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

Yet Another Week

Yet another week has passed without me really noticing it. Last time I checked it was Monday, yet here I am on Thursday trying to come up with an update for the week.

Well, I have not yet gotten around to cleaning up my Sibelius Home Page so the work in progress Umi is still available and will be over the weekend.

Progress on my “Concerto for Trombone and Jazz Band” is continuing nicely. And I might have a postable version by next week. But I have begun to question whether I will continue with my original idea of a full three movement work. Currently I am leaning towards leaving the piece as the single “movement” I currently have and not calling it a “concerto”. But it will be a long weekend and I might yet again change my mind.

Then again I hope to actual get my new computer this weekend, so my time might be devoted to setting up hardware and installing software.

If you are interested in new and interesting music take some time out of your busy schedue and check out The Composers Channel This Internet radio station from Show Programming has original songs you do not/will not hear on regular radio stations and the bonus is that the station is free. If you are tired of the same top 40 played over and over and over and over all day, then your ears deserve this.

If you want to talk about music or music composition please leave me a comment.

Ursus Demens

Japan, World War II, Outlet Malls, and My Mother-in-law.

So what do all the above have in common?

Well, last week I took the family (Wife, Daughter and Mother-in-law) out to one of the several outlet malls we have around Southern California. So there we where in a clothing shop and my mother-in-law is trying on a jacket. And it occurs to me, when she was Junior High School age did she ever imagine that she would one day be in America trying on and buying clothes? This is significant, at least to me, because a little over 60 years ago my mother-in-law was a young (JHS age) girl in Japan learning how to use a bamboo spear to protect the home islands from the invading America barbarians. And it struck me how much her world paradigm and the world itself has changed since then. And leaves us with the question what will the world be like in 50 or 60 years when my Daughter reaches my mother-in-law's age? Will the free world have exterminated radical Islamfascism? Or will her grandchildren be sharpening their bamboo spears in Junior High home room?

Ursus Demens

Soul Catcher

Well where does the week go? Last I looked it was Monday afternoon. Time does seem to fly when you are having fun at work. [For the humor impaired that last statement was meant to be sarcastic.] Umi is still available. The plan it to take it down early next week when I do some house cleaning on my Sibelius Music Home Page

This week I have spent what little composing time that I have had working on a concerto for Trombone and Jazz Band. The current plan is to write three movements. I am currently working on the first movement which has a tentative title of Soul Catcher. The piece starts in a moderate 7/4 and then moves into a fast 7/4 minor blues with a bridge. But it is a long way from finished. I do have some very very preliminary ideas for the second movement tentatively titled The Lady. I have no ideas for the final third movement, but I have a tentative title in mind, but I will let you all guess what it is.

I would love to hear from you all, but if all you are doing is trying to get me to go to your site do not bother. But if you want to talk about music or music composition please leave me a comment.

Ursus Demens

Progressive rock, minimalism, serialism, or cr&^?

I have new piece that is a work in progress. It is called Umi

So my question to y’all’s is: is this worth working on, or would the paper it is written on be put to better use cleaning up after the dog? I will leave the piece up for about a week, after which I will most likely take it down.

Umi is the original sketch idea that became Cat Juice but taken in a very different direction than Cat Juice

[Umi means Sea in Japanese]

And Ed thanks you for your support.

Square, square, square.

Well the knee is getting better, but not quite all the way back, maybe 95 percent.

Not a lot going on, just working on stuff. Picked up a Charles Mingus album (CD) on Monday, some pretty kool s**t. I listen to Kats like Mingus and Coltrane and I think man I am SO SQUARE.

Square, square, square!

(Oh, the Mingus album is titled “Mingus Ah Um”, and originally recorded in 1959. So that makes it 46 years old and it is still hip, hipper than I will ever be.)

Tonight might be a two Scotch night.


Ursus Demens

One hell of a week.

The week started off with me having a very nasty bout with the flu. I finally recovered and was feeling well enough to attend the inaugural meeting of the Southern California Sibelius User meeting, and what do I do? I twist a knee in the parking lot. My wife is not happy. Do you know what she said to me when I got home? “What’s next?”, over and over again, “What’s next?”. But then she made me a little something to eat before I took my shower.

The Sibelius User Group meeting was interesting. They had a demo of Sibelius 4, leaned a few more tricks. The real bit of insight that I came away with is that other than not knowing anyone there (most everyone else seem to know at least two or three others there), I have very little in common with other composers.

Earlier today I was checking on the stats of views of my scores on Sibelius Music and found that my piece Single Malt has been ignored this week. Every other piece had at least one visit, but poor old Single Malt was left all alone. So hoist a small dram this weekend in honor of Single Malt. It is another one of my various modal jazz tunes. Single Malt is in 9/4 time divided 3+2+2+2 and is scored for Vibraphone, Piano, Bass, Drums and Conga. It was the Musical Blog Piece for the Week of March 6th, 2005 Anno Domini. March 2005 Anno Domini Archive

Ursus Demens

Not so happy.

Well this week I am not so happy as I was last week. Mainly because I came down with a truly bad case of stomach flu over the weekend and I have still not quite recovered. It also looks like my new computer is going to have to wait a few more weeks, but not too much longer.

Despite my bout with the flu my latest piece Cat Juice is available on SibeliusMuisc.

I am still quite happy with newest version of Sibelius and have been playing with the video scoring feature. The one thing I have come to realize is that I want the video to match my music, not to match my music to the video, yet another reason why I do not want to be a film composer.

I also looks like the Garritan JAZZ & BIG BAND COLLECTION of samples will be available very soon. I have listen to some of the demos they have now, very impressive. Can’t wait to get a copy and new machine to run it, looks like I might be doing a lot more Jazz in the future.


Ursus Demens