What's Next?

That is my wife's question. It is starting to be her external question®. In the last two weeks I have suffered through an allergic reaction in my left eye, back spasms that that laid me out for two days, a cold that ruined a whole weekend and almost breaking my little toe (it was a deep purple for three days). And last night I felt the cold trying to make a come back. So my wife asks, in her supremely cute Japanese accent, “What's next?”

Naked Lady

Well another week has flown by without me getting around to updating this here Blog.

Well the configuring of the new system is going well it is about 90 percent done and I am using it quite a bit. I am pretty much very happy with it. Just need to finish install all of my software and moving files from the old computers. The only problem I see now is that it is so fast that my wife wants to use it all of the time.

I have started to sketch out the second movement to my
Concerto For Trombone. The first movement Soul Catcher is on SibeliusMusic for listening. But ...

I have gotten side tracked working on a variation on an early piece of mine called Nagoy Devotchka This is a five part fugue that I originally wrote for string orchestra when I was a sophomore at university. I re-orchestrated it for Synthesizer (and double the tempo) when I was in putting it into Sibelius back in 2001 Anno Domini. I am currently working on two more versions of the piece.

The first version simply adds drums and Latin percussion to the current synthesizer version.

The second version (and the one I am actively working of this week) goes back to the original orchestration of a sting orchestra, but the tempo is radically slowed to a fraction of the current and original tempo. The original tempo was about eight note = 196 BPM, the current version that is double at eight note = 392 BPM the newest radically slow temp the eight note is only 30 BPM. So what is currently a three minute piece becomes a 36 minute wash of very slowly changing notes.

Although the two pieces will share 99.99 percent of the same notes, they are so radically different in their listening experience I will give the new slow piece a new name. Do not know what it will be yet. AS just for the record I considered making the piece as slow as 15 BPM!

Ursus Demens

AT LAST!

The long awaited first movement [Soul Catcher] of my
Concerto For Trombone & Jazz Band is now online at
SibeliusMusic.

This is the first of three planned movements, but as I have written before, I am still undecided on whether I will actually expand this piece in to a full three movements.

This movement is basically a 7/4 Blues with a bridge, with a slow intro & postlude.


New System Update

The other miracle is that my new system is finally moving forward, the OS is installed and boots, most of the drivers have been configured. But a lot of stuff still needs to be done, but the light at the end of the tunnel can now be perceived.

Ursus Demens

Miracles Do Happen

And what is the miracle I am talking about? The miracle that I have updated this BLOG on Monday.

First an update of my trials and tribulations with my new system. The Power supply is just fine, just stupid user error. So I got every thing powered up and started configuring the system, but after running for about 20 minutes the monitor went all crazy and I could smell something burning. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

So after fooling with it for two days I found a small “blemish” on one of the connectors on the video card. So I went out and got another video card (different brand) and put it in. Every thing started working again. So I have a relatively expensive fried video card. I suspect that the cooling fan on the card itself never actually worked. The new card is working fine, and the fan on it is working. I also picked up two 80mm fans for the case, right now I only have one installed.

But. My new issue is that I only have Serial ATA drives in the system right now, and I can not seem to get the system to boot from them. The boot from the CDROM and OS installation goes fine, but then the system does not seem able to boot from the SATA drive. The BIOS seems to be set correctly. Fought with this all day Sunday. So I picked up an IDE drive today, which I will use as the OS & Boot drive. Hopefully that will be that last of my issues.

Music

Well in the midst of all my system problems, I did manage to write a short piece of music in the last week. (As a break for working on my Concerto for Trombone and Jazz Band.) It is a short “Amen”. The score is available on SibeliusMusic at

AMEN (October 2005 Anno Domini) As I say in the program note this short ( ~ 48 seconds) piece is not for a choir that is afraid of Zeitgeist. Currently there is no MP3 available, but it is on my list to create one.

That is all for now. Stay tune for more updates.

Ursus Demens

One Hell o f a Week.

Well here it is Friday already, and I have not yet gotten around to updating this here BLOG. It has been on Hell of a week. I finally got down to Fry's and pickup all the parts for my new system and finally got it all put together last night.

BUT!

DOA. Absolutely no power when I switched it on, I am pretty sure the power supply is DOA. Good power from the wall, but nothing from out of the machine. No pop or crackle, no fan, no smells, nothing. So I have to go back to Fry's and get a new power supply or maybe a whole new case. I do not think I have fried anything. But it has bummed me.

I continue to work on my Concerto for Trombone and Jazz Band. Just putting the finishing touches on the Drum part, but that tends to take time. So it will be another week before it will be available on line.

I still have not updated my SibeliusMusic homepage (link below). So all the in progress music is still available (see previous posts).

Please I would love to hear from you all on my music. Please check it out and let me know how it strikes you.

Ursus Demens