Since I decided to start off the Cycle just a week and a half ago, I didn’t really have time to throw together something fancy music-wise, so I had to make do with what I was already doing, which was re-learning the Kabalevsky.

Why Kabalevsky? Well, it’s usually regarded as a student concerto, which is fine by me: you don’t go from zero to Ysaye in a week and a half, especially when you’ve never played Ysaye before. Plus, it’s a happy little song, and emotionally straightforward.

However, being easier to play did not mean I could hit it out of the park. Apparently, I have much to learn when it comes to recording audio, because either I cannot phrase to save my life, or my room and mic conspire to deaden my sound and I just haven’t noticed because I fail at having recording space.

Oh, right, you might be interested in getting the actual recording. Maybe.

Now, the content of the recording is a little wonky. Like I said before, I can’t phrase pschoacoustically effectively to save my life (no sense in trying to blame inanimate objects), my diction isn’t very clear when the doublestops come into the picture, I had a pretty inconsistent speed, the accompaniment was arranged and recorded in half an hour, and I just plain make mistakes.

It’s not okay, but I shipped.

First time in a long time I played violin in front of people, even if it was just for under a minute. Which means that I’m finally on the road to fulfilling a promise (made to an inanimate object, but really). We’ll see where I can take this: for now, I’ll publically pre-commit to releasing something violin created, every Saturday. Except there’s also the fact I want to release code on a regular basis, and there’s that hardware portion of my life that’s been stagnating…

So maybe that plan will mutate, and soon. But weekly releases! With accompanying blog posts, hot off the cuff! I suppose I’m making resolutions early?

And, I’ll cover what’s been going on the last… 6 months. But later.

• Attended some graduations
• Tweaked the Arimaa Icon set up to version 3 4 4.1
• Attended a Classical Revolution session in Seattle
• Re-read Neuromancer
• Made progress on finding housing. I detest looking for housing. In fact, I detest looking for most anything.
• Failed to finish Halo: Reach
• Got to the Silicon Valley without dying

Start work next week! I should be able to actually start finishing projects again, so heads up for that.

I have rectified what I have previously noted as something negative. With less than a week of practice under my belt, I managed to not suck that much at a Classical Revolution session.

I’m coming for you, anti-generality. And lemme tell you, it’s going to be a wicked battle. Count on it.

Sometimes I forget that I live in the real world, a world full of entropy and forces of nature, so it’s always good when small things like getting passed over for a job or not getting into a music program remind me about that. Getting my map out of sync with the territory is always a terrible thing…

So, not miffed about not getting violin lessons or being part of the university chamber music program: getting to know another violin teacher would be cool, because I’ve only had 3 throughout my life (and more is better, asymptotically), but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to keep doing classical music when I signed up for auditions. I’ve been doing classical music for almost 10 years, and I’m moderately good at it, but it’s nowhere near good enough to even make a small local impact. And ultimately, this is bothersome: I’ve spent maybe a solid third of a year playing the violin, and for that much playing, a minimal number of people hear my playing. No, I’m not trying to become a professional musician. Yes, I’ve personally benefited from all the practice and musical thought patterns drilled into my grey matter.

However, I’ve come to the conclusion that if it doesn’t move people (emotionally or in dance), then it’s worthless. Thus…

Ah, screw trying to fill up a blog post. No one listens to my playing, no one cares about my playing, and I’m tired of it. I’m going to try my hand at more pop-ish music (ha. Anything next to classical is pop), and try writing my own music.

We’ll see how that goes.

Back on the original tack, I’m a bit more miffed about not getting that sysadmin position. Ah well, time to apply to those tech support jobs…

On a different note, there seem to be a large number of geeks around here (good indicator is the fact I attended a talk by a speaker that blogged something a read a few days before). I’m just not sure how to get them to come out into the open: maybe RAM on a stick?

I’ve been wondering how to apply agile-esque methodologies to things outside of programming, especially since I’m not that great of a programmer. To recap, agile (or what agile means to me) is the mindset that releasing content early and frequently yields better results than finishing and polishing something you release/perform once in a great while. It would seem like this sort of methodology would work with something like the performing arts, since performers are always in a state of flux: one continually gets better. (The discrete nature of traditionally infrequent performances mask that fact, at least to myself.). For instance, last year a visiting violin professor reorganized studio class so everyone would perform at least bimonthly, instead of only three times in a semester. Once you’ve accepted an unmovable release schedule, then one adapts and progress is more apparent through the frequent performances. So that’s my previous experience with an agile-methodology with music performance: where do we go from here?

Well, we do it. Here are some recordings that I made today, about half a month from juries.

To kick things off, here’s mostly chaos. I just overlaid everything on top of each other when I was recording, and here’s a few seconds of the end result.

Now, some Bach: eventually, I’ll overlay the Sarabande and the Double, which works since Bach wrote the two to be harmonically isomorphic (or whatever music theory people say when they mean equivalence).

bach-sarabande-27-11-09_1

A second try at the Bach Sarabande: bach-sarabande-27-11-09_2

I just started the Double, so no, I don’t suck that badly. Really: bach-double-27-11-09_1

And have some Mozart:

A quick run-through of the Mozart. Maybe I’ll add some piano overlay sometime. mozart-concerto-4-I-27-11-09_1

Cadenza: mozart-concerto-4-cadenza-27-11-09_1

And a less gimpy run of the Cadenza: mozart-concerto-4-cadenza-27-11-09_2

Have fun: remember, all content is under cc-by-nc-sa. The lead in/out times are there if you want to do your own trimming/noise removal.