. I tried to convince Nath to record a short Soderbergh-esque
exchange with me, but she rolled her eyes and told me to just put
it on the web already. Go ahead and picture Clooney and Brad Pitt
talking about stealing something.
As with
April's Minute, I made heavy use of sampled loops here. The shaker,
the congas, and obviously the guitars are all samples. I layered
enough sound on top of that (drum kit, organ, flute, sax, bass, etc.)
to feel like there's some "value added" here.
It's fun to make up random drum fills.
One person who shall remain nameless actually complained this morning
that there was no Minute yet. It's nice to know you care. *Sniff*
I'm travelling again in August, but mid-month. Hopefully I'll have enough
time in the second half of the month to put together another Minute.
Thanks for listening!
It's probably worth mentioning that as of the beginning of this month, I have successfully ascended the ranks. I woke up on Canada Day tenured and promoted to Associate Professor. I, uh, didn't feel any different (I didn't even remember until late in the afternoon). There were no official memos or emails, all the important communications having taken place months before. I'm not sure what I was expecting, really. A parade? Should I have woken up and suddenly felt more pompous? (To this, my former student responded, "How would we know the difference?".)
No, aside from job security, the big changes to my career are a
decrease in take-home pay and an increase in responsibility.
The pay decrease stems from the fact that although my salary doesn't
change at all, tenured faculty pay significantly higher dues to the
Faculty Association (our collective bargaining unit). Mind you, I
believe the dues are tax deductable. As for the increase in responsibility,
I've been asked to chair a committee this year. It's a committee with
a clear mandate, a fixed schedule of events throughout the year, and
plenty of opportunities for failure. It
requires the cooperation and volunteer hours of many faculty and staff
in the department, too. All in all, a significant amount of fairly
high-profile responsibility. Oh dear, I think my fight-or-flight
reflex just kicked in. Damn.
Of course, it's a tremendous relief to have the existential burden of
tenure lifted from my shoulders. My case was never certain, and
its successful completion is a real vindication of my frivolous research
agenda and atrocious work ethic. I will accept this mandate, and
continue to toil on in pursuit of the famed
Ig Nobel prize,
surely the most prestigious award in my area.
After spending a few days earlier this month at a workshop in southern Hungary, I arrived in Budapest at around noon on Wednesday, with the rest of the day to spend exploring the city. I was to fly out of Ferihegy (BUD) the next morning. One of the workshop organizers lives in Budapest, and was kind enough to offer me a room for the night. His wife is a midwife, and she runs a clinic in Buda that is indistinguishable from an apartment except that it has four bathrooms and photographs of women giving birth on the walls.
He also kindly arranged for me to picked up at the Budapest train station, driven to the clinic and given the (only) key: a most hospitable way to be welcomed into an unfamiliar city. The only unknown was that I would need to coordinate with them later in the day -- a friend who was also at the workshop was staying at the clinic, and I would need to be there when he arrived. Coordination is difficult given that I don't own a mobile phone (a fact that leads me to feel increasingly backwards when traveling in Europe), but I wrote down some phone numbers and said I'd call from a pay phone.
I spent the afternoon exploring Budapest. I walked along Andrássy
út to Heroes' Square, considered the fine art museum (but rejected it
because of the high cost of admission), took the subway back and visited
the Great Synagogue (wow). I then planned to head back to the river, see
the Parliament building, and walk back towards the old bridge. Alas, by
that time it was pouring rain. I walked around the Parliament briefly,
then abandoned my plans and decided to head back to the Moskva tér
subway station and call my contacts.
As I had feared, this was where my plans went awry. I have a bit of a
mental block when it comes to using phones. I can handle North American
phones because I grew up with them. But with foreign phones I expect to
become confused. How much money? Which digits do I dial? Pathetic, I
know. Call it my Achilles' Heel. Needless to
say I was completely unable to reach my contact, no matter which combination
of his phone number's digits I dialled. After about fiften minutes of
trying I shrugged my shoulders, gave up, and resolved simply to wait at the
clinic until they arrived.
It was at this point that a woman walked up to me and asked if I needed
help. I initially took her for a nun in a black robe. Then I realized
that she was wearing a hijab, not a wimple. In another moment
recognition set in, and I realized that she had also been at the workshop
a few days before! I remembered that she was a native Hungarian who had
converted to Islam. Not only that, but at the workshop she had approached
me to tell me that she knew my work from my website and was a big fan (!).
Needless to say, she came to my rescue. We reached my contact on her
mobile phone, and we established that they hadn't even left for Budapast
from the workshop yet -- they were hours away. With nothing to do, I planned to grab a
bite to eat at a nearby mall and then call it a night. But she told me
that she happened to work in a small Pakistani restaurant in the
neighbourhood -- indeed, she had been on her way there when she ran into me.
Was I interested in having dinner there? Sure, why not! I ended up taking
the bus with her to the restaurant, and disembarked at the same stop I
would have used to return to the clinic! My room for the night was
in sight from the front door of the restaurant, and less than a block away.
