Lights!

I don't know what happened this week but it was crazy.  Somehow after consecutive late rehearsals with the choirs and orchestras I was able to complete a 4 page paper, read two novella for class, compiled a resume, had an interview, represented the college in two recruiting trips, and may still have time for pie tonight.  Thank heavens next week is Thanksgiving.

Late rehearsals for what you ask?  I have to admit, as time consuming it has been, I've been lucky to have the great opportunity to perform with the USU Symphony Orchestra Holst's Hymn of Jesus and Scriabin's Prometheus.  Some people may have no idea what that means.  Here's the nitty gritty.

Scriabin was a legitimately crazy Russian composer.  I say crazy because he thought he was God.  He thought this so much that his final piece, Mysterium, was meant to bring about Armageddon.  Clearly it didn't and Scriabin is long dead.  The coolest part is that he liked to experiment with other senses in combination with music, so in our case he intended Prometheus to be performed with a light show but due to the lack of technology in the early 20th century that never happened.  However many universities are trying to bring this to life lately and Utah State is the next to do so!

All these pictures are from a rehearsal last night so you can see the sort of things they're doing with these lights.  The music is beautiful though highly neo-tonal and the lights are notated in the score with each colour and effect correlating to a particular note or key.  Sure, this performance runs the risk of giving people headaches, but those without those intolerances are in for a spectacular evening!  It may not be the most exciting thing I've been a part of, but I have to admit this is pretty cool!

Almost Halloween!

Here it is, the day before Halloween, and I'm sitting at a computer in a lab on campus finishing yet another project.  I don't know about anyone else, but it always seems that about this point of the semester is the time when you feel like you do nothing but homework in the vain hope that one day you will be free.  Let me know if that day ever comes for any of you.

I mentioned in an earlier post how I'm not the biggest fan of Halloween, though I will admit that I agreed to go to a friend's party tomorrow and I am a little excited to go.  I wish I wasn't expected to dress up (I have this mentality on costumes: if you can't do it well, why bother?) but it should still be way fun.  Maybe I'll post a picture or two of it later, should I actually think to take any, that is.

This song has nothing to do with Halloween, however, so hopefully that's not too much of a downer for those listening to it.  It's my first attempt at orchestrating for near full orchestra (no percussion yet) and it took me ages to complete this project for my class.  It's a rendition of Debussy's Sunken Cathedral which I feel sounds amazing on piano already which made this project tricky.  Hopefully it sounds good.

There were some who were wondering about getting copies of some of my pieces, particularly the last one, so if you want any either email me or, if I already know you, message me on Facebook and I'm more than willing to give you the pdf of anything.  Thanks!

Sunken Cathedral - Claude Debussy (Segment - Arr.)

Mid-term Madness

You know, it's hard to find time to blog or do anything not stressful when you're in the middle of your last year of college.  Weird, right?

I am always left amused when I sit back and realise that each of my professors has the idea that, to "help" us feel less busy, they are lighter on the homework at the beginning and end of the semester and pile everything at mid-term.  As "good-hearted" as this may be, the problem is that when everyone is doing the same thing it doesn't really work as they intend.  Instead the students are left with two or three weeks in the semester in which their lives feel like they're about to unravel because EVERYTHING IS DUE AT ONCE!  The result?  One of my classes didn't happen for me on Tuesday and one assignment became ignored completely.  I am okay with this.

Even with all of this going on, Halloween is upon us.  I don't actually care for Halloween very much.  I appreciate the candy and sugar portion of the holiday, but I could live without everything else.  Especially the costumes.  There's a reason I've been a "model" and a "nudist on strike" the last couple of years.  I just don't care anymore.  Some people do and I'm so glad that they do.  They can care on my behalf.

Having said that, this song is my latest project from my Orchestration class I was talking about last month.  This time we were supposed to do a string and woodwind version of a piece from Bela Bartok's Mikrokosmos.  I thought it sounded kind of creepy in a cool way so I tried to stay true to that while orchestrating.  This is the closest I get to Halloween.  Enjoy!

Mikrokosmos No. 150 - Bela Bartok (Stgs & WW Arr. Segment)

A Little 20th Century

Last semester I took my final semester of music theory which dealt primarily with twentieth century music (atonality, modes, twelve-tone, serialism, etc.) a lot like the music in this picture.  Weird, huh?  I like it!  Anyway, towards the beginning of the semester we had a composition project.  We had a lot of constraints on the project but the main thing is that it had to have a tonal centre (and mine does . . . ish . . . D dorian).  I didn't care too much about the project so I wrote the whole thing in about thirty minutes or so.  It probably would have been a lot better had I taken more time on it, but I still kind of like it.  I'm hoping eventually to write a little more music in this type of genre because, in my time at school, I've come to love it!

As a note, this is probably not for everyone since it's really weird and out there, but I'll post it anyway.

Theory Project