I stayed and had a lovely dinner of saag paneer and naan, all the while
chatting with my rescuer and the restaurant's owner about art and
architecture. Among other fun facts, I learned at the Mughals had built
a secret tunnel hundreds of kilometers long from Delhi to Lahore, to allow
them to travel undetected (note to self: find out more about this).
She even refused to let me pay at the end of the meal, saying I was her
guest. Sated after a wonderful evening, I then retired to the clinic
to await my friends. They showed up hours later, just in time for me to
thank them and wish them a good night.
All in all, a surprising set of coincidences conspired
to bring my Hungarian trip to very cheerful, almost giddy conclusion.
Hopefully I'll see my rescuer again when I return to Hungary in 2010.
To keep up the trend of reporting total length, this month's song comes
in a shade longer than May's: 1:50. And now, because midnight is quickly
approaching, I offer a few scattered notes:
This month didn't offer a lot of time for music making. I was away
in Europe for two weeks starting mid-month, and had to prepare for
the trip in the days before I left. I really only had the past week
to play with Reason, and failed to find any time at all until today.
This piece was created from scratch in a few sessions beginning this
morning.
I'm pleased to say that this one is entirely new, not based on any
previous doodles. That probably shows -- it doesn't do very much.
It also follows a fairly standard pattern from my early days of playing
with synths: construct some rhythm and bass, then lay down lots of
sixteenth notes on top of it.
My only thought going in was to achieve a kind of open, airy sound.
Compare, for example, with the Sting song "It's Probably Me", as
it appears on the Lethal Weapon III soundtrack (not the
version on Ten Summoner's Tales). That grew into a larger
piece that included ideas from Zero 7 and a few other places.
Nath complained in the late afternoon that it shouldn't take me
seven hours to create one minute of music. I agree! Seven hours
isn't nearly long enough -- it should take about three times as
long to create a truly good minute. Well, maybe I'll achieve that
next month (though I've got another weeklong trip in Europe coming
up).
Well, that's one more month's promise kept, but just barely. I had better
post this and start the mental gears turning for July. Thanks for
listening.
So, another probe landed on Mars last week. I watched the live feed of the landing on NASA's website. Of course, "live feed" has a funny meaning in this context. We've got a long way to go technologically before we can watch an actual landing (and even then the feed will necessarily be delayed by a few minutes!). The coverage was of a control room full of engineers, mostly staring intently at their monitors, and occasionally cheering when they passed the various mission milestones. There was quite a lot of cheering, actually, given that the landing was so perfectly executed.
Just as when the Rovers sent back their first photos of the Martian surface,
I get an incredible rush from seeing the Phoenix's images of the landscape.
On the one hand, they're utterly boring, as endless and featureless as the
most mundane landscapes on Earth. But that's obviously not the point. I
suppose part of the rush must come from the fact that this is virgin territory;
although not every little bit of the Earth's surface has been witnessed
firsthand, in principle we've got a pretty good handle on the place
(OK, ocean floor notwithstanding). Also, we have an obligation to reach
as far outward from our small home as our technology and longevity as
a species will allow. Landing on Mars is obviously a tiny step on the
cosmic scale, but it makes me itch for the next, and the next after that,
and so on. I sincerely hope to see humans land on Mars in my lifetime.
But I realized that there's something more to it for me, more of an aesthetic
response to these events. I don't know if I can do it justice, but I'll try.
See, for most of human history, Mars was a thing: a mere object,
whose properties we studied. But every time we send a proxy to land there,
Mars comes closer to being a place. For reasons I can't explain,
in my head a place is a very special kind of thing. It's a thing where
we can be. Those pictures from Phoenix tell me that Mars isn't
just a dot in the sky; it's a
place where I could theoretically stand and, you know, take a look around.
Yes, it's strange. But for some reason the notion of place has this special
meaning for me. For the same reason, we might wonder whether the moon is
losing its status as a place and reverting back to being a thing; it's been
too long since we've been there.
This distinction reminds me of the too-few times I've gone camping. I'll
hike into a campsite carrying a bag of nylon on my back. Once there,
I can turn that folded-up nylon into a shelter, again taking what was
previously a thing and revealing it to be a place.
Well, there you go. I suppose that if I were an artist, I would use this
sense of wonder to generate a series of paintings or sculptures that explore
the strange connection between things and places. Then I could use the
text above as my artist's statement. As it is, I'll just hope for more
wonderful scientific answers about the Martian surface, more tantalizing
questions, and many more missions.
Speaking of space, I tried watching a bit of Carl Sagan's Cosmos
again last night. I love watching it and him. He's got a very soothing
voice. Perhaps too soothing -- as with all previous attempts, I
fell asleep long before I got through the first episode. As a result, I
ended up sleeping for at least ten hours last night, which I suppose I
can't complain about. Some day in the future, I'll get through an entire
episode without falling asleep. Some morning in the future. Yeah.
Did I say minute? This bad boy tips the scales at 1:42. I'd like
to thank my two muses, Copy and Paste, for making this possible.
And now, some notes.
As with last month's OMoM, this is an old doodle that I had always
wanted to re-work (heck -- I've got a 20 year backlog to get through).
The rhythm and melody of the original sequence
were fine, but the sound was completely muffled. Unlike last
month, I actually went back and studied the old version to extract
the good bits.
I think I managed to get a pretty big sound, but I still want bigger.
That will take practice (and presumably more compression). I call
upon the spirit of Reznor! I expect he wouldn't use the orchestral
strings in the background, and would roughen up the lead. And I do
like the big triumphant ending, even if it's cheesy.
No canned loops this time; I programmed the drums myself.
I'm not sure what exactly to cite as the inspiration. If you pick
out the scale I'm using, you'll find it's the same one as Hava Nagilah.
There's clearly some NIN influence there. The rolling piano effects
in the second half are inspired by the Bowie song "The Heart's Filthy
Lesson" (also in an industrial style, incidentally, and produced by
Brian Eno).
The time signature is weird. I like weird time signatures.
Hey, it just occured to me that I never stated licensing rights for
this work (like it matters). I'll put up a Creative Commons notice
at some point. For now, it's for your private listening pleasure.
Please contact me if you want to put it on your compilation album or
play it at your wedding or something.
I didn't think I'd have time to do this one. Nath said I should just
forget about this month. But after making a big hoohah about it last
month, it would have been embarrassing to miss the second installment
(especially given that the first one was late). The whole point of this
exercise, after all, is to make sure I create a little bit of music on
a regular basis.
For about five days now, my jaw has been causing me problems. Basically, the muscles all the way in the back on the right-hand side are seized up. The end result is that it hurts to bring my teeth together, and I can't really form a clean bite. Eating has become occasionally problematic.
I managed to squeeze in an appointment with the dentist today. His suggestion was that I loosen up. You know, listen to some relaxing music before bed. Maybe get one of those little gurgling electric fountain things (mind you, I bet the cats would love that). His assistant asked if I ever read the bible before bed. Ha! Yeah, that'll help me relax. As a matter of fact I've been reading Dawkins before bed, which, let's be honest, could very well be a source of anger and stress ("intelligent design" is such a crock).
I also brought along the night guard I wear because I grind my teeth in my sleep; it's a natural source of suspicion in a situation like this. I think the dentist's eyes bugged out a bit when he saw it. The place where my teeth rest is polished to glassy clarity by the force of grinding. Better yet, it's cracked on both sides in the back. That's right -- I bit through my night guard. And whereas these things are supposed to be good for about five years, I've accomplished this in just over three. The dentist and I agreed that I should frame this night guard as a trophy marking tenure.
What's weird is that I think I'm sleeping pretty well. I guess I'm just unadvisedly good at sublimating stress into forms that are out of my conscious control. I've got to practice venting more openly. Excuse me while I go scream at my plants.
I saw a great show last week at the local chamber music space. The program consisted of three late Beethoven piano sonatas, including Number 32 (Opus 111), one of my favourites. And Marc Toth, the performer, just played the hell out of it too. I understood parts of it much better than ever before, partly by experiencing the wider dynamic range of live music, and partly by being able to watch his hands on the keyboard. I also saw the technical depth of the piece in a way that's hard to appreciate on the CD. One passage calls for three independent trills to be played simultaneously. A bit later, a trill is sustained for minutes, moving between different pairs of fingers as the remaining fingers play pieces of a melody both below and above it. Holy cow.
But there was a lot more to the show than that. Toth spent a fair amount of time talking about each of the pieces. Plus, he was funny, cracking dumb jokes non-stop until the moment he sat down to play.
After the first two sonatas the program called for an intermission. He actually said he'd be happy to keep playing if the audience was ready. No, that suggestion was voted down. But he wandered back into the performance hall during the intermission, where I had elected to remain. I jokingly suggested that he play anyway. So he sat down and played The Entertainer -- ha! Pretty silly, though he did later mention it in his introduction to the last sonata, with its "boogie-woogie variation". After The Entertainer, he practiced a bit for an upcoming show.
The formal program ended after Opus 111. The pianist returned after a couple of minutes and gave us an encore: Bach's Goldberg Variations. The whole thing (which, in fact, he had performed the night before at a different venue). The encore ran for about 40 minutes, longer than any of the individual pieces on the program, and was beautifully played. As I may have already indicated, Holy cow. This is clearly a guy who wants nothing more than simply to play the piano. What a great show.
A big story in Ontario this past week concerns a woman who died of respiratory failure on a train coming into Toronto. Others on the train were showing symptoms too, and so the train was quarantined until health officials could decide that there was no outbreak here, just a series of coincidences.
I find it interesting how the woman's identity has evolved throughout the past three days:
An autopsy determined Brenda Buckley, 43, of South
Africa died of natural causes...
Amazing -- the autopsy showed that the 84-year-old Australian was actually
a 43-year-old South African. In defense of these various media outlets,
we can perhaps forgive the widespread first mis-reported age, as it probably
came from interviews with unreliable passengers. And the story of an
Australian woman in her 80s came directly from Via (what is up with that?).
Still, the reporting here seems a bit sloppy when all the stories are
seen in close juxtaposition. And we're not talking about a minor discrepancy
either: her age varied by a full order of magnitude.
This is almost completely unrelated, but my (fully clothed) crotch was on
TV in a brief (heh) segment of local news last night.
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